Growing basil indoors

I seem to remember my Basil doing ok when I just watered it when it was a bit droopy. That said, I did kill it off in the end, but it lasted quite a long time. I'm not sure that's any help actually. Sorry!

I usually have a pot of supermarket basil on the go. I'm rubbish at remembering to water it regularly and my cue is usualy when it's droopy and half dead. it's fairly resiliant though as it always seems to recover. Curiously, mine now has flowers on whcih I've never seen before.

Another supermaket basil girl here - and I too, water it when it droops to remind me!

Ah, now one thing I did found out in my search is that if it has flowers on you need to remove them from the plant otherwise it impairs the flavour plus then the plant will put all its effort into creating yummy leaves.

Ok, then having just taken a look at the pot and the condition of the leaves I've got a feeling I may be killing it with kindness by over-watering it. So, from now on I'm not watering it until it until further notice and hope that I haven't killed it completely.

We have some that we have grown from seed, and it is thriving indoors. it's all a bit accidental though, we aren;t too sure what we are doing right.

Thank you!

We have a supermarket pot on the go that we've had for a couple of months now - to avoid overwatering it, we put the water into a saucer underneath the pot and let it be drawn up rather than putting the water directly into the pot itself.

When I bought supermarket basil it kept dying till someone told me to repot it- by the time you get them, they are usually quite potbound. I potted it on in a pot about twice the size, and it lived for months. So that's worth trying too - if you can see it's roots coming out of the holes, it's probably got too big for the pot. They'll last a while like that but will do much better in a big enough pot.

HTH

We have a supermarket one that's made it to 18 months so far. It sits on a windowsill where it gets a lot of light but is often cold - it doesn't seem to mind too much. We tend to water directly into the saucer. So far it's still going!

The 'received wisdom' seems to be that supermarket herbs are made to fail to make you buy a new one but we've got basil, mint and chives all doing well. However, however many times we try with coriander it always dies within a couple of weeks.

Thanks for that spacecadet, I might try that.

The only time I've ever had supermarket herbs survive is when I had them on a window sill above a raging heater. Maybe it creates some sort of tropical climate ?

I've never managed very well with coriander either, it always seems to droop as soon as it comes out of the packaging. That said, the lot on my windowsill at the moment seems to have found it's second wind after mostly dieing back. I wonder if they cram too much into the pots?

In my college days I had a HUGE indoor basil plant called Sybil (my boyfriend-at-the-time's basil plant (both came off the same supermarket pot) was called Mr. Fawlty). It must have been going at least a year.

I've got masses of the stuff growing in pots and window boxes all over the house

I grew it all from one supermarket pot, snipped off the bigger stems and rooted them in water - took between 4 days to a week, then potted them on

as the smaller stems grew I snipped, rooted, and potted them on, and now I have loads

I might try this with a few of the good stems as if it does die I can try and see if I can get some new plants off those.