Hey guys! Today in this video I'm going to be showing you how to prune basil. There are really three reasons why you want to keep your basil plants pruned throughout the summer, and one is for the overall health of your plant, two is to keep the basil plants really productive and keep the leaves large, and three is to keep the flavor at its peak. If you don't prune your basil plants they tend to want to grow really tall and they get spindly and the leaves that are produced are a lot smaller. And then they'll start to bloom and once they start to bloom the flavor changes. It actually takes on kind of a bitter, more mild flavor which is not what we want. We want them to be flavorful and productive, so we keep them pruned. And pruning is really easy. I'm going to start with this pot right here. This is a lot younger basil than my other pot. I started with plants. I did not grow these from seed and in this pot right here every single stem in here is actually a separate basil plant. So it looks like it's one big massive plant, but there's a bunch of little plants in here. And if you get in close you can tell. Lots of little plants coming out. Each basil plant has a central stem and they're really easy to identify. You can see right here. This is one basil plant and the central stem is just this big, long, tall one growing right up through the middle here. And basil grows with sets of leaves and they come out either side. So right here we have one set. There's the second, third, fourth. There's the fifth right here. And if you go all the way down to the bottom you can see this little tiny leaf that does not look like the rest of them, and that's actually not a true leaf. That's just the first leaf that emerges when the seed comes up, and so that set does not count. Usually you want to prune your basil when it's at least six inches tall or has two to three sets of true leaves, and so these ones are a little bit further along than I would have liked. But I just picked these up and planted them, so it's not too late. If your basil plants already growing you can still start pruning them back. Pruning them is super simple. I'm just going to take my clippers. You can use scissors. And I'm going to take it down actually past the fourth set of true leaves, right above this fifth set. And you can see right where this fifth set joins in with the central stem. There are two more branches that will form and that's what we want to have happen. We want this one basil plant to turn into two and then as you keep pruning it, it'll just turn into a bunch more. Right above the fifth set of true leaves, and I'm going to make an angled cut about a quarter-, half-inch above the leaves like so. I'll show you one more time here how you do it. This is a nice a big one right here, so you can see we've got one, two, three, four, five sets of true leaves. I'm going to take it down right past this set of four. And I'm just going to cut about a quarter-inch, half-inch up. And you can see there's another set of leaves coming out of either side and those will turn into two really nice big branches. Now all this basil that you prune off is totally usable. I'm going to take this inside and make something awesome. So, as you prune it throughout the summer which usually needs to be done like every one to two weeks, you can use all this basil or you can dry it, or make pesto and freeze it, whatever you want to do with it. So, just make sure to keep your eye on your plants every 1 to 2 weeks to do a pruning like this and make sure to do it all evenly. I know that it doesn't look quite as pretty as it did before but soon this whole thing will just be huge and gorgeous. So it's what you want to do. And a lot of people do this with peppers and tomatoes as well. I haven't done it before but I think I'm going to give it a shot. So moving on to this pot of basil, you can see that this one's been growing for a lot longer and it's starting to bloom. And I let it do that on purpose so I could show you how to prune it back. It's just basically the same way. You can see the bloom here. I'm going to actually take it all the way down past this set here because I want to create a nice mound. And I'm just going to prune it with my clippers exactly the same. About a quarter-inch up, angle cut, just like that. So whenever you see a bloom forming, in fact this is a good example: That one is not quite there yet. You can just pinch these off, just like that. So if you're walking by and you don't have your pruners just give them a quick pinch. And pinch those blooms off. You do not want those to start forming. So I'm going to do that, but these stems that have already formed blooms are a little bit thicker so I'm going to use my pruners on these ones. Now in between your weekly or bi-weekly pruning on your basil plants you can go ahead and harvest off of them any time. I just make sure that when I'm doing it I do it kind of evenly. I don't take them all off of one side. I'll take, you know, one, two, and three little branches off to use in the kitchen, so it looks kind of more uniform, keeps the plant growing a lot more, I don't know, pretty. It looks healthier or something when it's not lopsided. So this one's almost done. All right, it's looking really good. So a quick recap: You want to make sure your basil plants are at least 6 inches tall or have two to three sets of true leaves before you start to prune. When you do your pruning make sure to leave a quarter- to a half-inch of branch to help support the new branches that are going to form. And you want to check on your basil plant every one to two weeks to do a pruning like this. And if you see it start to bloom, or start to set blooms, make sure to pinch or prune them off. And that's it. Pretty easy. All right, thanks for watching. If you found this video helpful, please leave a thumbs up. Don't leave a thumbs down! I'll be really sad leave a thumbs up down below and make sure to subscribe to our channel if you want to see what's coming up next. We'll see you in the next one. Bye
