Are you growing these for outdoor placement, or indoor?

We plant our basil starts in a raised bed within a fabric-sided greenhouse. With the comment above, I started these in our sunporch so the temp seems close to70f, but I'm thinking I planted the seeds too deep. I use a couple of Charley's Greenhouse propagators for many of our outdoor garden starts, so thought I'd try it with basil this year rather than purchasing starts - though ended up doing both. The basil that DID sprout have thrived - Mammoth Italian this time around. We live at 1,100 ft. elev, in the maritime Pacific NW, and have found that growing our basils, peppers and most of our tomatoes in this little structure extends our season well into December, with the help of a small infrared propane heater operated at night, once nighttime temps fall below 45-50 deg. Thanks for the interest in answering!

I was wondering because here in Tn., basil self-seeds abundantly. I'm sure though, that direct seeding might be more difficult in some climes than others.

I barely cover the seed when sowing basil. And in my climate it stays in the glass porch all its life to reliably get the requisite heat.

Interesting. This makes me think I'll leave one go to seed and see what happens in the spring. The raised bed is 3' x 10', so shouldn't be a problem to leave the 'basil corner' undisturbed. I usually snip off the budding spears and use them in salads and such. Side note: with the unseasonably long hot summer Oregon is experiencing, we are having the best tomato crop in some years!