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When you have a small vegetable garden in your home. It may seem like a bad idea to add flowers next to your vegetables. However, you will be surprised by the many benefits that flowers have to offer to your garden. What is needed is careful planning to have an abundant harvest of vegetables and fruits. As a result, you will reduce weeds and pests and save money as well and much more. Therefore, decide to add flowers to your food garden and enjoy the multiple benefits that they provide. Design your kitchen garden afresh where you incorporate some flowers into it and below are the reasons why.
This is one of the main reasons flowering plants are loved and planted among other plants and vegetables. They offer service to the vegetables and the gardener as well. For example, strong-smelling flowers help to camouflage vulnerable crops around them. Also, the flowering shrubs help provide shade to sun-sensitive ground covers. Although flowering herbs are the preferred companions to grow with your fruits and vegetables. Flowering plants can also be used as companion plants to other flowering plants. According to the Gardener’s path, perennial flowers are ideal companion plants.
Nowadays, flowers have found their place in many dishes around the world. The more people learn of their nutritional value and ways to incorporate them into their food. The more they are planted in kitchen gardens for easier access. They are common in salads, teas, cakes, and wines. They taste good and since they are grown organically, they are a great addition to your diet. It is important you identify the flowers you grow with your vegetables to avoid eating poisonous ones. Some common ones are violas, blue borage, nasturtiums among others. Others like sunflower and chia flowers offer protein-rich seeds and are easy to grow in a vegetable garden in warm climates. Importantly, grow your flowers with no chemicals and wash them well before using them in your meal.
Flowers that are mostly of edible herbs are best to offer medicinal and health benefits. They contain amazing nutrient compounds that help to boost people’s health and are of medicinal value. For instance, Nasturtiums are known as a powerful antibiotic that helps boost the body’s immune system. Other flowers like roses are used to make home cosmetics like DIY rose water among other remedies. Also, you can make your lip balm among other products with Calendula flowers.
The beauty of flowers is that you can use them in many creative ways around the vegetable garden. Choose trailing flowers like lobelia that cascade down in hanging baskets. Select climbing roses and jasmines to draw the eye up as they climb up in a vertical structure. Also, you can grow flowers as a border around your vegetables as your unique design of growing them together. Try a garden design feature while combining your flowers with vegetables to give a unique look to your front or back yard. Grow colourful perennial flowers, herbs, and seasonal vegetables and create an attractive focal point in your garden.
Whether you use your flowers and vegetables as a way to earn an extra income or to gift your friends or neighbours. It is a win-win move especially when you have flowers, herbs, and vegetables in abundance. Supply a local florist with seasonal flowers or sell at markets. Alternatively, share the beauty from your garden by gifting a friend or neighbour with flowers mixed with some of your herbs like rosemary’s to share the abundance. Also, have some for yourself especially if you grew your flowers as microgreens.
If you require healthy fruits and vegetables it helps to grow them with flowers as they help you manage pests and diseases. Firstly, flowers help attract beneficial insects that feed on aphids, powdery mildew, and scale. Secondly, they are a sacrificial trap crop as they attract pests distracting them from your valuable vegetables. Also, flowers produce chemicals that repel insects that attack fruits, roots and vegetable leaves. There are other ways that the flowers help even with their strong scent. Therefore, planting a few of them is an easy and cheap solution to help solve a whole host of potential pest issues.
As much as, vegetables have the colour that they add to a garden space. The colour and beauty of blooming flowers give the garden space a better look. Either it is a large garden area or a small balcony. The beauties of flowers help boost your mood and create an inviting space that you live in. If you do not want to mix directly, you can surround your vegetable garden with a pot of flowers and you will enjoy the difference it makes to the garden space due to the added colour.
Flowers attract important pollinators like honeybees, wasps, birds, and butterflies. Thus, when these pollinators pollinate the crops they help increase the yields. Therefore, if you get a poor harvest with fruiting crops like berries, zucchini, eggplant among others in your garden. Grow some flowers together with these crops to increase their harvest significantly. This is due to the improved pollination rates as the insects help distribute pollen to vegetables and fruits in your garden.
If you are still wondering why you need to add flowers to your vegetable garden. The above reasons are a great motivation to help you add a few flowers. Find the fulfilment that flowers provide to your garden and the benefits they offer your crops. Therefore, start with edible herbs as they are an added advantage and other popular flowers. This is possible even in a limited space as you can use potted flowers or hang them if they do not fit in your garden area.
