[eli]

hello all :-)  i'm new here :-)

does anyone know of any good use for the huge amounts of alcanet that i've cleared from my garden?
can i compost it?
cos its will to live is truly remarkable and its seems almost immortal!

i'm diggin all the roots out and dryin them out to kill them but the leaves MUST be good for somethin, any ideas?
thanks in advance

[mumofstig]

It makes good compost

The roots make a dye, but I can't remember which colour  

[eli]

cool, thanks :-)
its a right shame they're not edible cos they're everywhere.
well, i dunno whether they're actually un-edible, but my instinct tells me not to eat them, i think because i find them too hairy and kind of grim-lookin to be edible.

[Trillium]

Here's some general cultivation info on alkanet:

http://www.ehow.com/how_2092417_grow-alkanet.html

About all they're good for is to compost the leaves, and the flowers are very attractive to bees as alkanet is part of the borage family.
But unlike borage, alkanet contains toxic alkaloids which can build up in your liver system and eventually poison you, so unless you're working with a trained herbalist, I'd avoid ingesting any form of this plant.