Basil flowers

My Basil plants are still going strong -- I normally expect to be able to pick useable Basil until Christmas, and sometimes the plants survive well into the New Year -- it depends on how cold it gets. Even indoors, on my Dining Room windowsill, particularly at night-time, it can be a lot colder than Basil would like (being a Meditrranean herb).

One way to prolong the life of these plants is to stop them flowering. If you do this, more of their energy goes into leaf production. It seems a shame, because the flowers are quite pretty, but you have to decide whether you are growing the plants as ornaments or as edible herbs!

Here's a couple of photos of some Basil flowers before I pinched them out...