Borage is known to increase courage and gladden the heart! This beautiful blue is an amazing and effortless addition to your perennial garden. The beautiful star flowers are edible, the seeds make medicinal oil, and the leaves make a potent plant fertilizer. All this in one beautiful, self-seeding plant that will happily multiply in your garden with glee. (Borago officinalis)
Why We Love It
Here are some of the reasons why we love Borage...
1) INCREDIBLE, EDIBLE BLUE FLOWERS - The beautiful blue star flowers are gorgeous on top of salads and can be frozen in ice cubes for a lovely drink on a summer's day. They have a light cucumber flavor and the bees absolutely love them.
2) HEALING LEAVES - The leaves contain allantoin, which is very healing when used as a poultice for cuts, scrapes, and rashes.
3) AMAZING FERTILIZER SOURCE & COMPANION PLANT - You can chop and drop borage around your plants or add them to your compost pile to make a nutrient-rich fertilizer. Borage makes a great companion plant for beans, spinach, strawberries, brassicas and tomatoes because it deters tomato hornworm and beetles.
How to Grow It
| SUN | FULL SUN |
| MOISTURE | REGULAR GARDEN MOISTURE |
| GROWING ZONES | SELF-SEEDING ANNUAL USDA 3-10 (Not sure? Find your growing zone here) |
| SIZE | 3 feet tall and 3 feet wide |
| PRO TIP |
This plant will self-seed freely and keep coming back for you with ease. If you don't want it to spread, just allow one plant to go to seed and trim off the flowering heads of the others at the end of the season. It can get a little bossy when growing with other vegetables, so just chop it back as needed and allow to rot in place as wonderful fertilizer. Winter Sowing is the easiest way to start these seeds. Here's a seed-starting tutorial for you. You won't believe how easy it is! |
How to Harvest and Use It
We harvest the blue flowers all summer long and enjoy them in salads, as a garnish, and frozen into ice cubes. We chop and drop the entire plant as a fertilizer throughout the summer. As long as you allow at least one plant to go to seed, it will keep coming back for you season after season with ease.
Angela from Parkrose Permaculture made this great video about borage in her backyard:
And here's a great video on how to make a rich homegrown fertilizer that doesn't stink! :) We like to combine nettles, comfrey, and borage into this fertilizer.