If you don’t want to pamper a plant but would like to experiment with sowing seeds, try annual borage. In reasonably warm weather it sprouts within five to seven days, which is soon enough that you’ll still be remembering to keep the seed bed moist. After that they grow apace, needing thinning as the leaves touch but little else. They thrive on average garden water but will put up with a wide amount of moisture variation, from wet to dry.

The plant itself is mounded with broad, prickly leaves that smell and taste of cucumber but it is the small, starry blue flowers that make it so welcome in our yard. The flowers are as delicate as the leaves are coarse and edible as well. I’m afraid I’ve yet to find the best method for serving them.

You can freeze the blossoms in ice cubes and float them in a summer punch. This is lovely at first but experiments show that Steve doesn’t like flowers floating in his drink after the ice melts. You or your guests might feel the same way. There seems to be an instinctive physical reaction to encountering stray solid objects in lemonade and it’s not a good one. 

It’s possible to dip individual flowers in egg white, making sure each one is lightly but entirely coated and then to let them dry while covered in white sugar. After drying, the excess sugar is removed, preserving the flower in a hard casing of candy. If you want to try a taste, many gourmet catalogs offer them at a price that must enhance the flavor. As for making these at home, I fully intend to, the day I hear that the Grand Poobah of The Whole Universe is dropping by for dinner. And with recent USDA warnings about using uncooked egg whites in any way, perhaps only if I don’t like the Grand Poobah’s political agenda.

I’ve tried the petals in a salad. “Hey, what’s this blue stuff?” was the alarmed reaction. I tried sprinkling them on a cake. “It’s that blue stuff again. It’s either dessert or salad but it’s not both.” I have heard that lightly steaming or sautéing the leaves removes the prickles and leaves a very nice greens dish but maybe I’ve snuck enough borage onto the table for now.

You will find borage seeds are available from most mail-order catalogs and some nursery seed racks. They don’t transplant well and start so easily from seed sown directly in the earth that commercial nurseries almost never offer started plants. Rough up the soil to a depth of at least eight inches. If you’re feeling generous and would like larger plants, mix in some organic all-purpose compost from a local home improvement center. Preparing the soil to a depth greater than eight inches will also result in bigger plants but borage is a survivor and will use what it has. Follow the instructions on the seed packet for planting times and seeding instructions.

Borage is a good first crop in newly broken earth. Its deep tap roots will penetrate all but the toughest layer of clay so that the borage plant can use the complex minerals present in the deeper levels of soil. A plant with more delicate roots would never reach these nutrients, leaving them bound in the earth. When you pull the borage at the end of its season, those minerals are now present above ground in the form of leaves, flowers, roots and seeds.

Put them on your compost pile or chop them into pieces no longer than a foot, throw them on the lawn and mow them into bits. If you spread the resulting green mulch over the bare spot where the spent borage was growing, over the winter months the plant will return its resources to the soil as it decays, leaving them in the top few inches where shallow rooted plants can access them next season.

Borage is so happy to grow anywhere that its size is variable. At this time of year, the volunteer plant in the photo receives only 2 to 3 hours of sun in the spot it selected and so is only about 8 inches tall. Borage will grow much larger in full sun. In our garden, one autumn sown plant grew over winter to 3 1/2 feet in diameter and height before blooming from mid-spring to mid-summer in a cloud of true sky blue that’s a hard color to come by. I had to stop myself from cheering every time I walked by it.

You should know that the year after you sow borage, when warm weather and spring rains arrive, you will have borage volunteers in abundance, particularly where you have mulched with a thin layer of them. Pull or rake out the seedlings that sprout where you don’t want them and leave a few that have grown in places you find pleasing. As long as you let a few plants flower and go to seed each season, borage will grace your garden every year. The bees will be in seventh heaven and I’ll bet you’ll enjoy them, too. Who knows, maybe someone in your household will even eat them!


Text and images Copyright 1998 Cyndi Kirkpatrick. All rights reserved