Borage bugs

Borage

My fascination with borage began last year when I read that as a companion plant it could improve the taste of strawberries and was good to grow with tomatoes as it confuses the moth mothers of tomato hornworms.  I was further drawn in when I read that the flowers where edible and that people froze them into ice cubes. And the interesting facts that they somehow taste like cucumbers  and that traditionally they were grown to ward off melancholy sealed the deal for me. I wanted a borage plant.

Never mind that they are suposed to grow up to 3 feet and be a foot wide and that is probably a third of the size of my balcony. The more research I did on the plant the more I wanted one. Borage flowers attract beneficial bugs that eat the nasty aphids! Borage flowers attract pollinators. Pretty flowers, awesome companion plant, and it atracts the good bugs – I WANTED!

Last year I tried growing a plant from seed with the tomatoes, but I think that the tomato somehow shadowed the borage too much and it died before it really reached its true leaf stage. And since for part of the summer I went away, I contented myself with my other plants.

But still the pretty blue flowers stayed in the back of my head.

Bees love borage

This year I thought that maybe what I needed to do was to start it early, that way I would give the young plant a better chance at growing big enough to transplant out.

It grew, yes. But I don’t think that borage is really one of those plants that you should start early. It has a really long tap root which makes it hard to transplant without damaging that root.

Regardless of a little rough manhandling when it was transplanted my baby borage did fairly well in the yucky early summer weather that plagued us in May and June. And then the sun finally appeared and the weather warmed up and my borage is in BLOOM.

I have it growing in a fairly small container in an effort to restrain its growth. I cannot have a prickly leaved behemoth taking over my balcony. It sits in the sunniest corner of my balcony all dainty-flowered and prickly-leaved bringing bees over to the tomato plants that live near by.

So explain to me, if borage is a companion plant to attract the beneficials, why the heck does my borage have aphids?

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Catalogue madness and the small balcony garden

I may have gone overboard with the catalogues… I may have gone overboard with the amount of seeds that I purchased. At this point I don’t have enough containers to house my ambitious 2011 garden plan. Heck, I don’t have enough balcony to house the containers for my ambitious 2011 garden plan!

I have two balconies – one faces east, the other faces north. The east facing balcony gets plenty of sun in the summer (even now in February on a clear day it gets plenty of sunshine). The north facing balcony is the cooler of the two.

Last year I only used the east facing balcony. On it I grew lettuce (which bolted mid summer), arugula (which also bolted mid summer), parsley, coriander, oregano, peppermint, black cherry tomatoes, yellow pear tomatoes and, to my delight, eggplants (who knew they were born purple!).

Gave me 4 yummy beautiful eggplants

I also grew some non-edibles for the sole sake of adding plants to my balcony which would attract beneficials or act as companion plants. Once the lettuce and arugula bolted I tossed in some marigold and calendula seeds. I kept a pot of lavender near the tomatoes. And tried, and failed, to grow borage with the tomatoes (for the sake of them tasking better as per some article I had read somewhere).

And I guess I shouldn’t forget the garlic experiment. My lettuce not only bolted. It became infested with aphids. As I wanted to try to keep my balcony veggies as organic and pesticide free as possible I researched everywhere I could on how to get rid of the bugs. I made garlic spray. I made jalapeño spray. And somewhere in all that research I saw something about alliums (aka onions, shallots and garlic) being naturally repellant to aphids.

My little lettuce before the aphids got them

What did I do upon reading that? I grabbed a garlic clove from the kitchen. Peeled it. Made a little channel in my container. Plunked the peeled garlic into the soil and covered it up. I don’t quite think that is what the author of the article meant. However, a few months later I noticed this green shoot amongst the marigolds (long after I had removed the aphid infested lettuce). I have no idea if garlic really repels aphids. I do know now that I love garlic scapes!

But that wasn’t the point of this post. The point was to tell you that I don’t know if I have enough room for my plan.

I know I want tomatoes again. I have some seeds I brought back with me from

These were so good, I regret not saving some seeds.

Barcelona last summer specifically to grow tomatoes for pan con tomate.

 I love the idea of fresh fava beans and green beans. The herbs are definitely a must –  though I think this year they may be in the kitchen not on the balcony and I am still not 100% on which herbs I want. The eggplant was so stellar last year that I know I’d like to have some again. Cucumbers and peas sound intriguing but I am not sure if I have the vertical space for trellising. But the peas could go on the north balcony with the lettuce as it is cooler there. I am also toying with the idea of summer squash and maybe potatoes. I read this technique for growing potatoes in a trash can that I am dying to test.

Sigh. I think I am going to spend the weekend making a giant jigsaw puzzle with my balconies. I mean, I do have the railing I could use as space after all. I could put the lettuce up on the railing on the north balcony. I could do carrots up there! Maybe I could make the peas climb downwards on the railing…

Perhaps I should just wait until Seedy Saturday and then take it from there. Until then, my itty bitty strawberry seeds,  are going to have to hold my gardening itch at bay.

Or, I could go back to browsing through the catalogues that are piling up on my nightstand…

 

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