From what I have learned in my amateur gardening sessions in growing stuff, is that it isn't always the easiest to grow from seed and you should spare yourself the effort of this.
Especially growing herbs from scratch seems like a never ending disappointment from where the herbs don't look like something you would ever intend to toss on your food.
Exactly the length where you want to cut your stuff
Instead what I have done a lot over the last couple of years is invest in juist 1 little plant coming from somewhere, and from there on make an endless amount of cuttings that will create new plants.
When the new plants are getting bigger, that is when you do the same thing again and all of a sudden you have a never ending supply.
The most well known one for this is ordinary super market basil. Once you buy a supermarket plant for this which is way too full in one little container, once you make a bunch of separate plants of this in a bigger pot that is when the cutting bonanza starts.
Every time you cut above on of the main stems, two new branches grow from here. For me that would mean after a couple of weeks that I would eat one of the new main stems, and cut the other one to propagate it again in water until the roots start to grow.
For me the real reason to get this going because I really love to eat a lot of Thai Basil in my food. You know the one that tastes like liqorice and is used a lot in the Vietnamese kitchen.
That one is fantastic to eat and cook with and it is super annoying to get here in Holland. I only saw once that it was easy to buy here in a regular supermarket and that was like 2 years ago. So I went on the hunt for some plants this year in the garden centre and it wasn't an easy hunt. It took a couple of tours of half dead and empty shelfs to get just one little plant.
And that one has been serving me ever since.
Just look at those roots after living in a glass of water for a couple of weeks to get them stronger!!!
Because what I did was make some nice cuttings from the original plant which wasn't really strong as you can seen in the top picture. Stack the lower sides in a glass of water and just wait. Yeah sure you need to make sure that the lower edges are in the water but that's it! That is all!
A couple of weeks later I saw a tremendous amount of roots formed in the glass and I decided it was time to plant them again. Those roots...For real that was like something I had never seen before how long they were. They were up until 10 centimeters long which was the same length as the cutting was.
And when you stick that in the soil again. Ow boy, that means those are strong plants ready to go again.
For now every time I use a portion of Thai Basil again, I also propagate a new portion again. There are so many nice dishes to make something with.
What about using it in Vietnamese Pho soup which is awesome for breakfast if you ask me. Or what about using it in some cold rice spring rolls where you just roll in the leaves.
Or one of my favorites making Pad Krapow which is just a really nice rice dish using either ground pork or ground chicken in there and making the sauce from scratch with some kitchen basics and stirred Thai Basil in there as well, is also not the biggest effort.
Adding a fried egg on top for some optics and some final taste and drizzling the Thai Basil leaves on the side really makes this a super fun dish, which also seems quite healthy everything together?
So growing the Thai Basil from scratch here, even though most likely it is a lot cheaper? Nehhh, propagating is the way to go in this one!
