DON'T LET SUPERMARKET HERBS DIE ON YOU

For many of us buying common herbs like parsley or basil involves the purchase from a store of a plant in a pot which we place on our windowsill. More often than not this turns into a regular habit as each plant dies and has to be replaced. But it does not have to be like this as Alex Mitchell explains in her article which I came across on the Learning With Experts website.

?I know nothing about gardening, but I do love cooking. I wish I could grow my own herbs, but every time I buy a plant from the supermarket it dies.? I hear that a lot; at the school gates, at dinner parties, wherever the subject of ?What do you do?? comes up.
Herbs are like the entry level drug to 1grow your own1 gardening. Even if you don?t think you like gardening, the chances are you?ll thrill to the scent of fresh mint by the back door. You?ll get excited by rosemary snipped straight from the bush to throw in with your lamb, and thyme to smash up with garlic and lemon for a killer marinade. Herbs can be slow to get going, if you start them off from seed. It?s no wonder so many of us are seduced by the fresh green irresistible-smelling, affordably priced plants on the supermarket shelves. We buy them, take them home and plonk them on the windowsill. Then watch them slowly die.
It doesn?t have to be this way. Follow the simple steps below, taken from my latest book ?Gardening on a Shoestring? (Kyle Books), and you can guarantee not one, but two, or event five thriving supermarket basils for the price of one. You can do the same with parsley, coriander and chives.

How to make 5 plants from 1 supermarket basil

We’ve all bought a lush looking supermarket basil, popped it on the kitchen windowsill then looked on in dismay as, a week or so later as the plant dies. The reason is that supermarket herbs are actually many plants all squashed together in one pot. This makes them look lovely and healthy in the shop, but means they run out of food and space after a couple of weeks, so they flop over and die. Because the plants are so tightly packed, each one tries to grow up to the light, meaning leggy plants without many side shoots. All of this means that they will droop sooner or later and give up the ghost.