The herb garden should find a place on all amateurs’ grounds. Sweet-herbs may sometimes be made profitable by disposing of the surplus to the green grocer and the druggist. The latter will often buy all that the housewife wishes to dispose of, as the general supply of medicinal herbs is grown by specialists, and goes into the hands of the wholesaler and is often old when received by the local dealer.
—L. H. BAILEY, Manual of Gardening, 1923
It always amazed me when something went well in the garden. I usually expected the worst: drought, disease, a plague of insects. Sometimes, though, things just work out, in spite of everything. That’s the way it was with basil, but not at first. I planted a row of it around my tomatoes earlier in the year, knowing full well what I was doing: setting out five dollars’ worth of herbs for the snails’ breakfast the next morning. There was only one possible fate for basil in my garden, that of getting eaten right down to the stem, until there was nothing but a slimy little nub left to the stalk, and then that would disappear, too. So far I had grown basil in clay pots on the porch, I had planted it inside a barrier of copper strips, and I had set it out among the chives and cilantro to confuse the bugs. None of these early efforts yielded me anything more than the pleasure of an afternoon in the sun spent planting deliciously fragrant young seedlings.
I had seen other people grow basil. I knew that it could be done. I visited friends who had a little knot herb garden featuring every color and variety of basil: purple opal basil, lemon basil, the enormous lettuce leaf basil, the bushy miniature Greek basil. So much basil, the owners of this garden complained, that they had grown tired of pesto every night. So much basil that they were using it to flavor vinegar and hanging the rest up to dry for the winter. Would I like some? they asked eagerly, as if they were passing their sweaters on to a poor relative. Would I do them the favor of taking some home?
I went to a farm where a row of basil stretched almost to the horizon. Basil season was nearly done; the leaves were tough and strong; the customers in the farmers markets had moved on to pungent, woody herbs like thyme and marjoram to flavor their stews and their roasted pumpkin soups. The farmer had let the basil go to seed. It acted as a magnet for bees, drawing them to his fields to buzz around the tiny white flowers and move on to pollinate his fall crops. A few more weeks and I’ll rip it out, he told me, and gave the row of sweet basil an impatient look, as if to say, I’ve had about all of this I’m going to take.
I allowed these experiences to convince me that I, too, could grow basil, in the cold and the fog, right in the middle of the insect battleground that is my garden. I had already planted it three times within a couple of months, each time in a matter-of-fact way, quite casually, as if this were an ordinary event that would yield ordinary results. I didn’t want to alarm the basil. I planted it in a row, along with everything else, and I didn’t let on that I was already sick with doubt and worry, that my hopeful basil seedlings had really been more condemned than planted.
The fourth time, though, something different happened. I planted two cherry tomatoes along the retaining wall in the front of my house, where they could trail down the wall, lean over the steps coming up to the porch, and offer themselves to passersby walking down the sidewalk on their way to the beach. I took great care in digging the bed, in pulling out all the morning glory and the African daisy, hauling off some of the old clay dirt and bringing in compost from the nursery. I covered the bed with black plastic to warm the soil and keep the weeds down. I built a bamboo and twine trellis for the seedlings and planted them on the first day of May.
Something was wrong, though. The place looked bare and artificial, between the black plastic and the cement wall. It would be months before the tomatoes grew tall enough to be interesting to look at. I may as well plant something around the edge, I thought. Something that would fill in and bloom quickly and entertain until the cherry tomatoes, the guests of honor, arrived.
I went to the nursery and came home with blue annual salvia and sweet basil. I would alternate them, I decided, so that when the basil got eaten, the salvia could fill in and cover up the places where the basil would get nibbled away. The tall blue spikes of flowers would attract some bees and provide a cheerful contrast to the orange cherry tomatoes and yellow pear tomatoes that were on the way.
I checked the basil frequently after I planted it, expecting to see holes nibbled out of the larger leaves and a slimy trail leading away. Nothing. The basil was perfect, untouched. The next day was the same, and the day after that. The basil and the salvia grew at about the same rate, getting leafy and robust. The black plastic warmed the soil, the weeds stayed away, the tomatoes grew. It was as if a patch of someone else’s garden had broken away and wandered over to my yard by mistake.
Then, at the height of summer, there it was: a little vegetable bed that practically dripped tomatoes, surrounded by a robust hedge of salvia and basil. The spiky blue flowers came inside and sat in a glass jar on a windowsill. The basil found its way into every meal: the tomato sandwiches, the pesto linguine, the cream cheese on bagels, even the green salads, where I snipped it into ribbons and tossed it with the lettuce. I was nonchalant about it. I didn’t want the basil to think there was anything unusual going on and get worried. The snails, I had come to believe, could smell fear. So I cut and harvested and cooked and dried, until I found myself at the office one morning with two bulging plastic bags in my hand. I am overrun with basil, I heard myself saying to my office-mates. Would you like to take some home?
There’s a simple way and a complicated way to enjoy surplus basil. The simple way is this: Slather two pieces of bread with mayonnaise, top with whole basil leaves and sliced tomatoes, and eat. The complicated way? Pesto, made by hand, the old-fashioned way.
I once read an article extolling the virtues of making pesto by hand with a mortar and pestle. Yes, of course, I thought. The finer qualities of pesto can only be appreciated if it is pounded out by hand, with no electronic gadgets involved. What better way to pay tribute to my bumper crop of basil? I dusted off my marble mortar and pestle and followed the instructions carefully, but after half an hour of pounding, I had nothing more than a collection of bruised basil leaves and some misshapen chunks of garlic. Finally, I gave up and threw it all in the blender, and five minutes later, I was eating my electronically produced, second-rate pesto, and I was perfectly happy about it.
But here’s the handmade pesto recipe anyway, if you want to try it. I’m told that a wide-bottomed pestle, one that nearly fills the inside of the mortar, is the key to success. Maybe I’ll give it another go myself.
Pound one or two cloves of garlic with a big pinch of course salt until you’ve made a smooth paste. Pound in three tablespoons of pine nuts, then add two cups of shredded basil leaves, just a little at a time and pound until you can see hardly any pieces of basil leaf. Mix in about five tablespoons of shredded parmesan (you can put down your pestle and use a spoon now), then stir in about three tablespoons of olive oil, and serve. Should feed four to six very grateful people.