Extracting Basil Seeds

Our basil was out of control this first year:

Needless to say keeping up with the flowers was not as easy as I thought it would be.  When basil flowers it produces little white flowers and seeds, hence the term "going to seed" when the plant flowers and seeds result.  Why would you want to keep a plant from going to seed?  Well, to make those pretty little white flowers the plant uses a lot of it's energy and thus is not focusing on the leaves while it's flowering.  By cutting off buds you divert the energy from producing flowers to producing leaves.  Despite my best efforts I could not keep the basil from going to seed completely and ended up with some seed pods.  Collecting these seeds for use in the future is fairly simple:

1. Seeds are not ready to be pulled from the plant until the pods have turned from bright green to brown.
2. Once you've removed the brown pods from the basil plant, carefully open the pods and extract the seeds, since the pods have already begun to dry out, the seeds should be black.  
3. Place the seeds into a dry container in a dry location for a day.
4. Take the dried seeds and place them into a sealed envelop.  Be sure to remember to label the envelop with the date you extracted the seeds, and of course what the seeds are.
5. Seeds will be ready for use the next planting cycle.

While I chose to extract my seeds from brown pods attached to living plants, Homestead Roots, offers a good visual guide to walk you through the seed extraction process when you've cut pieces of the plant off to dry and then extract seeds.

View larger scale basil extraction photos.