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Build your own basil bed and enjoy the glorious taste of sunshine through the year.
To make our basil bed, we built a free-standing “bed” out of 2×6 lumber and placed it on two sawhorses. (It’s easy to make a sawhorse from a 2×4 and sawhorse bracket available from your local building-supply outlet.)
How to grow endless basil forever
The 4×6 cedar forming the bottom of the bed is spaced to allow drainage, so we used a combination of insulating Styrofoam and a sheet of heavy plastic to seal it. Then, using an electric drill, we added drainage holes through the plastic in between the Styrofoam. Next, we laid out the electric soil-heating cable.
With a built-in thermostat, the electric cable automatically activates when the soil temperature dips below 74°F. The cables are available in a variety of sizes, from 6 to 48 ft. With a square footage of 16 ft. (based on our 2 ft. by 8 ft. dimension), we opted for the 48-ft. length.
The heating cable is taped into position so that none of the cable touches cable.
When the cable is nicely laid out and taped down, you are ready to add soil.
Soil is added gently.
As the soil takes care of holding the cable in place, the tape is removed.
The bed is topped up with soil and Sea Soil.
Planting rows are marked.
A bulk bag of basil seed is a good investment and can last for years if properly stored. See my blog post on saving seed.
Sprinkle seed into your rows and then very lightly spread dirt over the seeds.
The seeds are watered.
And in less than a couple of weeks…
(We also experimented with growing zucchini and tomatoes on this bed. The zucchini did not transplant well so I wouldn’t grow them in the basil bed again. The tomatoes germinated quickly and were successfully transplanted into larger pots in the greenhouse.
Crowded seedlings like these can be thinned into salads.
This easy-to-access bed is now a natural extension of our kitchen pantry.
A bounty of basil in early May!
The taste of summer: basil, tomatoes and fresh mozzarella!
Try this dreamy Pizza Margharita recipe or whip up a batch of pesto and freeze some for later.
This year, we challenged ourselves to see if we could continue to gather fresh basil from our kitchen garden throughout the year. Check out our solution!
