I think this is a clearer shot. Btw, in the background between the amaryllis are a couple of bell pepper plants. I read in forums that you need to dry out the seeds before planting them, but this survived! After cooking a grocery- bought bell pepper I just scattered the seeds there and forgot about them. I did not even cover them with soil. There is a third pepper plant out of camera range. I am not expecting them to be healthy because it's very crowded. I'll just wait and see.

If you remove one of the damaged leaves and carefully inspect the underside, do you see "stuff" inside all of the dimples and bumps. I ask because both aphids, thrips, and a certain kind of mite will do that to leaves.

Mine do that sometimes, even without signs of bugs, usually when there's a fast rise in temperature. I think it's a case of the leaf growth being out of sync so the middles keep growinf and the edges have stopped.

As long as they taste good I eat them.

Thank you for your inputs! Yes, I looked today and under 1 deformed leaf was an aphid, just one. I squashed it. If I see more tomorrow I will spray soapy water on them. The sprays work fine on the pepper seedlings that are infested with ants, they are all crawling on the underside of the leaves. I sprayed for 3 consecutive days and so far no ants. These pepper seedlings sprouted from my open compost bins which I started on june 15. The plastic bins are roughly 18inches in diameter and 18 inches in height. Several tomato seedlings have also sprouted and are now 5 inches tall. I plan to transfer them in a few days. I hope they survive because I dont have a green thumb.

Btw, I'm new to this, I'm sorry if I posted out of the topic, this is supposed to be a basil forum and I'm talking about compost and peppers. Thanks.

Never hurts to ask. Loved your pepper plants. I am growing a mix of two types of basils in my balcony, and do they smell great when I inspect them weekly. I water them about twice a week, since I am in great fear of overwatering so I just let the soil go dry. Will try to get you some pics soon, but I am in complete love with my Basil plants. Here and there I do see wrinkled leaves, but I just pinch of the leaves that I don't like, and new ones always grow from the top. Remember to pinch always from the top and just above a node, I believe you will do fine. Good luck.!!

I have trimmed recently (2 weeks) a lot of Basil already from this plant. Lovely pesto, and Italian dishes I have made from these batches. Just wanted to share with you.

Yum! Thanks for sharing.

FataMorgana

you got it!! I can't get enough of my plants, wanna eat them all lol..

Charles this is the basil today, 34 days later, no more deformed leaves, but it hasn't grown much. The past 5 years all of my basils are like this, mediocre, they're alive but they're not ... flourishing, like yours. When I harvest them I get only a handful of leaves.
Love your basil!!! What is your secret?? I don't fertilize mine. I water them almost daily. The pots are under the shade of a citrus tree because with direct sunlight they will wilt. Maybe the pots are too small? This one is about 5 inches in diameter. My other pots are Ocean Spray cranberry juice bottles, and 2-liter soda bottles cut in half, I use the bottom half. I try to recycle as much as possible, that's why I even plant basils in the small Minute Maid bottles. The KFC plastic spoon comes in handy as a trowel.

Btw, this is the pepper plant in the background. Doing better than the basils :)

Definitely the pot is too small. I need to transplant mine because it keeps growing, even form under the stems you see new plants starting to appear. After you find a nice pot size with good drainage, get rid of the old soil and use some organic dirt. I do not use any fertilizer, and be careful to not overwater your plant (twice a week max). You can always stick your finger in the soil and if it's moist there is no need to water them. Make sure they get plenty of sunlight but not direct. Keep me posted amigo.
Good luck, Charles..

I forgot to tell you that those peppers look great!!! congrats!!

Do not under any circumstances use dirt, organic or otherwise. Use a good soil-less potting mix. Especially don't use garden soil. Compost is wasted on pots - it is a SOIL conditioner and works great in the garden in the ground, in a pot it just compacts quickly and cuts off the air to the plant.

Stop using whatever you have on hand and settle on a SOIL-LESS potting mix, either commercial or make your own. Here are several potting mixes you can make yourself, if you can find the ingredients:

1:1:1 sphagnum peat, COARSE vermiculite, COARSE perlite
1:1 sphagnum peat, COARSE vermiculite
5:1:1 Pine fines, sphagnum peat, COARSE perlite
1:1 pumice (around 4mm) and peat
70% pumice, 30% peat

The 5-1-1 mix is also known on these forums as Al's mix. There's a ton of information about it available on the Container Gardening forum. I don't think it's the ONLY good potting mix but it works for a lot of people most of the time - if you can find the ingredients.

