Wow, just a week ago I had a great basil harvest and the plants looked fine. Then a day or two ago I noticed the main basil patch was looking off. I offhandedly thought maybe there had been some cool nights. Today I went to do a good harvest and decided to look into what's going on. Clearly it's downy mildew: the underside of the leaves have the brownish powdery spores, and the tops of some leaves are yellowing / turning brown / dying. Some leaves fell right off as I harvested (particularly the purple basil).
On the down side the crop is probably doomed; on the plus side it sounds like it's host-specific, so won't spread to other types of plants, and it doesn't live in the soil nor over-winter.
The handful of basil plants in the central bed also has it, now that I closely inspected it (at first I thought those were fine) -- I removed the affected leaves, will spray them with horsetail fungicide tomorrow once batch #2 is ready, and hope or the best.
Some resources:
https://extension.umn.edu/diseases/basil-downy-mildew
https://www.hobbyfarms.com/basil-downy-mildew-big-trouble-garden/
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