Xref: news7 rec.gardens:213366

wrote:

...Last year I noticed there were about 20 different basils, but which one is for
cooking italian dishes, I just don't know...


There must be 200 different basils out there. Most seed suppliers don't
carry more than 5 or 10. Many of the basil varieties taste very similar,
so there is not one variety that you should use. You will have to use
what tastes good to you.

We grow basil for PYO. Primarily Large Leaf (Johnny's Selected Seeds)
and everyone appears to be happy with it. We used to grow Genovese (also
Johnny's) and we couldn't tell the difference so we went with the larger
(about 20%) leaf variety. One person has asked about thai basil, but it
does have a different flavor and I don't want to mix them. We do grow
some purple basil, but most people use it to add a nice odor to PYO
flower boquets (we let it go to flower).

If you are planning to start individual plants, it's convenient to get
the pelleted seed. The seed is coated with clay to form a large pellet
which is easy to handle so you can place one seed pellet in a cell for
starting. If you are direct seeding, you can use either pelleted or
regular. If you are using a mechanical seeder (e.g. earthway), the
pelleted seed tends to get caught in the seed plates and jam the seeder.
In that case the regular seed is better.

The pelleted seed costs a bit more, but in small quantities it's not
significant. However, pelleted seed is sometimes primed (pre-germinated
for more uniform emergence), so it will not hold over to the next
season. Don't buy more pelleted seed than you are going to use this
year.