Beneficial Flowers for your backyard farm

The 9 Best Beneficial Flowers For Your Vegetable Garden

For us food growers, it can often feel like flowers just take up space where a food crop could go.  But growing flower alongside other crops can be beneficial on many levels.  Including flowers in your garden can deter or attract bugs, create microclimates by shading certain areas, add some color to your existing vegetable beds, and can become food themselves.  Learn more below about beneficial flowers for your vegetable garden.

Learn more about Companion Planting in Your Vegetable Garden

I would never suggest pulling up your garden and replacing it with all flowers (although I love my flower gardens), but there are many ways to tie flowers into an existing food garden.  Placing flowers at the end of rows, or interspersing them with the other plants can completely shift the feel of your garden space.  Traditional cottage gardens used this method and squeezed a variety of plants into a small space including ornamental, edibles and anything else that took the gardener’s fancy.

Marigolds are one of my favorite flowers to add to the vegetable beds to help deter nematodes from attacking my vegetables.  I also love to go through my flower gardens and stick extra vegetable seeds and plants in any empty holes.  If you are looking to add flowers to your vegetable gardens this year, here are some things to consider.

 
Beneficial Flowers for your Vegetable garden

Beneficial Flowers For Your Vegetable Garden: Attract or Deter Pests

There is a bit of controversy out there as to how well flowers can work to deter bugs, but the idea that certain flowers deter bugs is an old one.   In some instances, bugs are simply deterred from the plant due to a smell, in other situations the plant is actually poisonous to the insect, and finally some plants attract other insects that prey on things like aphids. You can also use some flowers to lure the ‘bad’ bugs to a different part of your garden away from your crop.

Planting beneficial flowers in your garden to attract bees has been done for many years and is a good way to help ensure better pollination.  You can also learn more about planting a bee garden as part of your backyard farm.  We often want to attract beneficial bugs to our garden to help with pollination and controlling other bug populations.  Here are some tips on attracting those good bugs to your garden:

  • Plant a diversity of plants  and flowers to attract pollinators (especially those with lots of pollen and nectar)
  • Choose umbrella shaped flowers that attract certain wasps that feed on other pests
  • Native plants often attract beneficial insects that are indigenous to your area

Here are some specific plants that may help deter/attract pests:

Borage – this wild looking plant is often grown in cottage gardens.  It is a favorite with pollinators and will help attract bees to your garden.  This plant is an annual that prefers full sun to part shade.

Calendula or pot marigold – this plant is in the daisy family (not the marigold family) and is edible.  It does repel asparagus beetles and tomato hornworms but may attract aphids.  You can plant  in your garden away from the plants that struggle with aphids (such as peas).  These plants can be grown as a perennial in warmer climates, or an annual.

Nasturtium – These are wonderful edible flowers and can be grown as an annual in full sun to part shade.  These flowers also help deter aphids and can be used as a trap and planted away from peas or other plants that are bothered by aphids.

Marigolds – marigolds are a vegetable garden powerhouse.  We usually plant these at the end of our rows and interspersed.  They add lots of color to the garden and may deter squash bugs, thrips, tomato hornworms, whiteflies, and even rabbits.  These are often grown as annuals and love the sun so plant in full sun for the best blooms.

Lavender – this is a great plant to grow, especially if you live in an area with lots of deer since they tend to skip over this plant.  It’s also been known to deter many bugs including possibly ticks and cabbage moths.  Grow in zones 5 +

Chrysanthemums – these plants produce pyrethrin that is poison that is used in some organic pesticides.  Plants mums throughout your garden to help deter many insects

4 o’clocks – These pretty flowers help attract Japanese beetles and can be used as a trap to lure these bugs in.

Sweet Pea – These fun plants are poisonous to humans so you will need to decide whether you want to put them in your vegetable garden, but they help with pest control, especially when planted alongside other climbing plants like peas.

Sunflowers – sunflowers are a fun and big addition to the vegetable garden. They attract loads on pollinators and produce sunflower seeds for your family or your backyard farm animals. You can plan sunflowers and squash together or use sunflowers to shade crops that struggle in the summer heat.

There are many other beneficial flowers for your vegetable garden and you can explore more about companion planting in general to benefit your entire garden. Even weeds, like dandelions, can help fix nitrogen and improve soil quality.

Beneficial Flowers For Your Vegetable Garden

Edible Flowers for your Backyard Garden

Adding flower to your garden can also be good for the dinner table.  Flowers can add a bit of color, style, and nutrients to your table.  You do need to be careful since some common flowers are in fact poisonous, so make sure you do your research, and also only eat flowers that you know were not sprayed with something weird or are naturally poisonous! Here are just a few edible flowers:

  • Basil
  • Allium
  • clover
  • Dandelion
  • Lilac
  • Sunflowers
  • Violets
  • Nasturtium

Learn more about the beneficial flowers for your vegetable garden can help create a beautiful, edible, organic garden and can help reduce insect and pest problems in the garden and is important to consider when planning your homestead garden. Learn more about gardening on your backyard farm.

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4 thoughts on “The 9 Best Beneficial Flowers For Your Vegetable Garden”

  1. Great ideas! We like to plant wildflower mix seeds next to our vegetables. I've always loved the idea of a cottage garden and like to mix the veggies and flowers. I've heard about marigold being beneficial as well, so I'll have to try that out this year.

  2. I have to fence my gardening spaces so I like climbing things like nasturtium to beautify the fence.
    Also, I'm growing amaranth this year – the young leaves can be eaten, the flowers are stunning, and then they produce a grain (hopefully. Maybe). I read a book called 'The edible front yard' for inspiration, even though i'm not working on a front yard…

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