PlantFiles: Basil
Ocimum basilicum 'Purple Petra'

From your friends at Botanical Interests: Your tomato and pasta dishes will look and taste even sweeter with this delicious basil. Its mild sweet taste is perfect for pesto, and the large dark reddish-purple glossy leaves add color to salads. Plants are 24" tall and small lavender-blue flower spikes appear in late summer. Grow it as a companion plant for your tomatoes or in other areas of the garden as an ornamental.

Ocimum basilicum - Basil, Sweet Basil
This native of tropical Asia, together with its cultivars, is the most commonly grown and most widely used basil. A favorite with cooks, it is one of the most widely used herbs in Mediterranean cooking. Fresh leaves are best; freeze them for the winter as they lose their flavor when dried. It is a tender annual plant growing to about 18" with light green, oval leaves that have a delicious warm, spicy fragrance. Small white flowers are carried in whorls towards the ends of the stems in late summer. There are a number of varieties of basil including a compact small leaf type; a crinkled, lettuce leaf variety. There are perennial varieties also, but their flavor is inferior.
Basil Purple Petra:
Attractive plants with mild sweet flavor, large dark purple-red leaves and flowers.
Cultivation:
Grow in a protected, warm, sunny position in a moist but well-drained soil. Regularly pinch back plants to encourage bushy growth and to prevent them going to seed quickly. Propagate from seed in mid-spring. Protect from late frosts and check for chewing insects and snails