From flowers to the vegetable garden, it is useful to bring joy, to break the monotony of the green foliage, but also to provide food for many helpful insects!
Flowers ? Essential For The Vegetable Garden!
A classic vegetable garden designed as a tight row of vegetables is very sad and a real paradise for vermin or vermin!
The fact of introducing flowers among the vegetables has at least 4 advantages:
- The vegetable garden is adorned with all these pops of color.
- you can make many bouquets of country flowers.
- the soil is good in the vegetable garden, it benefits the flowers. And the maintenance (care, watering) is also more regular than on the beds. Flowers love to be pampered just like vegetables!
- the flowers’ nectar and pollen attract many pollinators. In return, they visit neighboring vegetables, increase their production and help regulate pests, especially aphids.
Annual Or Perennial Flowers?
It all depends on your vegetable garden!
In places that “rotate” vegetables according to the season, choose annual flowers. You can sow or transplant them between or at the end of vegetable rows. For the reasons mentioned above, you need flowers rich in nectar and pollen to bloom as much as possible.
In corners and corners where vegetables remain in place because they are perennials, such as rhubarb or artichokes, do not hesitate to plant perennial flowers.
We also do not forget the aromatic plants. Some bloom for a long time, such as agastaca, lemon balm or sage.
Just one rule to follow! These flowers should not be too tall, so as not to overshadow the vegetables, nor too wide, so as not to suffocate them!
So if your vegetable garden has been hit by repeated aphid attacks, stop over-treating and here is a selection of bee plants that are very helpful in restoring balance…
1) Borage Officinalis (Bourago Officinalis)
At 60cm tall, borage is an annual with hairy stems and leaves, offering beautiful clusters of starry, blue or white flowers in early summer. It is a very melodious ornamental plant, which attracts all pollinating insects. It is also valued for its slug repellent properties.
A plant to establish in the vegetable garden in a sunny location, for example in combination with strawberries, whose production increases while keeping away our worst enemies, the gastropods! We also eat its flowers raw and its cooked leaves, excellent like spinach.
2) Nasturtiums (Trophy Or Plus)
Whether dwarf or climbing, nasturtiums are a great help in the vegetable garden. Annual, their rounded leaves, from light green to dark green, stand on long, brittle, creeping stems. Nasturtiums produce many colorful flowers for harvesting in the evening or early morning. It’s a pleasant addition to very dull salads.
Nasturtiums Whet Your Appetite!
Aphids especially who love it and leave the surrounding crops to better colonize them. In turn, they also attract helpful insects (ladybugs, ladybugs, lacewings, etc.) which have a well-stocked pantry! It is enough to offer them a nice insect hotel to overwinter in the shelter and that’s it!
And Cabbage Caterpillars Too!
Faced with the latter, which decimates fleshy leaves in less time than it takes to write it, natrin is easy prey. But it can be interesting to transplant it near sensitive crops (cabbage, broccoli, etc.) to divert the interest of the caterpillars, and thus limit the attacks on the brassicas!
Cabbage caterpillars love soda, whose fleshy leaves relish!
However, even when heavily eaten early in the season, water lilies have the ability to rise from their ashes and put back plenty of foliage before the good season ends. Impressive regenerative abilities…
3) Worry (Calendula Officinalis)
A low-growing bee annual that brings splashes of color to the vegetable garden and is used as a ground cover to keep vegetable stalks cool, concern develops rounded heads of yellow or orange flowers that open during the day and close at night.
marigold flowers are consumed fresh or dried and take part in medicinal preparations with healing and anti-inflammatory properties.
There is no doubt that the problem will happily re-emerge from year to year, sometimes even from season to season! A plant that should be kept in the heart of the tomato rows from which it keeps away, like marigolds, the root-gnawing nematodes.
4) Tansy (Tanacetum Vulgare)
Tall perennial with an upright habit that also produces many yellow, disk-shaped flower heads. tanaisie also provides shelter and cover to many insects, foragers, but not only. It spreads by itself and sometimes its excessive proliferation requires great vigilance.
Claiming numerous medicinal properties (notably herbicidal), tanaisie can also be sprayed as a decoction on plants, due to its fungicidal and insect repellent properties.
5) Sages (Salvia)
The most well-known for sure is probably sage officinalis which, apart from its elegant spring flowering, is useful in the kitchen since its leaves pleasantly flavor fish in sauce.
It is often found in the perfumery corner. Less well known but equally useful in the vegetable garden where it attracts many pollinators to it, Sauge blue queen is covered with many long dark blue spikes.
It is an early heat-tolerant sage that finds its place in the middle of vegetable gardens or in a large pot, allowing it to be moved, according to your wishes!
6) Smelling L’alysse, Alyssum Marinum
With its lovely little flowers all summer long, fragrant alyssum can be transplanted into the vegetable garden to create attractive fragrant ground cover borders. Helpful insects appreciate it and take refuge there. Sow it in terrine in March-April. Prick each small plant into a pot when it is a few centimeters tall and then line it up permanently to create your border around your vegetable patch from mid-May. Place it in the sun, at a distance of 25-30 cm.
7) Other Ideas For Garden Flowers
- Among the vegetables, classic annuals to make beautiful bouquets: Cosmos, queen-daisy, zinnia, immortelle, stasis, sunflower…
- With perennial vegetables, a bouquet of equally perennial flowers: peonies, asters, chrysanthemums, irises, gladioli, dahlias
- To create a border of aromatic plants in color: thyme, wild thyme, savory, tarragon, chives…
- When a site is available, to avoid leaving the ground bare, you can sow flowering green manures: phacilia, mustard, buckwheat…