Purple Basil Gives You Purple. . . and Other Harvesting Tips!

vinegar!  Isn't this the prettiest color? I get caught up in the little details of everything and forget about some of the important pluses of herb harvesting.  We planted the basils in my French bowl and they have been doing well.  So well that I need to start harvesting them and making herbal stuff.  So what you see is in a quart canning jar.  Even though it is a quart, it holds about 3-1/2 cups of liquid once the herbs are in the jar.  So I would guess that I have about one cup of basil in the jar along with white wine vinegar.  I will be adding more basil to the mix and then wait about two weeks and try it and bottle it for gifts or use it for salad dressing.  You could also use red wine vinegar, but I would use regular basil instead of the purple.  Rice Vinegar would also be a good choice for basil.   I just would not use plain old white vinegar.  Use that for cleaning!

Bonnie and I were talking this morning about our 'Clevelandii' sages we got last fall from our Ohio herb buddy, Kathleen Gips.  I said I wanted to harvest some of my leaves as it was getting very tall.  She said mine flowered and hers has not gotten as tall as mine has!  So my extension agent, Sandy Feather, used to tell me when you couldn't get a plant to flower or fruit in a container, stress it out a bit.  The more pampering it gets the more lush in leaves it becomes and it won't produce flowers or fruit.  Bonnie neglected her sage a bit hence the flowers.  You also want to be cutting about one-third of most herb plants so that it will keep producing leaves.

We are slowly coming down in humidity and temperature.  Looks like tomorrow will be a delightful day and I am hoping to get the herbs that I bought a couple of weeks ago into the ground finally.  This has been a long season.  I always like surprises in the garden and Bonnie has given me her elecampane and I am just figuring out where to put it so it will be a surprise!  I will let you know where it goes!  Hope you are having a great day wherever you may be!  I will talk to you tomorrow!