Basil Flowers
If you have basil in your herb garden, you need to regularly remove the blossoms that form. If you leave the blossoms on, the basil plant will begin the process of going to seed and will stop producing new leaves. The good news is, that you don’t have to get rid of the basil flowers that you remove. You can dry them and add them to your dried basil leaves. The basil flowers have a faint hint of basil smell and taste and can be safely mixed in with your dried basil.
The first step is to clip the flowers from the plants where the basil flower connects to the stem. Remove all of the basil flowers. You can collect them on a sheet of wax paper, or in a shallow dish.
Next, take three or four basil flowers and gather them at the base of the blossoms. Use a rubber band to hold the flowers together at the stem.
After you’ve made bunches from all the basil flowers you have collected, take one paper clip for each bunch and fold each paper clip open to make it look like the letter S.
Use one end of the S-shaped paper clip to hook onto the rubber band of one of the bunches. Hook the other end of the S to a nail in a warm dry location where your basil flowers can dry.
Let the basil flowers hang upside down for four days. Then check to make sure that the basil flowers are totally dry. If the basil flowers are dry, they will feel crisp to the touch. Once they are dry, remove them from where you’ve hung them.
Keep your dried basil flowers in a glass jar with a secure lid or a plastic container with a lid that seals. You can crush the dried basil flowers with your dried basil leaves to make your herb garden even more efficient and abundant.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ve been fortunate. My basil plants have been thriving this year vs going to seed. We live in Florida and every morning I go out and remove any flowers that have bloomed. The other day I noticed something round growing……like a fruit. Do you know what this is? Is it useful, edibile or should I remove it immediately? You should know that I keep my basil containered out by our screened in pool…..to keep the bugs at bay. My basil sits on a table with several cantaloupe plants that I also started from seed.
I am not sure – can you send a picture? Could be a number of things so don’t want to say without an image.
If the flowers are done and gone and the “shoots” are now brown and full of seed, can these be used other than for collecting seed, for instance added to the dried basil? And can the seed be used in some way, maybe like poppy seed or some other way? We already have plenty of seed for next year’s crop. thanks for any info.