Borage Care: Stopping It Flopping and Cutting Back for a Second Flush

It flops because it is too well fed, not because it needs staking

The stems of borage are hollow and covered in bristles, and they hold themselves up only while the plant is compact. Fed with nitrogen, or grown in a bed that has just had compost dug in, the plant makes long soft internodes and huge leaves, gets top heavy, and then a summer downpour opens it out from the center like a split umbrella. Once open it does not close again.

Grow it hard. Borage wants full sun and ordinary to poor, free draining soil, and it flowers better and stands up better in ground that you would think too thin for a vegetable. Do not feed it at all during the season. If you have only rich ground, sow it at the wider spacing and accept that you will be cutting it back earlier.

Staking works but is fiddly on a bristly plant. Three canes and a loop of string around the whole clump at eighteen inches (45 cm) is far easier than tying individual stems, and it is the only staking method worth the trouble.

Water only when it wilts, and water the soil

That taproot goes down a long way and a plant established for a month finds its own water through most of a normal summer. A borage plant droops dramatically in afternoon heat and recovers by evening on its own, and watering in response to that afternoon droop is how people end up with soft, floppy plants and root rot. Judge by the plant in the morning: still limp at breakfast means it genuinely needs water.

Water at the base and soak it properly when you do, a gallon (about 4 liters) per plant rather than a daily sprinkle. Water thrown over the top sits in the bristly leaves and the crowded crown and is the main way powdery mildew and stem rot get started. Container grown plants are the exception and need watering every day or two in summer, because a taproot in a pot has nowhere to go.

1. Check in the morning, not the afternoon Afternoon wilting in full sun is normal and self correcting. A plant still flat at first light has run out of water at the root.
2. Soak, then leave it alone One thorough soak every week or ten days in dry weather beats daily sprinkling. Shallow water keeps the roots near the surface and makes the plant weaker.
3. Keep water off the leaves Use a can without a rose and aim at the soil. Wet bristly foliage in a crowded plant is where mildew starts in late summer.
4. Mulch after the plant is up An inch (2.5 cm) of straw or leaf mold around the base holds moisture and keeps the lowest leaves off wet soil. Keep it clear of the stem itself.

Cut it back hard at midseason for a second flush

This is the one job that changes the plant. After about six weeks of flowering the first stems go leggy, the lower leaves yellow and the flowers get sparse and small at the tips. Cut the whole plant back by half to two thirds, down to a point where you can see young leaves at the base, and it will rebuild from the crown and flower again within three to four weeks.

Do not be timid. A borage cut back by a quarter simply carries on being leggy. Take it down to eight or ten inches (20 to 25 cm) tall, cut every stem, and clear the debris away rather than leaving it lying on the crown. Do this before the first seed has hardened if you want to limit self seeding, and the cut back and the seed control become the same job.

1. Wait for the signal, not a date Cut when the lowest third of the leaves have yellowed and the flower trusses at the tips have thinned. That is usually six to seven weeks after the first flower.
2. Wear sleeves and gloves The bristles are stiff enough to itch for an hour after handling, and reaching into the middle of a full sized plant with bare forearms is unpleasant.
3. Cut every stem to the same height Take the whole plant to eight to ten inches (20 to 25 cm) with shears in one pass. Leaving a few tall stems means the regrowth is uneven and flops again.
4. Clear the cuttings off the crown Rake the cut material away and compost it or lay it as mulch elsewhere. Left piled on the base it holds wet against the crown and rots it.

A plant cut back in high heat and drought will sulk. Water it well the day before you cut, and it regrows within a fortnight instead of standing bare for a month.

Deadheading, and the point at which you stop

Borage sets seed while it is still flowering, and each flower that fades drops its seed within about two weeks. Picking flowers for the kitchen is deadheading, so a plant that is being harvested regularly stays tidy and seeds far less. A plant left alone from midsummer will have shed a few thousand seeds around itself by autumn.

Decide early whether you want the colony. If you do, leave the last three or four weeks of flowering entirely alone and let it drop. If you do not, keep cutting the fading stems off at the base and pull the whole plant as soon as the first pale, ripe seeds appear at the bottom of the flower stems. There is no middle position here.

Keep a note of the cut back and the first flower

Two records make next year easier. The first is the date the first flower opened, measured against the sowing date, which tells you how many days your ground and your climate need and lets you time successions to give continuous bloom. The second is the date you cut back and the date the second flush started, which tells you how late you can cut and still get flowers before frost.

Also mark on a sketch of the bed exactly where each plant stood. Borage seed drops straight down and the volunteers next spring come up in a ring around the old position, so a plan of this year's plants is a map of next year's weeding. Note which plants flopped and what had been done to that ground, because the flopping is almost always traceable to feed or shade rather than to the plant.