Flower Companions: The 411

There are so many elements to gardening that many of them get overlooked in the details of climate and pests and nutrition and plant selection.  One of the oft overlooked elements to gardening is the use of flowers in the food garden.  Whether your food garden consists solely of a rhubarb plant, or two blueberry bushes, or is an entire backyard teeming with vegetables and fruits from Artichoke to Zucchini; adding flowers to it will be worth your while.

Cosmos in bloom

The benefits of flowers in the garden:

-As food! 
-They are pretty
-Attract and provide food/homes for beneficials
-Repel pests, or trap crops
-Reduce weeding
-Reduce erosion
-Cut flowers
-Smell wonderful
-They are pretty!

The only reasons not to plant flowers are the costs; space constraints; or that you hate pretty things. ;)

Bee balm or Monarda Didyma or wild bergamot attracts pollinators and makes a tasty tea as well.

So what are some good flower options for your garden?  Nearly any flower will do the job of attracting bees, but if you are looking for flowers that really pack a punch as far as benefiting the garden goes, I have listed a few common flowers below.

Marigold

Marigold:  Marigolds are one of the most commonly thought-of companion flowers.  They are said to deter some common insect pests, including nematodes; marigolds are often companion planted with nightshade plants (i.e. tomato, potato, pepper, and eggplant).  Some species are deer-, rabbit-, and rodent-resistant.  The flower petals African marigold (Tagetes erecta) can be used as a yellow food coloring.  Marigolds are a food plant for butterflies and certain Lepidoptera caterpillars. 
On the down side, marigolds do NOT smell particularly pleasant, and their roots emit antibacterial thiophenes so should never be planted near legume crops.

Potted nasturtium (center)

Nasturtium:  Nasturtiums are my favorite garden flower.  They grow as beautiful flowing carpets of green with bright yellow, orange, and red flowers.  They actually prefer to grow in poor soil; rich soil will give them abundant foliage but reduce flower production.  Nasturtiums make a great ground cover to keep down weeds in areas you are not ready to plant, or around bulbs that won't come up for a while.  They don't require much nutrition, have small root systems, self-sow year after year, and are very inexpensive seeds.  Most importantly, the leaves and flowers are edible (they have a mild peppery taste); and they repel a great many cucurbit pests, like squash bugs, cucumber beetles, and several caterpillars. They have similar benefits for brassica plants, especially broccoli and cauliflower. They serve as a trap crop against black fly aphids. They also attract beneficial predatory insects. 

Red Yarrow

Yarrow:  Yarrow flowers in a flat cluster of tiny white, yellow, or pink blossoms.  Yarrow has been used as a vegetable in the past, the younger leaves can be cooked similar to spinach or added to soups.  It has a sweet, slightly bitter flavor.  It has also been used medicinally as a tonic, and to treat wounds.  Pasture grasses traditionally contained a small proportion of yarrow, because it's leaves were particularly high in certain minerals, thus preventing certain mineral deficiencies in cattle.  It repels bad insects and attracts predatory wasps, ladybugs, and hoverflies.  It improves soil quality and its leaves are considered to be good fertilizer and a beneficial additive to compost.  It is said to improve the health of plants nearby, and starlings use it to line their nests (inhibiting the growth of parasites).  Common Yarrow can be invasive.  Wikipedia has some great information on the extensive history and uses for yarrow.

Sunflower:  Both a beautiful annual flower, and an edible; the sunflower's seeds and oil are eaten, while the leaves can be fed to livestock, and the stems can be used in papermaking.  The seed is often used in bird seed blends.  Sunflower is also used in phytoremediation to extract toxic ingredients from soil, such as lead, arsenic and uranium.  Sunflowers are allelopathic, meaning they inhibit other plant growth.  This can be a good thing!  Plant sunflowers in a sunny area that has major weed problems, or around the outskirts of your garden beds to protect from encroaching weeds.  Don't plant them inside the beds though, the roots exude a substance that will inhibit your plants' growth.  I am seriously considering growing them in my blackberry zone in hopes that they will kill off the remaining blackberries.

