Basil - Don't Talk to ME about Basil!

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Basil - Don't Talk to ME about Basil!

If the title rings bells with you, you’ll recall Marvin the paranoid android in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with his fits of laconic gloom and despair about life.

That’s roughly the response that basil, one of the world’s most popular and delicious culinary herbs induces in me. I wish it wasn’t so popular. I wish hordes of people didn’t keep asking me for it, from January onwards. On the other handl, that would be fine – if only I could grow it!

It is a tender herb, grown as an annual in Britain. It is native to India, where the species Ocimum sanctum, the holy basil, sacred to Krishna and Vishnu, is used as much for medicinal and religious purposes as cooking. In both Europe and Asia, basil leaves are traditionally a ticket to the next world after death.

The main species grown in Britain is O. basilicum, or sweet basil, which has loads of really nice cultivars such as cinnamon basil, lemon basil and purple and ruffled-leaf forms. I’ve tried most of them, with no great success! Basil is good for colds, aids digestion, and the essential oil is a real tonic, stimulating the mind and lifting the spirits. The leaves are traditionally used with tomatoes, with which vegetable it loves to grow (once established!), but I love the flavour with almost anything – especially fish. Once I grew enough to make pesto – but only once.

Basil requires a lot of warmth and high light levels to do well. This I understand, and provide, yet every year the first batch of seedlings “damps off” jubilantly, regardless of variety sown, time of sowing, whether or not I neglect it, or compost mix used. I know of people – lucky wretches – who throw basil seed into garden soil in a pot, shove it on a window ledge and ignore it, and grow wonderful crops as a result. I can’t even simulate that, nor will I use the methods of the non-organic gardener which do, I’m told, produce results. Of the second sowing, glum seedlings sit – literally for months – with barely a true leaf showing. During which time, slugs, aphids or spider mites come and eat them. Millipedes snap off any remaining stems. The slightest watering and they go mouldy. The third sowing – well, it’s early days, but it does look more promising, especially the liquorice-scented Thai Basil (O. basilicum var. thyrsiflorum).

There is one more thing I can try. In Mrs Grieve’s Modern Herbal, it is recounted that the ancient Greeks and Romans believed basil would not grow unless the grower hurled abuse at it at the time of sowing. Since I only abuse it and curse it as it dies, perhaps my timing is at fault…..But generally basil hates me, it’s the only herb I have to buy, and if there is anyone out there whom it loves, and who can contract grow it for me, I’ll be glad to hear from them!

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