The Borage experment is going very well

Back at the beginning of summer a neighbor was willing to trade with me: eggs for comfrey. Mother Earth news did a great article about comfrey and its benefits and I knew my neighbor had some. While researching comfrey I stumbled across a closely related plant: Borage. The benefits of borage was extensive: The flowers are great for honey bees because the nectar refills almost right away. The flowers of borage are edible and taste sweet so cake decorators will freeze the flowers and add as decorations. The leaves taste like cucumbers (although are prickly) and can have a calming effect. And they are self sowing so they will come back the next year if you let them go to seed. They will flower in just over a month after planting and can keep flowering all summer onto fall if you allow it to go to seed.

So the borage plant helps our honey bees, is tasty, and will come back every year. The honey from a borage plant is suppose to be amazing. Armed with this information I just had to try some. But I also read it can take over gardens. I have 5 focused gardens so I decided make a garden just for borage.

Now normally I do Back to Eden gardening. However it was now the beginning of July and I wanted flowers before the fall. So I decided to break out my old tiller and till up part of the field. Once the weeds were gone I plated my borage seeds. 3 weeks later I converted the garden to Back to Eden because I hate weeding. By mid August we had our first flowers and now the beginning of September our flowers are covered in honey bees. I call this experiment a success.

20170904_134146

20170904_134038

49

48

47