Coneflower (Echinacea):  Echinacea produces large, often purple, daisy-like flowers.  Medicinally it is used primarily as an immune booster, but also for several other purposes.  It also attracts beneficial insects to the garden.

Fuchsia:  In my area fuchsia are commonly grown as trailing container plants, and annuals.  Fuchsia are actually perennial plants, though not especially hardy.  Besides being absolutely gorgeous, fuchsia are major attractors of butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds; they smell great, look better, and if you are going to plant them anyway you may as well do it near your vegetables.

Catmint:  Nepeta sp. include common catnip as well as several other catmints.  I'm sure most people know the purpose of planting catnip as far as cats go.  Catmints also produce very pretty flowers, and are used medicinally for humans.  It contains a chemical that is a strong repellant to mosquitoes, cockroaches, termites, and flies.  Planting it away from your vegetables can keep your cats out of the area, while planting it within the garden can repel certain insects.  While it is a perennial, if your cats are like mine you may need to buy multiple plants each season because they roll on it so often the whole plant dies.

Hollyhock (Alcea sp.)/Mallow (Althaea sp.):  Tall or short, gorgeous, biennial or short-lived perennials.  A beautiful cut flower and attractor of many beneficial species.  Hollyhocks will often self-sow and are very drought-resistant, they are a great way to brighten up a hot, dry corner of your garden.  Ancient peoples used the Althaea species in both medicines and cooking.  They are also considered one of the mainstays of a traditional cottage garden.

Morning Glory:  Not to be confused with Field Bindweed, a perennial species of Morning Glory that is a nasty weed!  Delicate flowers open in the morning and close in the evening, giving the morning glory its name.  It is a slender vining annual, that will quickly spiral its way up a trellis to offer shade to plants, animals or people below.  Morning Glory will happily cover up a chain link fence with a view of your neighbor's backyard and replace it with a view of green leaves and blue, pink, or white flowers.  The trumpet-like cones of the flowers are particularly attractive to hummingbirds and butterflies.

Rose:  Wondrously scented, beautifully flowered.  The hips and petals are edible; they have been used in cooking, perfumery, winemaking, as floral arrangements, and are a symbol of love and beauty.  A rose by any other name would smell as sweet... and would, obviously, attract plenty of pollinators.  But roses have so many pests and diseases, right?  Yes, and no.  Hybrid tea roses are very needy little things that do require much care (and are very commonly found), they have been developed over many years for the showiest blossoms, leaving the plants themselves weak and of poor quality.  The old garden roses, or heritage or historic roses, are far more independent.  They tend to have highly disease-resistant foliage.  Albas, Gallicas, Damasks, Centifolia, Moss, Portland, and China roses are all fairly safe older varieties of rose.  Also the Tea, Bourbon, Hybrid Rugosa, Noisette, Hybrid Musk, and Hybrid Perpetual.  Modern roses are more demanding and include the Hybrid Tea, Pernetianas or Hybrid Foetidas, Polyantha, Floribunda, etc.  Before purchasing a rose to include in your garden take time to do your homework, they are well worth the effort to plant, but if you buy based solely on the picture you may find they are too much work and too sickly to work for you.  (I did this once and was sorely disappointed by the sad sticks with even sadder single blossoms on top, I have since learned my lesson.)

Violet/Pansy/Johnny-Jump-Up/Heartsease:  Viola tricolor actually has over 200 colloquial names.  The wild variety has been cultivated into the many different sizes and colors of pansy we see in nurseries today.  The pansy in its wild form has been used for centuries as medicine, as a plant dye, and the flowers are edible.  They are hardy plants and will survive a short freeze even while blooming.  Pansies are actually biennials, but are often sold the second year and treated as annuals.  They may reseed themselves, but are susceptible to several diseases and a few pests.  They certainly do bring a bright spark of color to the garden early on though, and I can't imagine a Spring without them popping up all over.  The bonus is that pansies are not only pretty, but incredibly cheap!  They do suffer from aphids, but in my mind that makes them a great trap crop. ;)


So, I know I didn't cover all of the great flowers available and all of the great advantages they offer in the veggie garden, but I did cover most of my favorites!  If you have a favorite garden flower that you just couldn't live without, leave me a comment and tell me why it's so great.  (I probably should have included something about Cosmos and Bee Balm, ... but I'm tired!)

