Houseplant hacks: does dividing supermarket basil help it survive? | Houseplants

The problem
We’ve all done it: picked up a lush, generous-looking pot of basil from the supermarket – full of promise and pesto plans, and within a fortnight it has collapsed into a dried-out, leggy mess. You assume you did something wrong. In reality, the plant was set up to fail before it even reached your kitchen.

The hack
That full, bushy pot is not actually one plant; it is dozens of basil seedlings crammed into a single container to look bushy on the shelf. Packed that tightly, they compete for light, water and root space, and exhaust themselves within days. The fix is to divide the overcrowded mass into smaller, separated clumps and give each one room to actually grow.

The method
Tip the basil out of its pot and gently tease the root ball into three or four smaller clumps, keeping as many roots intact as possible. Pot each clump into its own container of fresh compost, water them in and place them somewhere bright and warm. Pinch out the growing tips regularly to encourage bushier growth, rather than letting them flower and set seed.

The test
I divided one supermarket basil pot into four. Three of the clumps survived and put out new growth; one sulked and died, which felt like a fair survival rate. A month later, I had three healthy basil plants rather than a single dying one.

The verdict
Divide and conquer is the only real route to keeping supermarket basil alive. Give those crammed-in seedlings the space they were denied on the shelf, and you turn a near-certain compost-bin casualty into a proper, lasting supply.