Pesto is a delicious, versatile condiment that can be used for flavoring sauces, baking into breads or spreading on sandwiches. It also, however, can be a pricey grocery item. Even when making pesto on your own, the ingredients needed to prepare 1 cup of pesto cost around $5.12, according to Oregon Live. Growing basil, the main ingredient besides olive oil, and making your own pesto can save you a lot of money. You'll need a large outdoor planter to plant the basil you plan on growing, though.
Making Pesto Requires Lots of Basil
If you're going to make pesto more than once, you'll need a lot of basil. Barefoot Contessa's recipe calls for 5 cups of basil leaves. The recipe yields 4 cups of pesto, which works out to 1 ¼ cups of basil per cup of pesto.
To grow this much basil, you're going to need a very large outdoor planter -- and you'll probably need more than one.
Growing Lots of Basil in Outdoor Planters
Not only will you need several planters to grow enough basil plants, but basil, itself requires a large pot. Although basil is an herb and can be grown in a small planter, or even hydroponically, a basil plant will only reach its full potential if its roots have enough room to grow.
As How to Culinary Herb Garden notes, basil doesn't have a single, long taproot (like parsley does), but its root system is extensive. Its roots will quickly grow throughout the soil in a pot as its stems shoot up. For this reason, How to Culinary Herb Garden recommends getting a pot that's at least 18 inches deep for basil.
When looking for an outdoor pot that will house basil, its volume is more important than its width. Although basil has a large root system, it won't spread like some other herbs, such as mint. If you plant a single basil plant in a three- or four-gallon outdoor planter and take care of it, you'll still have only one plant in the pot at the end of the summer. It'll be a large, healthy plant, perhaps with enough leaves for several batches of pesto, but it'll still only be one plant.
If you're thinking about growing basil this summer to make pesto with, invest in a good, large outdoor planter. Only a big planter will give your basil plant's roots' the room they need to grow for the plant to be healthy and produce lots of leaves.
