Wise Pairings: Best Flowers to Plant with Vegetables
Grow a profusion of pollen- and nectar-rich flowers among your crops to help boost pollination, control pests, and provide eye-pleasing pops of color.
By Rosalind Creasy
In the 1970s, when I was a budding landscape designer newly exciting about strategizing the best flowers to plant with vegetables, I attended the garden opening of one of my clients. As I walked around anonymously, wine glass in hand, I overheard many guests exclaiming, “Do you see that? She put flowers in the vegetable garden!”
In the United States, segregating vegetables from flowers still seems like such a hard-and-fast rule that when I lecture on edible landscaping, one of the first things I mention is that I’ve checked the Constitution, and planting flowers in a vegetable garden is not forbidden. Not only can you put flowers in with vegetables, you should.
I admit that, in the ’70s, I first intermixed my flowers and vegetables because I was gardening in the front yard of my suburban home and hoped the neighbors wouldn’t notice or complain as long as the veggies were surrounded by flowers. Soon, however, I discovered I had fewer pest problems, I saw more and more birds, and my crops were thriving.
It turns out that flowers are an essential ingredient in establishing a healthy garden because they attract beneficial insects and birds, which control pests and pollinate crops. Most gardeners understand this on some level. They may even know that pollen and nectar are food for insects, and that seed heads provide food for birds. What some may not realize is just how many of our wild meadows and native plants have disappeared under acres of lawn, inedible shrubs and industrial agriculture’s fields of monocultures, leaving fewer food sources for beneficial critters. With bees and other pollinators under a chemical siege these days and their populations in drastic decline, offering chemical-free food sources and safe havens is crucial. Plus, giving beneficial insects supplemental food sources of pollen and nectar throughout the season means they’ll stick around for when pests show up.
Envision an Integrated Edible Landscape
One of the cornerstones of edible landscaping is that gardens should be beautiful as well as bountiful. Mixing flowers and vegetables so that both are an integral part of the garden’s design is another key. Let’s say you have a shady backyard, so you decide to put a vegetable garden in the sunny front yard. Many folks would install a rectangular bed or wooden boxes, and plant long rows of vegetables, maybe placing a few marigolds in the corners, or planting a separate flower border. In either case, the gardener will have added plants offering a bit of much-needed pollen and nectar.
Integrating an abundance of flowers among the vegetables, however, would impart visual grace while also helping beneficial insects accomplish more. Plentiful food sources will allow the insects to healthily reproduce. Plus, most of their larvae have limited mobility. For example, if a female lady beetle or green lacewing lays her eggs next to the aphids on your violas, the slow-moving, carnivorous larvae won’t be able to easily crawl all the way across the yard to also help manage the aphids chowing down on your broccoli.
In addition to bringing in more “good guys” to munch pests, flowers will give you more control because they can act as a useful barrier — a physical barrier as opposed to the chemical barriers created in non-organic systems. The hornworms on your tomato plant, for instance, won’t readily migrate to a neighboring tomato plant if there’s a tall, “stinky” marigold blocking the way.
More at link: https://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/best-flowers-to-plant-with-vegetables-zm0z15fmzsto/
Goood morning....got the dining room table covered with seed pkgs...looking forward to Spring! Love planting flowers with veggies...well in my garden it is more interspersing veggies with Flowers.
I planted my first tomato seeds Wednesday. My master gardener friend suggested Rutgers tomatoes as a trial getting away from all the hybrid plants we normally try.
The almost impossible goal is ripe tomatoes by the fourth of July
Here's a page from the web site "The Spruce":
Companion Planting Flowers and Herbs in the Vegetable Garden
At the bottom of the article are links to 16 related articles about companion plants for specific veggies.
And at the end of the day all your precious garden tools are in one place.
I have decided to try my hand at gardening this spring... I do live on a farm so why not give it a try... My late sister had the place ready for raising garden year round but poor health prevented her from doing much.
My food-grade 5 gal white buckets have been delivered and I have potatoes on the window sills starting to sprout out. I will put the buckets on the back patio and see how they do there... getting my feet wet growing stuff in the buckets seems the right way to begin.
I have good soil in the barn I think, cows and horses spent many years in there pooping and much loose hay and feed has fallen in that soil... now I just have to use a wheelbarrow to get some of that rich dirt up to the back patio..
I am going to try sweet potatoes, carrots and regular old white potatoes in the buckets... if it works out then I have a large greenhouse and could keep growing year round I suppose.
Given the state of things it certainly seem like a good time to start growing food...
Last week was mild and dry here in Central Missouri. Then came Friday with nasty cold temps, gusting winds, and blowing snow. I had hopes of moving dirt over the weekend but Mother Nature said Not Happening!
Saturday was too nasty outside to do much so I spent some more time cleaning and organizing my workshop. Sunday was nice so Mrs. Augie and I started a bit of spring cleaning on the yard. I chopped a silk tree down last fall and have since gotten tired of tripping over the stump so we built a bonfire on that Sunday morning and got it mostly burned out over the past two days.
I got the new to us little Kubota tractor out Sunday afternoon and commenced to cleaning out the horse stalls in the barn. I was about half done when it blew a hydraulic hose to the front end loader so I put that one away and finished up the job with Nanner and a manure fork. I replaced the blown hose and topped off the hydro fluid yesterday, so the Kubota is ready when it’s next needed.
That was the first time I’d used the Kubota for any real work since we bought it and I was fairly well pleased with the performance. It’s a much more capable machine than the Massey Ferguson that it replaced.
It’s supposed to stay dry for the next couple days so I may have an opportunity to get some dirt moved after work. Good chance of rain on Thursday, then they’re guessing another week of unseasonably warm temps and dry weather. I’m hoping they’re guessing right because I really would like to finish moving dirt so I can get to building my new raised beds.
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