Gone are the days when the vegetable garden was strictly distinguished from the flower-filled ornamental garden! If you want your vegetable garden to be more beautiful and more productive, it is in your best interest to plant flowers in it. We have listed 5 good reasons to put flowers in your garden.
The first good reason to put flowers in your vegetable garden is of course to beautify it.
Simply planting a few flowers around the edges of your vegetables will improve the overall look of your garden with their beautiful colors.
But the point of pairing flowers with your fruits and vegetables is not just aesthetic, as we will explain below.
The second good reason to put flowers in your garden is to promote biodiversity in your garden.
This is because flowers are a very effective way to attract beneficial Insects and pollinators such as bumblebees, bees and butterflies for example.
Since most vegetable and fruit plants need insect pollination to produce fruit, adding flowers will help you have better crops.
If you want to improve both the quantity and quality of your fruits and vegetables, simply privilege honey flower varieties such as sunflower, yarrow, blueberry or edible chrysanthemum.
Not only do flowers attract beneficial Insects to the vegetable garden, but they can also help you naturally fight pests.
Some flowers actually have the ability to attract or repel insects, and that's another good reason to put some in your vegetable garden.
Many gardeners plant nasturtiums in their gardens because these pretty orange flowers attract aphids: so they turn away from your crops and leave your vegetables alone.
Another very interesting flower is green carnation or Tagetes patula as it has a repulsive effect on soil Insects and nematodes.
Finally, you can grow borage to attract pollinating Insects and scare away caterpillars and slugs.
To keep these undesirables away, simply spread a layer of borage leaves at the base of other plants.
Another good reason to put flowers in your garden is to take advantage of their edibility.
Indeed, many useful varieties for the gardener such as nasturtium, borage or Edible chrysanthemum can be safely eaten.
Among the most interesting edible flowers are sunflowers, whose petals and seeds can be eaten at the same time.
So don't hesitate to grow them in your vegetable garden to sprinkle your salads with pretty, colourful petals!
Flowers such as buttercup, bindweed and oregano can also improve the quality of your soil. These varieties work slowly but surely to make your garden more fertile.
More generally, welcoming a wide variety of plants into your garden helps improve soil fertility by adding organic matter and nutrients like nitrogen.
To reap the benefits of flowers in your vegetable garden, you can plant a row of vegetables followed by a row of flowers or mix the two in the same row.
You can also plant your flowers around your vegetables to form a protective barrier around your garden.
Author Audrey on 24 September 2021
Home and Garden : Garden
Author Audrey on 15 June 2022
Home and Garden : Garden