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22 Mar 12, Penney (New Zealand - temperate climate)

I had organic blue Borage growing over this summer 2012 just North of Auckland, and have dug it up now as it was not in a good place, but heaps of bees and bumble bees visited it and now I have heaps of healthy little new Borage plants coming up everywhere and it is mid March. I have re potted them into plastic plant bags with potting mix. I thought I might try selling them at a market, but will they live? I see you say it dies down in winter....so are my efforts going to be to no avail?

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04 Mar 12, Eve (Australia - cool/mountain climate)

I have heard you can make a borage tea which has positive medicinal properties. A quick google will provide information as the site would not let me paste a link. I feed my chooks borage from time to time among other herbs and vegetable greens.

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28 Oct 11, Duncan (New Zealand - cool/mountain climate)

Borage is a dynamic accumulator, which means that it collects and stores a lot of nutrients within its biomass. It sends down a long taproot, extracting nutrients from the sub-soil and massing them within the plant. The easiest way to benifit from this is to simply cut the plant back and use it as mulch. Also, the small leaves and be eaten within salads etc, and the larger ones cooked like spinach/silverbeets. They have a slight cucumber flavour to them. The flowers contain a chemical thought to help prevent cancers, although this could use more research.

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25 Aug 11, Elizabeth (Australia - temperate climate)

Bodage is a great companion plant for strawberries.

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18 Oct 11, Sophie Molnar (Australia - temperate climate)

I have just started my kitchen garden. The only place I could have it is in the front yard.I removed all the rocks and black matting, its all been dug over with compost added. It took four weekends to do. I have planted quite a few strawberries( about 30 plants), in one whole section. The borage sounds like a good idea. What can I use this for other than to be kind to my strawberries and encourage then to reward me with lots of fruit. In my other side of my garden I have parsley, sage, garlic chives, chives, capsicum (3 from last year that I planted in a pot too late) and 2 tomato plants, (one that I planted too late last year and it was also in a pot) and three baby asparagus plants, ( I have taken on board the three year wait, I was told that by a customer when I purchased my asparagus). I have also planted many, many petunas on either side of my two new garden beds, until such time as I know what to plant. I don't really want to waste the water on just flowers. Any suggestions, I live in South Australia in the Western suburbs. And I'm a newbee at this. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

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24 Feb 11, Sue (Australia - temperate climate)

Thanks for the answers. Now I'll make tea for my veggie plants and as I still have flowers, pretty salads for myself. Don't think my stick-in-the-mud husband will eat flowers though!

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24 Feb 11, Dominique Chanovre (Australia - temperate climate)

Borage is a dynamic accumulator, it is great at absorbing nutrients from the soil. So you pull up the plant, soak in water and make a tea which you use on your plants as a fertiliser. The flowers are also edible.

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09 Aug 11, Graham (Australia - sub-tropical climate)

Very interesting Dominique. Do you know of any other uses for Borage?

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23 Feb 11, (Australia - temperate climate)

I have heaps of self-sown borage. It looks very pretty, but has anyone found a use for it?

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24 Feb 11, borage back at ya (Australia - cool/mountain climate)

If the borage has flowers still (mine was dying off a while ago), you can pick them. You can use many of them by using them in salads. Or you could use as a garnish. (The flowers are totally edible by the way.) When I was a kid, if we had special drinks or made a big bowl of punch, we would always put borage flowers in to pretty it up. An effective way to pick them is to pluck the flower by the black stamens/spikes. This way the flower comes away easily and leaves behind in green part of the plant. :)

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