Why Gardeners Always Plant Borage Next To Their Cucumbers

Without bees pollinating their flowers, cucumbers would not produce the long, juicy fruits we depend on in summer for whipping up delicious and cooling salads. Enter borage, a star of a companion plant if there ever was one. Above all, borage is a pollinator magnet, attracting bees and butterflies alike to its star-shaped blue flowers. When cucumbers haven't been properly pollinated, fruits can become stunted and misshapen, but cultivating this easy-to-grow annual herb near those vining plants increases the likelihood of a beautiful, well-formed cucumber crop.

But help in pollination isn't the only advantage of this companion plant — the benefits of planting borage in your edible garden are multiple. Borage also contains compounds that dissuade pests and provide protection for neighboring plants. This relative of comfrey likewise acts as a ground cover with its wide-spreading foliage, slowing water loss, preventing weed growth, and limiting soil erosion. Plus, borage produces tasty and non-toxic flowers and leaves, so you can happily add it to the list of edible plants in your landscape. And when grown from seed, it produces flowers in just 50 to 60 days, making it accessible to gardeners in USDA Hardiness Zones 3 through 10.

Borage is easy to grow — so easy in fact, that it will often self-seed for many years after you first sow seeds intentionally. When you're ready to grow it, plant seeds or transplants in full sun and keep the soil moist while the seeds germinate and seedlings or young plants get established. Once it has settled in, borage grows well in dry growing conditions, so make sure not to overwater it.

Do you have a difficult area of your garden or yard where you can't get much to grow? If you have leftover seeds from sowing it next to your cucumber plants, consider adding some of these fuzzy-leaved plants to areas where the soil is poor — or grow borage near fruit trees as a ground cover. Wherever you plant it, keep in mind that borage grows up to 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide, so when using it as a companion plant, make sure it won't shade out neighboring plants that need full sun, such as cucumbers.