Borage - €1.80

Borage is a bushy plant with attractive sky blue flowers ideal for salads.  You only need to sow it once as it self seeds.

Sowing:  From March to June.

Sow one seed per module and plant out 4 weeks later.  Alternatively sow direct.

Spacing: 20cm x20cm

Approx. seed count: 30

In the early part of the nineteenth century, the young tops of Borage were still sometimes boiled as a pot-herb, and the young leaves were formerly considered good in salads.

The fresh herb has a cucumber-like fragrance. When steeped in water, it imparts a coolness to it and a faint cucumber flavour, and compounded with lemon and sugar in wine, and water, it makes a refreshing and restorative summer drink. It was formerly always an ingredient in cool tankards of wine and cider, and is still largely used in claret cup.

Our great grandmothers preserved the flowers and candied them.

In all the countries bordering the Mediterranean, where it is plentiful, it is spelt with a double ‘r,’ so the word may be derived from the Italian borra, French bourra, signifying hair or wool, words which in their turn are derived from the Low Latin burra, a flock of wool, in reference to the thick covering of short hairs which clothes the whole plant.