The Herbs - Basil and Epazote

I have always loved fresh basil and consider it essential to any herb garden. No wonder it is one of the most popular herbs to plant and it is so easy to grow from seed. There are hundreds of varieties but commonly only about 20 varieties are grown in our gardens.

Here’s some trivia regarding basil.

• It’s an Old World, annual plant and easily reseeds and comes back year after year.
• It was considered poisonous in some parts of Europe and bred scorpions. They thought even if you smelled it, you would get a scorpion in your brain. Italy, on the other hand, loved basil.
• If there was a pot of basil on the lady of the houses balcony, she was ready to receive a suitor.

The variety that is so common in Italy is ‘Sweet Basil’. Fresh basil is even sweeter than dried.

So, I said it was easy to grow. Yes siree! Plant some seeds in your soil or a pot when the daytime temp’s are in the 70’s F. They grow just fine in my dry, hard, clay soil and I never even fertilize it. Be sure to plant in FULL sun. They need at least 5 hours of daily sun. In just 5 days your seeds will have germinated.

When your basil has 8 sets of leaves, start pinching back to the first or second set of leaves to promote branching to make a fuller plant. Don’t let it bloom though. Once it blooms the essential oils in the leaves get less and less pronounced. Speaking of keeping the oils, pick your basil in the early morning as this is when there are more of the oils in the leaves.

I dry my basil by laying it on newspaper in my car while it is sitting in the sun. Woohoo, does my car smell good! I also dry it by placing it on a cookie sheet at the lowest oven temp until it is dry. Be sure it’s dry before you put it in your herb jar, otherwise it will go moldy. Here’s the conversion rate: 1 Tablespoon of fresh herbs is equal to 1 teaspoon dried.

I also freeze my basil. I chop it up and place it in ice cube trays with a small amount of water over it. When frozen, put the cubes in a freezer zip lock bag. You’ll always have the freshest basil around when you need it.

Pesto anyone?

Another herb I found interesting was Epazote, a perennial herb (chenopodium ambrosioides) Greek translation chenopodium=goose foot (the shape of the leaf) and ambrosioides=food of the gods.

Epazote is native to Central America and in the Natuatl language, it means, skunk sweat. (eptl tzotl) The Mayans were the first people to use it, that we know of anyway. They used it to spice up their food and to also get rid of intestinal worms. It also gets rid of gas, (if you know what I mean) and is used in a lot of bean dishes.

Well, I think everyone knows what basil looks like but what does epazote look like?
It grows 60-120 cm high, has yellow green flowers that are clustered on the stems, tiny black seeds reside in these flowers, and they have sharp-toothed leaves. Here’s a link to a picture http://www.theproducehunter.com/productdisplay.asp?ID=1951

Epazote grows anywhere. You know what that means…..It’s invasive!!!…… so plant it in pots only, in full sun. Since epazote is a strong herb, one sprig of does fine in a recipe and it can also be dried. (Conversion info: 1 Tablespoon of fresh herbs is equal to 1 teaspoon dried.)