Harvest Monday: 5/21/12

I actually harvested this on Sunday, but wanted to take part in Harvest Monday for once.  This week's major harvest was kale, Swiss chard, and onions.  The kale in the whiskey barrel has been struggling and just not keeping up with the kale in the beds, since I didn't amend the soil in the barrels at all it was understandable.  So I did the merciful thing and just pulled it out.  Which actually worked out well since it was raining and I felt like making some soup for dinner.  Zuppa Toscana was the soup of the day; I did fancy it up a bit with the two Walla Walla onions I have been trying to get a bulb from for the past three years, a few good sized chard leaves, the kale, and some beautiful oyster mushrooms and new potatoes from the farmer's market.  Served with a hearty loaf of sourdough, also from the farmer's market, it made the perfect treat on a wet Spring day.

Sunday's harvest, onions, kale, and chard.

I also took a little time to thin down the celery, when I transplanted them they were packed into their containers pretty tightly.  Now that it's obvious which plants are going to do well I yanked out the littler ones.  After rinsing them well I tossed them into my stock bag in the freezer.

Celery thinnings.

 A whole different kind of harvest was going on yesterday as well.  I spotted a ladybug flying past, tracked him to the shed, picked him up and set him on my aphid-plagued mini rose.  I actually spent more than a few minutes watching him harvest aphids like a kid gobbles candy on Halloween.  An hour later he was gone, but I'm hoping he decided it was worth his while to stay in the vicinity.

Phone camera does not do justice to this little guy.

 **Harvest Monday is a day to show off your harvests, hosted by Daphne's Dandelions, stop by to see who else has posted this week, or add your garden harvest to the list.  Have a great Monday everyone!

Today's Update

The weather today has been cold and cloudy, which is a good thing.  After all the work in the yard over the weekend my body is trying to tell me I'm too old for this.  So I will take a break and recover a bit today, in preparation for the rest of the week, which is supposed to be sunny and cool.

After planting the cherry tree and the camellia I even managed to get out back and tear out another swath of blackberries.  It's starting to look like I will need to take a trip to the dump though to get rid of the last of the junk back there, and the blackberry vines I removed.  I also need to try to find a source for old newspaper.  I plan to use it to smother any remaining blackberries along the back of the house so I can put the lava rock back there and have a clear path across that yard.  Maybe I'll put a post on Craigslist and see if someone's got a stockpile they're willing to part with.

Once it's a bit nicer out I'll get some pictures up of the blackberry disaster, and my progress in removing it.

I have a lot of plans for the yard this year that have been put off for a while as I was investing in the garden itself.  This year it's time to spruce up the rest of the yard though.  Edging the grass, removing all the lava rock, adding bark mulch, laying new gravel in the paths.  Those areas have all gone a long time with little maintenance, and as the garden is expanding into them it's becoming time to finally get them up to snuff.  Also the mobile home park has a new manager who is more determined than ever to make this place look appealing to new tenants.  So I am forced to pay more attention to the public areas in front of the house.

For today, I will relax, and do some planning.  Making a list of stuff to buy for the garden needs to be done.  More bark, a bag or two of compost, and old newspaper are on the list already. 

My rhubarb root division should arrive in a couple weeks too, I cleared out the area for it yesterday while planting the camellia.  The artichokes will also go in that area, at the end of the strawberry bed.  I'm trying to keep my perennial edibles in one area so I can easily water and harvest them but they aren't mixed in with the annuals (where the soil is turned and amended yearly and would disturb them), it's a nice sunny spot too that should have excellent soil under all the lava rock.

Lastly, I scattered my packet of beneficial bug mix flowers in the empty lot in hopes of improving it's look, and attracting more beneficials to the area.  We shall see if that is helpful or was a waste of money soon enough.

That's my update for now; still planning a garlic culture post soon and an onion and garlic harvest post as well, so stay tuned.

