Garden Tips Mixing Your Vegetables With Your Flowers
Create space in your garden
Running out of space in your garden? How about checking out alternatives. Here are a few garden tips that help you grow vegetables with your flowers. First thing to do is install pergolas or trellis. This serves as support for vines and creepers. Raising the height immediately gives you space beneath.
Use pergolas and trellises in your garden
Use more than one crop
Many flowers benefit if you grow another crop along with it. This help may be in the form of additional nutrients or it may be physical in nature. Watermelon or pumpkin can be grown within other vegetable and flowering plants like tomatoes and hollyhocks.
Garden enthusiasts
How do you interact with your garden?
Use of horticultural techniques
Certain fruit trees can be trained with help of horizontal stakes and trellis to put out horizontal branches in one single plane. This produces a screen effect that gives you plenty of space otherwise. Examples of this would be apple and pear.
Raise your gardens using trellis
Mixing and matching garden plants
Purpose
| Most suitable plant
| Other
|
|---|---|---|
For Pergolas
| Climbing rose, vine
| Pergolas make gardens attractive
|
For repelling bugs
| Calendula, catmint, borage
| Get rid of aphids, hornworm
|
For attracting bees and birds
| Sunflower, fennel, mints
| Flowers use scent and bright color
|
Plan your garden well
Work with your garden
Garden Dos and donts
Dos:
- Water regularly
- Weed your garden
- Apply fertilizer when required
- Intercrop
Donts:
- Do not over fertilize
- Do not over water
Avoiding common mistakes
One small point to be mentioned here is for new gardeners to avoid being overenthusiastic. Overwatering just like over fertilizing could destroy your crop. Remember, weeds eat up nutrients and you have to send them packing if you want your plants to see the light of day. Lack of effort is another common mistake that affects many gardens.
a) Do not over water
b) Do not apply too much fertilizer
c) Keep weeding
d) Deadhead flowers
e) Keep shoring up your waterways in between your plants
Best kitchen garden plants intercropping
Benefits of inter-planting your crops
ü Other than huge saving in space, gardeners especially those cultivating kitchen gardens benefit extensively from mixing and matching. The bees and birds are attracted by flowering plants and so there is increased activity. Pollination takes place and fruit yield increases. It is so useful mixing your vegetables with your flowers.
ü Certain insects are good for your garden such as ladybugs or ground beetles. Planting coriander or parsley alongside certain flowers like sunflowers helps attract beneficial insects through their scent and color.
ü Another point is repelling insects. You do not want certain insects like asparagus beetle or tomato hornworm. If you grow certain plants like catmint and borage, you can repel these unwanted insects. Examples: Marigolds keep asparagus beetles off your garden patch. Same way, borage is used where there is tomato hornworms, catmint for squash bugs and aphids, and sage to repel carrot rust flies. Calendula helps repel tomato hornworm but they attract aphids. So, take care when you are using this flower in your garden.
Choosing your flowers
Here is another one of those garden tips you should be aware of. Lovely fragrant lavender helps keep ticks off, at least to an extent. It also smells fantastic. Orange colored Nasturtium needs cooler temperatures for blossoming well. Aphids come by the dozens and this helps to clear your garden of this pest. Those who prefer to eat this flower (and plant) have to beat the aphids to their crop.
Zinnias are so lovely and full of nectar that all manner of insects find them irresistible. One pest that likes to feed on these flowers is Japanese beetle. However, it helps bring pollinators like hummingbird, butterflies and bees to your garden.
Bringing order to your garden
Beneficial flower borders
a) Anise Hyssop: These purple flowers are rich in nectar and grow up to 2 ½ feet in height. Butterflies and other beneficial pest-eating insects are attracted by their bright color and rich nectar.
b) Mountain mints: These attractive white flowers make lovely borders. They grow 2 –3 feet in height.
c) Borage: These edible flowers are purple and attract good bugs like lacewing.
d) Fennel: Bright yellow in color and full of nectar, fennel attracts beneficial insects and are edible. They can grow up to 4 – 5 feet in height.
Three sister crops
In many places around the world, it is common to mix three crops – squash, pole beans and corn. One can also use their own combination such as sunflowers, carrots and beans. You can also grow peppers in rows between your flowering plants. Or you can try, hibiscus with your watermelon and coriander.
Endless love with all garden flowers
You have many choices when it comes to selection of nectar bearing flowering plants or vegetable and spice varieties. These basic kitchen garden tips tell you that some common choices are coriander, asters, dill, sunflowers, catmint, lavenders, birds eyes, bachelors buttons and yarrows. Mixing your vegetables with your flowers keeps your garden vibrant and colorful. Flowers help attract butterflies, birds and bees that are instrumental in pollination. Attracting useful insects like hoverflies that feed on aphids, helps protect your garden. Coriander and fennel are particularly favored by hoverflies. You can use nursery beds to grow plants and compost pits to manure them.
