Hi Everyone and welcome to the channel! In this video, I'll be attempting to grow a basil
plant from a single leaf. Re-growing basil from a cutting is incredibly easy and popular- we've done
it here on the channel before and that's how I've got the two plants that we see here. I've recently
seen some internet content showing that we can regrow a plant from just a leaf and I had to
give it a try. So I'm going to take a few leaves from these plants and see if I can regrow them.
For this first leaf, I'm going to pinch it clean off where it connects to the stem. The
second leaf, I'm going to pull back along the stem and as you can see, this isn't a clean break. A
strip of stem is coming along with the leaf here and this might be necessary to regrow a plant.
One might argue that this isn't exactly re-growing from just a leaf and I wouldn't
disagree. Nonetheless, these are the two leaves I'll be using and trying to propagate. I'm
simply resting these leaves along the rim of a glass jar, which is filled with tap water.
The leaf stems are submerged, but the leaves are mostly out of the water. I'm going to leave
these in a bright spot, where they will receive indirect sunlight for the majority of the day.
Checking in on day eight, we can see that one of our leaves has propagated
and has some small roots developing. This is the leaf that also had a small strip of stem attached.
Our second, clean cut leaf, looks the same as it did originally and there's no roots forming
yet. I'm going to move the rooted leaf into some soil at this point. This is random, bagged soil,
nothing fancy. I'm clearing a small hole to insert the roots and leaf stem into and burying them in
place. Here we see the plant three days after transplanting into soil- it seems to be drying
out quickly, despite my efforts to keep the soil moist. In this clip, it's been eight days since I
moved this plant into soil and I think it's time to give up on it. It just wasn't able to take
hold in the soil and couldn't hydrate itself. The leaf with the clean cut stem never rooted
and seems to be withering away. I decided to toss out both of these leaves and give it another try.
Going back to our original plants, I'm going to take more leaf cuttings this time and see if I
can get better results. I took three leaves with clean cut stems and three leaves with those stem
strips attached. To propagate these leaves, I'm putting them in small glass jars and again using
tap water. I'm making sure the leaf stems and the bottom of all these leaves are submerged.
Once again, after eight days we had root growth on our leaves. From our clean cut leaves,
two of the three have rooted. One of them has pretty small roots,
just beginning to emerge, but the second one looks pretty good. From our leaves with the stem strip,
all three have rooted nicely. Each of these leaves has propagated better than even our best
clean cut leaf. It seems as though that small bit of stem helps in the rooting process,
but it is possible to root a leaf without it. One thing to note about these plants, is that the leaf
bottoms have all curled in on themselves. This happens with stem cuttings as well, but usually
not to this extent. This exaggerated curvature makes it much more difficult to transplant these
into soil. Our last attempt was drying up quickly and I wanted to prevent that in this trial.
I set up a simple drip irrigation system to keep them watered 24 / 7. I'll also be taking two of
my rooted leaves and transplanting them into a hydroponic nutrient solution. This is typically
how I would regrow plants when taking a stem cutting and I want to compare these two methods.
We're checking in on these plants a week after they were transplanted, the soil leaves are
looking much better than my original attempt, but there's no real signs of growth. The leaves are
beginning to yellow and get a bit limp, but our last attempt was complete garbage at this point.
I think my efforts to keep the soil super moist are helping. Our hydroponic leaves have shown
tremendous root growth in this time. Both plants have developed pretty elaborate root structures
and the leaves look to be in good shape. There aren't however any signs of new structural growth
or a new stem emerging. Here we are 10 days after transplanting and our soil plants are worsening.
They're losing vigor every day and their green is fading. I could keep these attempts going longer,
as it is possible they might re-establish themselves, but this method is simply falling
behind the results I've come to expect from the standard stem cutting methods.
Even if this could eventually work, it's not worth the extra time. Our hydroponic attempts
have continued to grow their root systems, but there's still no signs of leaf or stem growth-
I'm not sure if they'll ever turn into full plants. Once again this might be something that
works if I wait long enough, but standard stem cuttings would be showing clear growth by now.
To check and see if this soil was viable and capable of growing basil, I propagated some
standard stem cuttings from the same original plants and transplanted them into the soil.
Once again I'm burying those small root structures and leaving them in the same bright spot. Here we
are seven days later and these plants are clearly growing. It looks as though the soil is absolutely
fine. Ultimately, the jury is still out on if it's possible to regrow a basil plant from a single
leaf- I wasn't able to do it, but maybe I'm doing something incorrectly. Either way, this method
seems to be adding complexity, effort and chances of failure compared to taking regular old cuttings
with a piece of stem, and a few leaves up top. We can propagate these cuttings without them curling
in on themselves and they quickly adapt to soil or a nutrient solution, once roots have propagated.
If you're looking to regrow basil, I think that's your best bet. Thanks a lot for watching, I'd
love to hear from you all your preferred method of re-growing basil and if you've had success
with these leaf only methods. Let me know in the comments below. Thanks again and Happy Harvesting!