Butterfly Bush Changes

When my family first moved into our home one of the first things I planted was two butterfly bushes next to the back porch.  The bushes were on the south side and during the heat of summer blocked the sun from the porch area; they also blocked my view of my neighbors on the other side of the empty lot, and the one across the street who enjoys smoking outside early in the morning during the summer... so early that he generally hasn't put on a shirt yet.  Since I too enjoy my morning coffee and cigarette on the porch in the summertime, but do not enjoy the view of him, the butterfly bushes were a welcome addition to my yard.

Sadly, a year later butterfly bushes were deemed noxious weeds in the state of Oregon.  They were completely removed from all nurseries and if you live in an area in which they are considered a problem, you should not propagate them and remove all the seed heads at the end of summer to prevent their spread.  I love my butterfly bushes, partly because they are so easy to grow, which of course is how they became classified as noxious weeds to start with.  Luckily, they look pretty shabby when the flowers die off anyway, so deadheading them isn't an issue.  Each fall I take my shears out and slice off everything above the porch rail, then double check that no flower heads are left below that line.  They grow back beautifully every spring and attract a multitude of beneficials to my yard.


This post isn't about the bushes however, it's about the bugs.  After nearly four years living here my bushes have gone through three summers and I have noticed the changes in visitors to them over those three years.

The first year they were bombarded by little brown skipper butterflies, painted ladies, and swallowtails.  Obviously this was what I had planted them for, butterflies!  The weather that year was normal for western Oregon, warm wet Spring followed by a hot dry summer.

The second year there were dozens and dozens of hummingbirds, piles of carpenter and bumble bees, a few honeybees.  But almost no butterflies at all.  The only ones I did see were a few swallowtails.  That year the spring stayed cold much longer, and even summer was fairly cool.  Everyone complained that their tomatoes wouldn't ripen.

The third year was similar to the second, no skippers, no painted ladies.  Even fewer swallowtails.  Plenty of hummingbirds and bees.  There did seem to be a shift from the carpenter and bumble bees to more honeybees though.  Again that year the Spring cold stayed on long after it should have, I still had snap peas producing by the pound in July.  The summer was warmer than before, tomatoes ripened on time.

I am very curious about the shift in visitors to the bushes.  The butterfly bushes themselves have done great throughout.  I did water them daily the first year since they hadn't established a deep root system yet, I suppose the moisture level of the bushes may have attracted more butterflies.  I would be very interested to discover what is causing the change in bugs and birds each year.  Is it the weather? Or maybe something completely unexpected like a nearby field being sprayed or mowed and killing the butterflies before they hatch?  But if so, then why did I get so few bees the first year?

I will keep watching and see if I can work out some pattern in the next few seasons.

A Bit About Bugs

While doing some weeding of the garden beds in preparation for my first spring plantings I came across some bugs (well grubs) of an unknown type.  By the way, this is a great time to pull up any dandelions, dock and other taproot weeds since the soil is still very soft and moist; it's more likely you will get the entire root out rather than have it break off and re-sprout.  The grubs I found were gray or dirty white with dark heads, I also found a green grub or caterpillar that was hanging around in the weeds.  I have no idea what they are, after some internet investigations the best answer I could find was cutworms.  Since I'm not certain of this I tossed them over the fence into the empty lot.  If they are harmful at least they are out of the garden, if not, I wish them the best in their new home.

I am considering picking up some beneficial nematodes to help manage soil dwelling pests.  One reason for this is that I spotted two cucumber beetles at the end of last summer, bright beautiful little green ladybug-like beetles with 12 black spots.  While they are very pretty, these beetles are a real problem in the garden.  They eat just about any vegetable they can get to, then lay eggs in the soil, when larva hatch they too will feast on vegetables and they spread bacterial wilt and squash mosaic virus.

