Basil plants are very soothing herbs with various medical benefits. While growing the Basil plant at home, one should care for it properly as you can't leave it on its own as most people do with mint herbs.
Basil plants should be pruned at the right time and height otherwise you will not get enough leaves for your daily use.
Here, I'll share some valuable tips and steps for pruning Basil plants DIY.
Basil plant pruning in the garden
For pruning Basil, you need some basic information about the plant first. Apart from the information, a proper guide and a sharp scissor or cutting tool are required for clean pruning of the Basil plant.
But before guiding you further, for those who are starting from scratch, the following will be more helpful-
Purpose of the pruning basil plant
Every houseplant needs pruning at a certain time to improve its growth, and shape, and utilize its growing conditions properly. If you let the Basil plants grow without trimming and pruning, they'll grow too taller. Later, the Basil plant will start producing flowers at the top of each branch which completely distracts the whole plant.
While developing flowers, plants will mostly focus on flowers instead of producing new and bigger leaves.
Thus, your purpose will get failed of getting regular leaves from Basil plants. So it is important to prune them at the right time and right height so that you can get regular leaves for daily use and the plant will be healthy and in good shape. Also, pruning helps to make Basil plants more bushy and thick with leaves.
When to prune basil plant?
Basil plants like moderate to higher temperatures instead of cool weather. So the right time to prune your basil plants is late spring to the end of the summer season. You can directly use a pruning scissor to cut the necessary portion from the plant.
Also, the right height is very important with the time of pruning.
When your Basil plant will grow over 12 inches without flowers, you can start first pruning. Making it short up to 8 inches is good.
In many varieties of Basil, they produce flowers on lower heights. In such cases, you can prune quickly after the flowers start appearing. If the plant is not producing flowers even if it's growing over 14 inches tall, you should prune it to create a balance. You should prune at 10 inches over the ground for such Basil plants.
Step by step guide to prune basil plants
If you never touched a Basil plant for pruning or trimming, you may do some fundamental mistakes even if you have the basic knowledge. So step by step guide is very important in such cases.
So, let's see how to prune Basil step by step-
Step 1- Examine the plant balance
First, examine your Basil plant to see the balance and weight of the plant so that you can identify which sections need to be cut.
Closely examine if the plant is producing new flowers or if leaves are not growing at a particular section of the plant. You also need to look closely at the older leaves and the new ones with their nodes as the older leaves should be pruned first.
Step 2- Remove the dry or dead leaves
If your Basil plant has any dry or yellowish leaves, remove them first. But remember, if leaves are only yellow at the tip, you don't need to cut the whole branch.
So if the branch is not producing new leaves, you can cut it just 1/2 inch above the recent node.
Step 3- Cut the top of each branch
To avoid growing flowers on Basil, you need to cut the top section of the plant. Either you can pinch it or cut it directly with scissors.
Before deciding the length of the cutting, you need to consider the whole length of the top branch of the plant. If it is 1 inch above the last node, then pinch it without hesitation.
Step 4- Prune the whole Basil plant just above the nodes
Now, you can cut the older leaves 1/2 inch above the last node. It means you can repeat this process on the whole plant till you'll get enough leaves for your use and the plant will become lighter. In the end, you'll have left offensive looking Basil plant but soon, it'll produce more new leaves in no time.
Remember, you shouldn't cut the shorter or newer leaves or nodes. And don't cut the whole branch of older leaves. Just remove leaves 1/2 inch above the nodes.
Step 5- Use cut basil leaves
I hope you'll have left some good Basil leaves for your use after pruning. Wash them, store them, and use them as you want to in your breakfast or lunch.
If there are dried leaves then leave them right there, they'll be decomposed automatically.
What if you don't prune Basil plants?
If you don't prune your Basil plants, they'll continue to grow tall. After a time they'll produce flowers and seeds which will shift plants' focus from the leaves to these flowers. Thus, your existing leaves will remain the same but the new ones will not grow or grow very less.
Although, once these flower seeds become mature, they fall and germinate new Basil plants. But it takes some time to grow new Basil plants and you don't want to get without Basil leaves.
Without pruning, you can't consider regular leaves for your daily usage. Although, pruning will not work much after flowers, so you should pinch the top portion each time while pruning the Basil plant.
Even if you don't prune at the right spot of the plant, you may lose some valuable sections from the Basil plant.