Coarse vermiculite has been difficult to find for about 15 years, but it seems to still exist in some parts of the country. You may be able to find it being sold as insulation in some hardware stores. Just make sure it doesn't have any additives.

I used to order mine from local nurseries but the last time I did that I ended up with 4 cu feet of MEDIUM grade vermiculite. Then they tried to convince me that was as "coarse" as vermiculite has ever come. Every place I've tried since - and I admittedly haven't tried in awhile - tells me they can only order the medium grade.

The problem is that vermiculite breaks down pretty quickly. I could get 3 seasons with a coarse vermiculite, but the medium is really only good for 1 or 2 at best, and that's stretching it. Then into the compost it goes.

Home Depot carries or can order you a 2 to 4 cu ft bag of COARSE perlite. I forget what size that is, but it's between 2 and 4 cu ft.

Pine fines are another thing I've had difficulty locating. Every time I think I've located a source, it dries up. Other people do seem to manage to find it; maybe you can too. Look for it as a ground conditioner or small decorative pine bark mulch. It has to be the bark and not the whole tree. It has to be a certain size, which is fairly small as decorative bark mulch goes. Google Al's 5-1-1 mix gardenweb for details and discussion.

Currently I'm testing various proportions of pumice to peat, because those are media I can easily locate and lay hands on. Read about it here:

Laguna Hills pumice blends

Or a less-detailed and possibly easier to follow version here, starting with Kittymoonbeam's first post:

Discussion of potting mixes for roses

It won't work for seed starting but so far seems fine for plants in containers. Haven't tested it outdoors here in the very arid region in which I live but I will be doing that come spring. It is working out well for the few houseplants I have to date.

My "make-do" mix is OK for seed starting but I would never use it for houseplants. In the past it has worked for outdoor container growing but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't work here in the hot arid near desert conditions, where potting mixes are particularly stressed by local conditions.

Hence the pumice-peat experiments. Also in the past other people who have tried it (my "make-do" mix) have not had good results and that is due in large part to it not being very forgiving of mistakes (because it is after all not an optimal blend). There is works-for-me and there are optimal blends that work for nearly everybody; this is a works-for-me blend. But I wish I could replace it with something I could actually find the ingredients for.

For your particular basil plant I suspect poor aeration of the potting medium and waterlogged soil, resulting in deformed leaves and stunted growth. Try sticking some wicking material up into a drainage hole, poke it in about halfway the depth of the soil (from the bottom) to drain off perched water. Poke it up in there with a pencil or a chop stick or a knitting needle. Anything that will wick will do, even cheap knitting yarn. One board member uses the ties that come with some netted bags of onions or potatoes or oranges. Use a chopstick or knitting needle to poke around the soil from the top and loosen it a bit. It may help. But the best thing would be to re-pot it into a good soil-less mix.

I have a jasmine plant that I would have sworn was in a good aerated well-draining mix, until I moved out here and it started going yellow on me. That's a classic sign of over watering - yet the soil appeared to be going dry very rapidly in the intense heat and arid conditions here.

Finally I knocked it out of the pot it was in and lo and behold, the person who sold it to me had planted it in muddy mucky compacted common garden dirt with better looking potting media on top of it. So the top would get dry but wasn't wicking moisture up from the soggy bottom layer. This stuff was also concentrated in the root ball. I had to wash it out with a garden hose and repot in soil-less media. It IMMEDIATELY perked up and I am actually watering much less frequently now that it is planted in decent potting media (sans soil).

In the humid midwest where I was living before, the shortcomings of the original planting media were much less obvious. But when I moved to the arid west, the problems became glaringly obvious, in the form of failure to thrive, no blossoming, very little new growth, and yellowing sick looking leaves. The soil was waterlogged on the bottom and dried out to quickly on top because that 3 or so inches of soil-less media couldn't wick the water up out of the waterlogged bottom layer.

You could water until water drained out the bottom but that bottom layer would not drain, it was just a place for perched water to sit there and live forever, making the plant sickly, and making a plant that looked too dry from the top show clear signs of OVER watering, LOL!

Re-pot that basil into soil-less potting media and see what happens. Keep in mind that the root system is undoubtedly very weak - as the top, so the bottom, and vv. Handle it carefully.

This post was edited by zensojourner on Sun, Sep 28, 14 at 0:29

I don't ever grow my basil straight up like that. Keep pinching the tops so that the growth goes wider rather than taller.

