Harvester Of Basil

Not only have my Basil three been creating delicious leaves that I have used for a few dishes so far (the difference between the fresh and dried herbs is so huge that it is nigh indescribable--but if I were to try I would say it is like using a machete to cut down reeds versus ones bare hands.) Despite the fact that I have taken a few times from these plants, they are still growing like mad--and thus I decided that is time to become the harvester of Basil. I gave them excessive water today and took some pictures of their voluptuous veined leaves before I started to pluck them. (And you are not surprised, are you? ^.^)

 A view from above of the first two.

 A view from above of the third one.

 Looking up close, you can see that there are three generations of leaves growing here--the largest being the oldest, obviously. These--especially the ones that are growing under two or even one other set--are the ones that I pinched off during my harvest.

 Even after removing one leaf, you can see that it allows much more sun to shine down on the rest of the growing leaves.

 And more and more is allowed in when you remove the mature leaves. Thus, I set to work on all three of my plants, armed with a bowl to collect my Basil. 

Eventually...

 This is what the first two look like now that I have done with them--and even though I gave them a huge amount of water, they promptly sucked it up just after I was done harvesting. The third Basil, pictured below after its harvest, did the same.

 This cluster has the most mature sets of leaves--I wound up leaving some leaves with a few generations still growing on this one due to the pristine nature of the leaves. The other two--while having produced significantly larger leaves--I wound up plucking most of the leaves from because they had been bitten or otherwise occupied by something somewhere along the way instead of based solely on maturity.

 Done and proudly packing a bowl full of fragrant Basil, I headed inside and ran a sink of cold, clean water and began to soak the leaves. This is going to not only get rid of some of the dirt that remains, but hopefully frighten if not drown any critters that still lurk in among my herbs.

And so, there it soaks. And now, to decide what I want to do with it all...

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