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Why this one

The most versatile plant in the drawer.

Sweet Genovese basil: broad, soft leaves and the smell that makes people stop mid-sentence in your kitchen. It grows fast, forgives neglect, and comes back again and again if you cut it right — which is why it's the single most reordered thing we sell.

Cut it properly and it never stops. Take the top two leaves just above a pair of side shoots, never strip a stem bare, and pinch out flower buds the moment they appear — flowering is what turns the leaves bitter. Keep it beside plants of a similar height; a tomato next door will steal all its light.

What to do with it

A lot of things to cook.

Cut basil loses its perfume within hours, which is the entire argument for growing it on your counter. Use it the same day.

The obvious one

Pesto alla Genovese

15 minutes No cooking

  1. Pick 60 g of basil — roughly two full pots at cutting height. Leaves only, no stems.
  2. Pound or blitz with a fat clove of garlic, 30 g pine nuts and a good pinch of salt.
  3. Loosen with 100 ml olive oil, then fold in 50 g grated Parmesan by hand.
  4. Taste for salt. Use within two days, or freeze in an ice-cube tray without the cheese.

Basil · garlic · pine nuts · Parmesan · olive oil · salt

Grow both

Tomato, basil, good bread

8 minutes Barely a recipe

  1. Halve a handful of ripe cherry tomatoes, salt them, and leave for five minutes.
  2. Tear — never chop — a generous handful of basil straight into the bowl.
  3. Olive oil, a scrape of garlic on the bread, black pepper.
  4. Eat standing up, over the sink, the way it is meant to be eaten.

Cherry tomato · basil · olive oil · sourdough · sea salt

For the trimmings

Basil & lemon iced tea

5 min + chilling Uses the cut-backs

  1. When you cut basil back, keep the stems — they hold plenty of oil.
  2. Bruise a big handful and pour over 500 ml just-off-the-boil water.
  3. Steep ten minutes, add the juice of half a lemon and a spoon of honey.
  4. Chill hard, serve over ice with a fresh sprig on top.

Basil stems & leaves · lemon · honey · ice

Before you ask

The five things people write in about.

Will basil fit my Auk Mini 2?

Yes — and so will every other seed we sell. Seeds are never model-specific. Auk is an open system: our packets, your own seed packets, or a cutting from a supermarket herb pot all work the same way.

What is model-specific is coco fiber, nutrients, rods and pots, because sizes differ between Auk 1, Mini 1 and Mini 2. Those cards state their models directly.

How many pots does one packet fill, and how long does it last?

About one gram, which is enough for two pots. Cut it properly — top leaves above a pair of side shoots, never a bare stem — and one sowing keeps producing for the best part of a year.

Unopened, seeds keep about two years somewhere dry and dark. If you have a packet from 2024 in a drawer, sow it.

Which program should I use?

Herbs & salad 🟢. On Auk Mini 2 that's the default mode. On Auk 1 it's the green plant chip — the red one pushes basil into flowering too early, which is what turns the leaves bitter.

Mine hasn't sprouted. What now?

Basil is usually up in five to eight days. The two usual causes are seed buried too deep and fiber that dried out in the first week. Basil wants the thinnest dusting over the top and a surface that stays damp.

Still nothing after four weeks? Write to us and a replacement packet goes out the same day.

Can I grow it next to my tomato?

You can, but the tomato will win — tall plants shade short ones and the basil starves for light. Group plants of similar height; basil sits happily with parsley, chives and oregano at 20–30 cm.

If you want both, use the taller light rods, or run the tomato in the big plant pots on its own.