Many of you familiar gardeners already know this trick, but I recently (last year) began growing basil due to it's wonderful taste and health benefits and found this to be true:

Pinch the small developing leaves off of the top of the plant to produce a bushier plant!

It works great. You will go fom a scrawny plant that might give you one meals worth a week, to a monster that each week will give you enough to eat and dry for later use.