When to sow basil?
- Botanical name
- Ocimum basilicum
- Family
- Lamiaceae
Basil is sown outdoors in June, 0.6 cm deep. It germinates in 14 to 18 days. It is harvested from June to September.
Basil is an annual plant. The edible parts are the leaves and flowers.
The spacing of 10 centimetres applies to basil cut for leaves, and 60 centimetres to a plant left to grow into a spreading bush.
The tops of the shoots are picked, and the whole plant is cut before it flowers. Repeated sowing through the season lengthens the picking. The first cold night ends it.
Basil through the year
- indoor sowing
- transplanting
- outdoor sowing
- harvest
In short
The last frost is not on the same day everywhere, so the recorded weeks are a guide and not a date.
Growing conditions
Is basil toxic to cats and dogs?
No. Basil is not toxic to cats and dogs.
Companions in the bed
Companion planting is tradition and not an agronomic claim. What is recorded is which pairs sources recommend and which they advise against.
- “Cited” means the pair is named by one source or two.
Pests and diseases
Listed here is every problem for which the sources name this plant as a host. The problems are not listed in order of how common they are.
- Signs
- Colonies of small aphids sit on the shoot tips and the underside of the leaves. The leaf curls and puckers, and sticky honeydew is left on everything below. The viruses they carry are more dangerous than the feeding itself.
- Prevention
- Go easy on nitrogen, because soft sappy growth is what aphids are looking for. Encourage the predators (ladybirds, lacewings, parasitic wasps). Use a reflective mulch, which puts them off settling, and a strong jet of water to knock the colony off the tips.
- What to do
- Potassium soap works on contact and only while it is wet, so it has to reach the underside of the leaf. On drought-loving plants and in heat it can scorch, so apply it in the evening.
- Signs
- Over the upper side of the leaves there is a coarse pale speckling, and on the underside small animals that jump away quickly. By the end of summer the leaf can be heavily mottled, while the growth of the plant is hardly affected. The affected herbs are perfectly safe to eat.
- Prevention
- It overwinters as an egg on the plant itself and is active from May into autumn, so cleared old wood and foliage at the end of the season helps. Encourage birds, ladybirds, parasitic wasps and ground beetles.
- What to do
- No spray is needed: the pest does not affect the growth or the vigour of the plant, so the right answer is to put up with it. If the look bothers you, cut back the most mottled shoots, because the new growth comes clean.
Check the registration and the label before use.
Keep track of your plants with Tendask
Log the task and set a reminder for the next one. Every plant keeps its own history, so there is nothing to guess at.
Related plants
The plants below are in the same botanical family (Lamiaceae).
Sources about the plant: BUND Region Hannover, Clemson Cooperative Extension, GBIF Backbone Taxonomy, Johnny's Selected Seeds, KGZS, NC State Extension Plant Toolbox, Royal Horticultural Society, Semenarna Ljubljana, University of Georgia Extension, University of Maryland Extension, Utah State University Extension, Wikidata. Checked between 14 and 30 August 2026. The problem descriptions also draw on: University of Wisconsin-Madison Division of Extension.