This one was all but dead with three long twigs with a leaf or two on one of them. But once I saw any growth, I kept pinching back like I do to basil seedlings, too -- and 2 months later, it's a full pot. It had obviously gone to seed before I found it as others are cropping up on the perimeter of the plant. I do water this pot daily because it's not big, and the plant(s) are growing profoundly fast. I pinched last week and you can hardly tell.

What I do top off, I usually store in a glass of water where they will continue rooting and staying alive until I use them, OR I stick them in another pot with potting soil and they root there to make new plants. When I use basil, I use a lot at once, so I need many plants going or else I'd be without basil except once a year.

If I were you, I'd repot it into a better potting mix, slightly bigger pot and then do this to it -- cutting where the red lines are:

Presuming you still have a good month or two of sun and warmth left, it should fill in nicely as long as you continue pinching off the ends. You can plant the cuttings into a different pot and keep it watered and in shade for a couple of weeks....and you'll have more plants.

Grace

I agree with Grace. Keep pinching off the top, and definitely repot.

I wanted to share a pic with you that I just took. I trimmed the plant from the top, always above the nodes about two weeks ago and you can see how it get's bushier and grows towards the sides. They smell great..

Updated pic. Can't see the dirt, incredible. Looking forward to yummy dishes!!

Hi guys.
Zen thank you sooo much for that very extensive discussion, I really appreciate it! I changed to a bigger pot and got pure potting mix.
Grace I pinched the basil along the red lines you indicated.
Guys this is the basil now. I waited for weeks for it to perk up so I could show you guys the wonderful job I did in reviving my plant. As you all can see, there has been no progress :( Last week a few leaves came off when I touched it. This is a sorry looking basil, I think the consensus will be to just pull it.
Charles and Grace, congrats on your basils! If I didn't know better I'd swear you photoshopped those pics to make me jealous lol
Imelda

That is a sorry looking basil. Now I have to wonder - is it getting enough sun?

I've never had a basil plant NOT perk up if I corrected whatever the problem is - so maybe we've not identified the problem. It is also possible that its just been so stressed that it's given up.

Sun is what I have in abundance here, lots and lots. If you go out past 6am it's sunny already, and hot. That's why the basils are under a citrus tree. By 10am the tomatoes start to droop and I have to water them ( if I'm home).

You're right, it probably gave up :) The other basils are doing fine.

when I grow basil, I find it to be kind of a heavy feeder. Have you fertilized it at all? If not, I'd definitely do that, use it at the recommended strength for potted plants.

I usually find my potted basil does better if I set it in the ground, especially with some manure or compost worked into the ground around it, or some nitrogenous fertilizer (the main benefit from manure is from urine in the bedding, plus soil conditioning.) Usually it takes off a few weeks after. I think the roots may get overheated in the pot.
If all the other plants from that batch are doing well, you *might* have a virus or root fungus, or some bug chomping the roots, or even a mutation that slows growth. I also find it withstands the sun FAR better with its roots in the ground instead of a pot!

Two things that jump out at me are:

It looks like the soil level is really low in that pot. It should be closer to the top. Did that potting mix compact and sink?

A dark pot could cook the roots if it gets any direct sun.

One thing I've found with my basil is that it doesn't like overhead watering. I try not to wet the leaves when I water mine.

Good thing you have other successful plants. Sometimes it's not our fault. Once in a while you get a weakling plant that doesn't thrive.

Sandy, I haven't fertilized the basils. I have some leftover Osmocote stashed somewhere but I think it's way past its expiration date. I do have this "Complete Fertilizer 14-14-14" which I use for the tomatoes, will it be ok for basils? And how often? Thanks. (I was afraid to fertilize them because I read somewhere that basils do not like fert because it burns them? )

VW, I do wish I could set my plants in the ground but I have very poor soil conditions here, that's why I went into container gardening. It's so hot and sunny that the soil is like concrete, and when it rains it turns to mud, and when I dig in I hit a lot of rocks. I don't have the skill (or patience) to "cure" the soil so I use containers, but it is so challenging, some plants survive, and some don't. I just keep experimenting :)
I also do composting in containers.

Sandyslopes, thanks for the tip, I'll try not to wet the leaves. Question, is that the rule for most plants? I thought it was just for African violets.
I do have other successful plants, I have several gourds about 3 feet tall now and am waiting to see if they will make it. The last time I tried gourds they took off nicely, climbed the trellis up to 5 feet then died.