Basil
 

Hi everyone, what is the best basil to plant for market.

Thanks,Matt

For marketing the plants or for selling leaves?

I think it's a matter of knowing your market. I only sell plants once a year, but most of the folks want sweet basil. It's a very rural, conservative area, and while folks like to look at and smell the lemon, Thai, and Italian basils, they rarely buy any.

Matt
Sweet and Italian both - at Fullerton Arboretum behind Cal State Fullerton every spring they have a tomato and pepper sale and at green scene 2 weeks later there are about three other growers selling - I also used to buy plants when the person I shared seeds with moved and went from nursery to nursery looking for diff heirloom tomatoes - and always saw the most basil sold were those 2 varieties
Dennis
Ps the last few years I went back to seed starting again as problems with plants (diseases introduced) quality and plant varieties dropped when vendors disappeared

If you have a Greek clientel, you would want to try the Cinnamon Basil. I was told last year that Cinnamon is THE taste for greek cooking. While it has a great cinnamon smell, when you chew a leaf the taste is not cinnamon as much as something unique that I can't describe.

I grew 4 basils last year -- Italian, lemon, thai, and cinnamon. While the Italian sold out the most regularly, the 3 others seemed to vary from week to week with at least 2 flats (1 italian and 1 other) selling each Sat.

For me the Italian was the quickest to grow and would be ready in 4-5 weeks. The Thai was the slowest needing 6-8 weeks.

Carol

Re: Basil
 

I grow basil plants for the markets and sell basil plants in the spring. I only plant the sweet basil. I found out you can give people to many choices . With all the different kinds available it would be hard to choose one type that would suit everyone. Most of my customers use it for Pesto that seems to be the big thing in this area.

here in our country, italian sweet basils are the only marketable basil because we use it to make pesto. the other varieties is not as fast moving as sweet basil.

Are you calling the variety Genovese, Italian?

There are many Italian basils. I am growing , or have grown recently, 4 or 5 of them-genovese, siciliana, lettuce leaf, verde piccolo, verde palla greco, napoletano, and several more that I got from Italy.

^ i'm refering to genovese, the round leafed basil. It is generically called here sweet basil.

got any pic of verde piccolo, verde palla greco, napoletano and siciliana?

here are my basil plants...
[IMG]http://img443.imageshack.us/img443/5203/img1296h.jpg[/IMG]

Here is a link to some of them:

[url]http://growitalian.com/Qstore/Qstore.cgi?CMD=009&DEPT=1070766635&BACK=A0001A1[/url]

The seed he sells is from Italy. Napoletano and Siciliano I dont remember where I got it from-I might have brought it back from Italy myself, or gotten it from Seeds from Italy.

wow thanks for the link. i'll try to contact the store and inquire if they ship orders abroad. :D

Sweet basil and Genovese are not the same plant. They are similar, but many chef's consider Genovese to be the standard. So, I'd consider growing some of them with whatever else you do. I think most who woud buy Sweet basil would buy Genovese, but not the other way around.

thanks for the info dewayne. :)

I haven't even had time to read this yet. but here i am

[URL]http://www.tulsaworld.com/scene/article.aspx?subjectid=370&articleid=20100728_39_D1_MATTBA97425[/URL]

garyvs

interesting seed source. nice. might look them up. hehe.

how many basil plants do you need to produce 1lb of leaves if you will just harvest 2/3 of the 2ft plant's foliage?