My tomatoes are finally coming in, my long cayenne hot peppers are finally turning red, and the basil is huge. When basil is still small, i pinch it back and encourage it to branch out. Now the basil plants are 4 -5 feet high and i've been harvesting it for a few weeks. Instead of pinching back the flower head (which with all my large plants would take hours), i trim off a nice bit of the stem. This way i can make pesto throughout the summer, or keep some in a glass of water for fresh use,  and still keep my plants from flowering. The reason you want to keep your basil from flowering, is that plants use a lot of energy to flower and produce seed. Unless you're saving seed, you don't want your basil to flower, it takes too much energy away from making those wonderful fragrant leaves. I've found the best way is to continually harvest some while the plant is still growing.

I go down the stem a bit till i find the next 2 sets of leaves. These will branch out and grow again. I've taken off the top part, which is where the plant will flower from and gotten basil to use fresh and make pesto with. I've illustrated where to cut the basil in the photo above.

In the next few posts i'll start talking about fall crops and what to plant now, as well has some preserving methods I use to save my harvest for use in the winter. I freeze, can, dehydrate, air dry, among others. Now is a good time to think about what you want to save for winter use as the garden is in full flow and producing a lot.