Thumb not green. Started w/Sweet Basil. They're 20in high, now what, how to preserves/dry etc?

Drying is tricky as the discolour fast, if you have a dehydrator it is better, as the first persons said, make a paste with oil or water, and freeze them in cubes, then use at your leisure, make pesto, with garlic, nut or none, parmesan cheese and olive oil, it to can be frozen, just omit the cheese until using, there nice added to a salad for flavour the leaves, I use the stems when I make tomato sauce, and remove them at the end, if you make a canned or jarred sauce add 2-03 leaves to each jar before adding the sauce.

my thumb is not green! so far this year I have totally killed 2 sweet basil plants, a rosemary and several different mints!

to use fresh cut leaves off, cut them up and add to bread dough about 1 tablespoon per loaf!! Super fantastic!!

to dry, cut off the plant and spread on cookie sheet and put in oven on lowest setting for a couple hours then put in sealable bottle or jar. Label the jar with what it is and the date!

personally with sweet basil i'd pick the leaves and preserve them in ice cubes as i feel it's a herb that lends itself much better to using fresh rather than dried. i store mine in the freezer after freezing batches in silicon cupcake containers and then bagging them. easy to pop one of these 'ice cubes' in a recipe without defrosting.