Many people prefer to have a vegetable garden that is separate from their flower garden. However, there are a lot of benefits when you plant your vegetables together with your flowers. So, no matter the space you have in your garden.
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Try planting vegetables and flowers together as they have a lot of benefits to offer, especially if you need to have an abundant harvest of vegetables and fruits. In this article, you will learn of various reasons why you should grow your vegetables and flowers in the same garden to reap the many benefits that it has to give.
There is a fantastic read why you need flowers in your space so as to attract pollinators such as honeybees, wasps, native bees, and birds. Plus, when bees, for instance, pollinate, even the self-fertile crops, the yield tends to increase significantly.
So if you are struggling with your vegetable yields like citrus, berries, eggplant, and others, try adding flowers. Since when the pollination rates improve, then your harvest will increase. Additionally, there are many flowers that help to attract pollinators that you can add to your vegetable garden.
Depending on the flowering plants that you use in your vegetable garden, they can help manage weeds. For instance, flowering plants that grow as a ground cover or space fillers, are the best to help outcompete the weeds and shade the soil.
Also, other flowers are effective as they grow fast and do not allow weeds to grow in the garden space. So as you design your kitchen garden, use flowers that can provide a living carpet such as native violets, nasturtiums, among others, that can act as great companion plants in blocking weeds and also to attract beneficial insects.
Did you know you can use the flowers you have as a focal point and also in various creative ways? For instance, you can choose climbing roses or vines that climb up a vertical structure to draw the eye up. Also, you can opt for trailing flowers like ivy geraniums that cascade down a hanging basket.
Plus, in this way, you can decide to interplant amongst your vegetables. Thus, when you have a potager garden, it is one way you can grow fruits, herbs, vegetables, and flowers together. Especially plants that are beneficial to the vegetable garden such as violas, pansies, lobelia, among others.
Flowers are also edible and nutritious that you can add them to your dishes, for instance, pretty petals in a salad and as a garnish on your plate. So when you plant edible blooms in your vegetable garden, they add vital nutrients to your diet.
Some that you can try are calendula, borage, pansies, and others, but be careful to identify the flowers before you eat them. Others like the chia, sunflowers, and coriander have protein-rich seeds that are amazing to grow in warm climates. A few flowers like the chamomile and lemon balm are edible as well that you can use to make herbal tea, whether they are fresh or dried.
Companion plants are great as they help the gardener with a useful service. For this reason, it is best to grow your flowers together with your vegetables. As an example, flowers with strong smells help to camouflage vulnerable crops nearby. While tall flowering shrubs are great to provide shade to ground covers from the sun.
The best flowering companion plants to grow among your vegetables are flowering herbs. An ideal example is the chamomile flower that has antibacterial and antifungal properties, and it benefits other plants in your vegetable garden as well. To use the companion plant is to have it in a pot or a carpet of chamomile.
Plants from the bean and pea family that produce flowers can help to fix nitrogen in the soil. As a result, they fertilize your plants for free. To do this, they add nitrogen through a relationship with rhizobia bacteria that helps to convert nitrogen in a way that other plants can use.
To reduce the cost of fertilizing, grow a few of this flowering species like peas, sweet peas, clover, and wisteria. Additionally, grow this as a cover crop, chop it and drop as mulch. Also, you can use the flowers, stems, and leaves as the organic matter to help to build healthy soil.
Flowers come in handy to help with managing pests and diseases. In this way, it will help with the growth of healthy and productive vegetables and fruits. They help through attracting beneficial predator insects. Thus, less work for you, for instance, species of ladybirds help with feeding on pollen, aphids, and scale.
Also, they act as a sacrificial trap crop and help to lure pests, and in return, help to remove them. For instance, nasturtium flowers attract moths that can attack some vegetables such as those of the cabbage family crops. Thus, distracting them from your valuable vegetables in your garden.
Even though vegetables provide color, a pop of color from flowers is better. Add flowers to enhance the beauty of your kitchen garden space, or small balcony. The beauty around is important not only to create an inviting environment but to help lift your mood as well.
Even though it is a few planters that you have put along the balcony rail or a pot of flowers on the outdoor table will make a difference that you can enjoy. Also, you can gift someone an edible bouquet with flowers and herbs from your garden.
In conclusion, with the above reasons to add flowers to your vegetable garden. Try adding some flowers, for when you do not add them, it is an uphill battle. Additionally, the way you need vegetables and fruit, you need flowers as well and design your vegetable garden in a way it has flowering plants year-round.
Hello, I’m Laura Bennett. I love nature especially when it comes to flowers and different kinds of plants. I started a very small garden behind my house and I named it Humid Garden. So, I created this blog to provide aspiring and inspiring thoughts about gardening for gardeners and anyone who has the intention of keeping a garden.
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