It has been a weird spring in NE OK hasn't it?

If it were me I think I'd put half of em in the ground and see what happens and if they don't do well you still have the other half for later. I think they do like heat but I've oinly grown basil one time and I just remember it liked heat and it grew like wild.

Good luck

E

You might try raising the pots so that they are closer to the light for a while. They are a little slow for me when I start them but they take off once they are out in the heat. I start my seeds about Feb. 24 and plant the seedlings outside about April 10, since we are in the southern part of the state. I'm not sure about your dates there. When the seedlings go in the ground, they are still fairly small. This year, with the cold nights we've had, even here, they still have'nt grown much. I would have held off about planting them until the weather is more consistently warm if I had known what was coming.
Just give them time and I expect they will take off. I don't plant the purple varieties, since the few times I tried them they didn't thrive like the green. They may take even longer as seedlings. I just don't remember.
Good luck.

I bet it's the heat. I'd put some outside.

I had masses and masses of basil last year, and this year have been nervously watching my planted squares for the first green sprouts. It seemed to take them forever to pop up, but during a few warm days they did and seemed to grow pretty quickly.

Jo

In ditto, Im having the same problem with my basil, chamomile and thyme. I started mine in a greenhouse a LONG time ago. I am wondering if I kept them too damp maybe and maybe the problem is the roots system hasn't gotten established very well as the roots have not had to stretch to reach water. Ive decided to try letting them get a little drier than normal and it seems like the chamomile may have actually grown some in the last week. I put my 3 types of basil in a container with fertilome potting soil last week and set them outside and still nothing. I've now sidedressed them with some humore -no results yet, but the potting soil hasn't reall dried out very much from when I planted them. If these ever start growing I'm going to leave them in the container, and just sprinkle some seed right along the soaker hose in my garden and see what happens there.

I was really geared up to try making my own chamomile tea, but the seedlings for them are not even 1/4" after all of this time.

With the basil seedlings, I think they need heat and light, and if they are in a soil-less seed-starting mix that does not contain fertilizer, they need to be fed with something gentle like liquid seaweed fertilizer.

I usually have basil volunteers pop up all over my garden in April or May. They seem to stay tiny for a while, probably until the soil temps and air temps hit just the right temperatures, and then they grow like mad and I spend a lot of time whacking them back with pruners to control their size. Otherwise, they'd just completely take over.

Sheri, Chamomile self-sows in my garden every year. It is very invasive. If you can get plants started and into the ground, you then will have chamomile forever. Mine pops up out of the ground in February or March and by mid-April, they're in full flower. I've been cutting them back hard for about 3 weeks now because they are trying to take over the world. I don't think I've sown chamomile seed but once....and that year they seemed slow to grow in flats, but I finally transplanted them outside and they've been self-perpetuating ever since. They even self-sow in our lawn, our pasture east of the garden and our gravel driveway. If I'd realized how easy they were to direct-sow, I never would have bothered starting them indoors from seed. In the fall if you scatter sow seeds on the surface of the ground in late fall after the garden is 'done', you'll likely have seedlings up in the spring.

Dawn

My basil seems to be doing ok; but my chamomile just stopped growing. It sprouted just fine, but when the tiny seedlings got to 1/4",they stopped. This is the 2nd time the same thing has happened. I make my own skin care and hair products with chamomile so I wanted to grow my own. They're in containers, but they just won't grow!
Can anyone help?

Did you just sow seed recently? Chamomile likes cool weather and many parts of zone 8 still are pretty warm.

Otherwise, if the temperatures you have are right for it, then the most likely issue is that the container mix lacks nutrients. If that could be the problem, you could feed the seedlings with the water-soluble fertilizer of your choice and see if it makes a difference. Also, plants that small have tiny root systems so don't keep their soil-less mix too wet or it can interfere in the plants taking up nutrition. If they have only stalled for a few days, it also is likely they are busy making root systems and then will begin to make growth above-ground once their root systems are more mature.

In my garden, chamomile springs up everywhere and self sows itself all over the place and it would be considered an invasive pest by most people. I love it though, so I leave as many of the plants in the ground as I can and weed out the ones that are crowding other plants too much. So, don't give up on it. Once it has the conditions it likes, it will grow like mad.

Hope this helps,

Dawn