SAFLAX - Organic - Borage - 40 seeds - With potting substrate for better cultivation - Borago officinalis
Tasty addition to salads and stimulating garnish for chilled summer drinks
With germfree and permeable potting substrate based on coconut fiber for suceessful cultivation.
The vigorous Borage with its star-shaped blue flowers is an important plant in traditional cottage gardens. The shrub prefers sunny places and can grow impressively to a height of up to 3.3 ft (1 meter). Its decorative, mostly shiny blue floral stars are an attraction for bees as well, which is why it is also commonly known as honey plant. If you prefer to cultivate your Borage in a pot, you should choose a taller pot to provide enough space for the deep reaching tap root and its extensive suckers to develop. You best harvest the leaves while still young and tender, and the flowers while they are fully opened. The young leaves smell a bit like cucumber and are simply being chopped to add to salads. They go fantastic with gravies and fish dishes as well. Most famous is the use of Borage together with six other herbs in the traditional German Green Sauce. The Borage flowers make a colorful decoration. Just grab the black anther in the middle of the flower and carefully pull the flower out of the calyx. Frozen with water in an ice cube tray, the flowers make a nice floating decoration in a summer drink. You can also crystallize them and create a nice garnish for a cake. Pluck the flowers for this on a dry day. Beat an egg white until foamy and dip the flowers first in the egg white and then in caster sugar. Place them carefully on a platter with greaseproof paper and dry them either for a couple of hours in a mild warm oven with the door kept slightly open, or keep them for a day or two somewhere dry and warm. You may keep your deco-flowers in a sealed box until use.
Natural location: Borage is native to the Mediterranean region, but also being cultivated in gardens all over central Europe by now.
Cultivation: The best time for propagation is starting in February at a sunny place indoors as the seed is a light germinator. Scatter the seeds onto moist coconut substrate or organic herbal soil and slightly press them on. Cover the seed container with clear film to prevent the soil from drying out, but dont forget to make some holes in the clear film and take it every second or third day completely off for about 2 hours. That way you avoid mold formation on the potting compost. Place the seed container somewhere bright and warm with a temperature between 20°C and 25° Celsius and keep the surface of the earth moist, but not wet (ideally using a water sprayer). Depending on the propagation temperature the first seedlings will come up after two to five weeks. Seedlings that are already raised indoors can be planted out with beginning of May. As soon as there is no more night frost expected, you can move the seedling with its complete root ball, to avoid stress for the plant.
Place: The plant needs the sun, warmth and a wind-sheltered place to produce its full aroma.
Care: Keep the soil always moist, but not wet. Water your plant as soon as the top layer of the earth has dried out. Fertilize the plant either very modest with compost or organic fertilizer for herbs, or dont fertilize at all.
During winter: Sow again the next year.
Bonsai ability: No
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