Spotted cucumber beetle

Cucumber beetles also have a striped species that looks similar but the spots are instead stripes that run from the head to the rear.  These guys are a real danger to a garden.  Unfortunately they are also a challenge to be rid of.  Parasitic wasps can be helpful, if you don't know how to get these, try planting flowers that will attract them to the garden.  Tiny nectar-filled flowers such as thyme, savory, dill, cilantro, parsley, yarrow, candytuft, verbena, sweet allysum and goldenrod.  If you spot caterpillars or other pest bugs with tiny white sacs attached to them leave them alone!  The sacs are the cocoons of parasitic wasps and the pests will die when they emerge, spawning a new generation of pest killers.  Another cucumber beetle predator is the soldier bug, "leather"-backed firefly-like bugs that can eat up to 100 bugs a day.  Soldier beetles are attracted to pollen and nectar filled flowers and particularly like hydrangea, goldenrod and milkweed.  Tachinid flies are also effective at managing beetle populations, and are another type of parasitoid.  Tachinids are not as preferential as other biological controls and will just as likely parasitize butterfly caterpillars.  Having a large garden variety will help to attract these pest managers.

Beneficial nematodes are microscopic roundworms that live in soil and prey on soil dwelling insects.  They are effective controls of fleas, ants, termites, roaches, flies, grubs; yet they are harmless to humans, pets, and our soil-dwelling friends the earthworms.  You can try to attract nematodes to the garden by adding plenty of compost and having rich organic soil, but this is a grab bag; you could just as easily attract pest nematodes.  It may be wiser to purchase a small package of beneficial nematodes to spread through your garden instead.

Since I live in a mobile home park that was built over an orchard in the 60s, I suspect this area was heavily treated with pesticides in the past and the likelihood of it supporting its own nematode population is fairly slim.  So I will most likely purchase them from a supplier and sow them in and around my garden and yard.  Ants are a major issue in our area, and I imagine if we had a natural nematode population that would not be the case. 

I also plan to sow a package of "Beneficial Bug Mix" flowers in the empty lot next door.  My garden lacks space to add a lot of these plants but I can at least use them to attract beneficials to the vicinity of the garden itself. 

If you plan to attract beneficials to your garden to help with pest management, you should keep a few things in mind:

-Don't spray! Insecticides will kill your beneficials, birds that eat pests, and the pests.  Let the birds and bugs do their jobs and handle the pests for you.

-Identify before you destroy.  It does you no good to attract ladybugs to your garden and then kill their nymphs because you thought they were pests.  Take time to identify bugs, if you can't then move them out of the garden and hope for the best.

-Provide what they need.  Food and shelter in the form of flowering plants, and water.  Your bugs need to drink too.

-Putting out a suet block or feeder of quality untreated bird seed will attract a variety of birds to your garden, many of which also eat pests.  You may find you have a lot of millet to pull up later in the year though.  You can also grow sunflowers and save the seed each year to offer the birds.

The garden is an environment all its own, keeping a balance between flowers and food, pests and beneficials will allow it to transform into its own natural environment that maintains its own balance rather than needing constant interventions. 

Hooray for Tiny Black Alligators!

Thought I'd share a little snippet of information I learned last summer.

In early June my celery plants and a few others bolted and started to put out flowers, since I didn't plan to collect seed from these plants I decided to pull them out to let more light get to the plants around them.  When I brought the celery plants inside to rinse the remaining usable stalks and put them in the fridge I noticed lots of tiny black alligators crawling around on the plants.  After getting severely weirded out by the creepy crawlies and washing them down the sink I figured I should look them up to find out if I had a pest problem that needed dealing with.

Luckily for me there are lots of websites with information on insect identification.  As it turns out the tiny black alligators are ladybug nymphs, the scourge of aphids.  And I had washed them down the drain!  These were not pests, they were beneficials who's home I had uprooted, and then drowned.
  Here's a link with some great photos of what these little critters look like
Well, I learned my lesson, from now on I will identify any and all bugs I find before I kill them. :(

As it turns out, ladybugs like to lay their eggs on Umbrelliferae species.  These include carrots, celery, queen anne's lace, and most other flowers that bloom in flattened umbrella-like clusters of small flowers.  This year, I'll let the celery flower, even if I don't need the seed.  I also plan to sneak into the empty lot next door and disperse some Beneficial Bug flower mix, if it's going to be full of weeds, they may as well be habitat for helpful insects.

Learn about the habitat and food needs of beneficials to keep a healthy organic garden. If you provide homes, food, and water they will return the favor with pollination and pest management.