Well the first harvest of the season is in and I am very happy to declare that the basil is looking beautiful. I must admit it is very hard for me to bring in the first harvest of herbs every year. I grow basil from seed.
So first
- Find the best seeds
- Then the best growing medium for seeds
- Then plant
- Water gently daily
- Watch
- Wean them gently to the outdoors
- When the time is finally right you transplant them to the great outdoors
- Next it’s watering
- Watch some more
It seems a shame that as soon as they are big enough you chop them back so they won’t go to flower. But alas unless you prefer your basil as an ornamental you must. And well that has been the point of the whole excercise as well. The freshest herbs for meals and the rest dried and put away in the pantry for future use. I didn’t have a recipe in mind for this particular batch so it all went into the handy dandy dehydrator (thank you NESCO)!
First a little bath to clean away any unwanted visitors. Must admit the last minute cricket was a bit of a surprise but he was kinda cute.
Then pulled the leaves off of the stems and got them arranged on the drying trays.
All stacked up and ready to go!
One evening in the dehydrator later.
Quick trip through the food processor.
Now the one thing I forgot to mention was that in here somewhere hiding amongst my sweet basil there is a cinnamon basil. I will have to be more careful next time I harvest but there was nothing to by the time I figured it out. So I took a bit of sweet basil and purple basil left over from the garden last fall and mixed them together.
I think that it made a rather divine looking mixture. Now it also smells heavenly. No hint of cinammon.
