I Could Use A Little Help With My Basil.

[horticulture]

Ok, here's the deal - I have a Basil plant that I have been wanting to clone very badly and could use some tips from a few green thumbs

I have been doing alot of reading on the web about how to clone basil in paticular. I know it is better to have more warmth for the cutting, and I also read somewhere that it is good to have the cutting in a dark atmosphere.
So, where is the best place to take a cutting off my plant..? When I was doing some reading it was saying to take a 4" cut from the very top of one of the stalks ( there is three in my pot) right under a leaf nod. Is this true? And where should I put the cutting? Should I let it soak in a glass water? Should the water be cold or warm? Luke warm maybe? Room Temperature?
Should I put it in very moist dirt? And I read somewhere about a guy not being able to get a succesful cutting to sprout some roots. He then tried to experiment with a few different methods and found out that putting a plastic baggie over the top of a glass of water to act as a mini green house.

Suggestions please!!!

Here's a pic so you have a better understanding -




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Peace, Frankie.

[Tinybu88les8]

I haven't cloned basil and actually didnt know you could.... BUT I got a plant (just a house plant) from my bfs mother. she told me if I took some leaves off of the plant (right underneath a node) and placed it in water it would root. So I followed her advice and it did root. It took a few weeks and was annoying having that glass sitting on my counter for that long but now I have a 2nd plant.I just used regular old faucet water...cold. As the water would evaporate I would just top it off...and once a week (or so) I gave them fresh water. Good luck!

[horticulture]

I am pretty sure you can clone just about any plant I am still kinda new to gardening. I'd say on my first year

What I did was take two cups of water, on one of them I taped some black paper around it to shield out any light and I put a plastic bag ofer the top to act as a greenhouse. (got the idea off of stories from peoplke who cloned their basil And I put about three cuttings in it. 2 of them 4" from the top main stalk like I said before. And there was 2 more that are just leaf knodes. In another cup I have just one pain stalk piecs like the other two and it is in a clear cup of water. No top or anything.

And by the way....I don't even exactly know how a greenhouse works
I'm gonna google it
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Peace, Frankie.

[NatGreeneVeg]

Instead of 'cloning', I'd call it how to 'root cuttings'. Basil roots easily from cuttings (woody and not woody). Basil is a warm weather plant, you'll want to root in 75-85F degree temps.

Cut a healthy stem, take off half of the bottom leaves. Insert the stem in a small pot of sterile, nutritious potting soil. Not soil from the ground. Water it. Make sure two nodes are beneath the soil. Keep it in full shade outside. You can cover with a plastic bag if you make sure it doesn't overheat during the day. I usually do not use the plastic bag, because my method works for me. You should have rooted basil cuttings within two weeks.

I don't recommend water because roots need oxygen equally as much as they require water and nutrients. If you start roots in water, you stress them when you move them to soil. You're better off starting in soil in the long run.
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Have a cup of tea and witness the evolution of an Organic Kitchen Garden.

[rainbowgardener]

Agree with NatGreene except when he said "outside," he of course did not mean outside in Illinois in November! Your little basil cutting (which is of course a clone, whether or not you want to call it that) would promptly shrivel up and die. If you are doing your cutting now (or even in October when it was first posted), it is an indoor experiment.

And Nat's comment about the mini-greenhouse overheating was meant for when it could be outdoors in sun. For your indoor experiment, in dry heated indoor air, the mini-greenhouse will indeed be very helpful, maybe necessary. Browse around with the search function, there's several places where people have posted pic of doing this with 2 liter soda bottles cut in half.

If you do get the cutting to take, the next step will be how to give it enough light to keep it going indoors all winter. I have a basil plant I brought in for the winter. It's in a corner with two windows and I give it a couple hours supplemental light morning and evening to make up for the short gray days. It's barely hanging in there, may or may not make it through the winter. But I don't feel like running all that light full time, seems to work against all my energy conservation attempts. And I spend enough energy once the seed starting begins in January with grow lights on 16 hrs a day, heating pads...

[healthyfruit]

holy cow my basil never looked like that,

that plant looks healthy good work.
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fun.