Herbs in the Netherlands are super expensive. I love sprinkling random amounts of basil onto a lot of the things I eat, but often have to be keep myself in check because of how prohibitively expensive they can be for just a packet.

I've resorted to just buying small pots of the herb itself from grocery stores. They're great for a couple of weeks but then die out really quickly. After doing some research online, it turns out that that's because they stuff way too many stems into a tiny pot and there's not enough room for everyone to grow.

The general consensus was to repot those stems into their own pot so they could grow in peace, and that's what I did this summer. I started by putting these cuttings in some water and after a couple of weeks they already grew roots. So I could propagate them separately.

I expected them to grow well, but the rate at which they grew, and the sheer amount of basil I now had was beyond what I initially predicted.

The good news was that I could now randomly pluck of as much basil as I wanted, as and when I needed it. And like a hydra, it almost seemed like 2 more leaves grew for each one that I plucked out. The next logical step, of course, was to use large amounts of basil and make my own pesto sauce. This was the amount of basil I was able to harvest, and that was only about half of what I had...

The recipe itself is quite simple and there are plenty of nice recipes online. I added some a lot of garlic, sun-dried tomatoes, lemon juice, varied nuts, and olive oil to the basil, and grinded them down in a food processor.

I got quite a good amount of sauce out of all of that! Now, not only do I have basil I can pluck whenever I want, but I have fresh pesto I slather on all my sandwiches and mix in my sauces as I like too.

I made and used another batch since I wrote this post, and I'm almost ready for a third. I'll have to see how long the plant lasts now that it's autumun. The leaves have started to get a bit droopy and slighlty shriveled, but are still abundant and tasty. So for now I'll keep watering them and hope they get enough sun...