Ten extra minutes in the garden and you will have tons of basil seeds for next season. Never buy basil seeds again!
If it’s the end of the road for your basil plant, you may be thinking of how you can start saving seeds so that you won’t have to purchase seeds again next season. You will know when it’s time to harvest basil seeds if your plant has dried flowers (like in the picture below).
Flowers petals that still have some green on them should dry completely if you want to harvest the whole steam. You can also try to harvest the seeds from the dried flowers below it.
(You may be wondering why the basil in the pictures doesn’t have any leaves or other flowering stems. Whenever a plant has run its course in the garden we like to give the remainder of it to the chickens and compost pile.)
The first thing you will want to do is cut the stem you would like to harvest from.
Next, take all of the the little flower pods off of the stems with your fingers and let them fall in the container. Another way is to shake the stems in a paper bag, but I haven’t tried that way yet.
After the pods are in the container you will notice little black dots and those are your seeds! If you don’t see very many, rub some of the pods between your fingers and more seeds will come out.
So that’s it! All you need to know to be able to save our own basil seeds! Put them in a container or bag to stay dry and they will be available for your garden next season.