5 Reasons You Need Flowers in Your Veggie Beds
Starting a garden has an undeniable draw – there’s just something about growing your own food, knowing where it came from and having a deep connection with the labor it took to provide it are more than enough reasons to get your hands dirty.
Planting vegetables, fruits, and herbs has incredible value these days as we continue to see prices rise and supply chain issues affect availability.
I understand the urge to fill every available square inch in your gardening space with nutritious fruits and vegetables to feed you and your family… but you need to be planting flowers too.
And because I know you’re already arguing with me in your head, here’s five reasons why.
1. Pest Deterrent
You’ve heard to plant basil with your tomatoes to increase yield while also repelling flies and mosquitoes, or to plant beans, corn, and pumpkins together to provide a natural trellis for the beans and shade for the pumpkins.
There are several flowers that provide benefits like this too!
Some flowers put off oils or scents that discourage insects from coming close. Marigolds have a strong scent that repels a large number of destructive insects, including aphids and whiteflies, and will also kill bad nematodes. Other bug-repelling plants include petunias (leafhoppers, aphids, tomato worms), dahlias (nematodes), lavender (fleas, moths), and catnip (beetles, squash bugs, aphids).
Giant yellow marigolds have an off-putting scent that keeps bad bugs away and have a stem length suitable for cut flower use as well
Other flowers act as “trap plants” by attracting those bad bugs to them, which keeps them off your more valuable plants. The trick is to plant these plants close enough to your garden to attract bugs near the area, but far enough away that they aren’t just hopping onto your tomatoes! Calendula is well known for attracting aphids and keeping them off your other plants, acting like a “trap”.
Other trap plants include Four O’Clocks (Japanese beetles), sunflowers (aphids, stink beetles), amaranth (cucumber beetles), and zinnias (Japanese beetles).
BONUS: You can get the best of both worlds with nasturtiums, which deter squash bugs and cucumber beetles while trapping aphids, or Bouquet Dill, which deters aphids and spider mites while trapping tomato hornworms.
2. Attract Beneficial Insects
Flowers aren’t just to keep the bad away, but can attract the good as well! Flowers are probably best known for their attractiveness to creatures like bees and butterflies, which is extremely beneficial for the rest of your garden!
Many vegetable varieties require pollination to set fruit, and even those that do not require it have increased yields when they’re pollinated anyway. Honeybees, wasps, butterflies, and birds all serve as pollinators for your garden plants. Pollinators are necessary for high production in your garden, so it serves you well to find every way to get them to your plants!
Bachelor’s Buttons are some of the first flowers to bloom, making them extra attractive to bees and other pollinators as a source of food early in the season.
Another type of animal you need to be attracting is predator insects like the ladybug or the praying mantis. Ladybugs famously love eating aphids, and you can invite them to your garden by planting some of their favorites like cosmos and yarrow. Other predatory bugs include hoverflies, green lacewings, and ground beetles.
Planting flowers to attract beneficial insects and repel the bad bugs will lower (or eliminate) your need for controversial sprays while increasing your yield without the use of expensive fertilizers. Win-Win!
3. Weed Management + Soil Quality
Exposed soil in the garden loses moisture more quickly than that covered by plants and foliage, and leaves space for weeds to sprout and take over. Vegetable plants like tomatoes, corn, or pole beans need room to grow upwards, but the base of the plant is left empty and prone to drying out or becoming a home to a host of weeds. To preserve water, planting shorter crops, like nasturtium or calendula, can help keep soil moist and shade out any potential unwanted weed seeds from germinating.
Bare soil also lends itself to erosion. Without roots in the ground, rain and wind can carry top soil away and negatively impact soil health. Just like you can plant flowers to retain water, they can also be planted to keep your soil intact and minimize damage due to erosion.
But flowers don’t only serve as a way to protect your soil as it is, they can also add to its value. Adding plants of different root length can aid soil health. If all your plants reach the same root depth, the areas not reached by their root systems will be compacted and hard to break up (by both you and plant roots). Planting flowers with extensive root systems, like sunflowers, or deep taproots, like larkspur, can break up the soil far beneath the surface and increase activity of important soil builders like microbacteria and worms.
Sunflowers don’t just have a pretty face, their extension root systems are great for breaking up tough soil and preventing erosion.
Flowers in the legume family, like sweet peas and clover, are nitrogen-fixing and can add nitrogen back into your soil without the use of synthetic fertilizer.
4. Edible Qualities: Medicinal, Health, and Garnishes
Planting flowers provides benefits to your vegetable garden, but they have value of their own as well!
Many flowers and flowering herbs have amazing medicinal qualities. Many annual and perennial varieties have amazing healing qualities, but here is a short list of several annual or tender perennial varieties that work well interplanted in a vegetable garden:
Calendula: can be taken for sore throat and cramps, or used as an antibacterial salve for healing cuts
Sunflower: seeds contain vitamin E, B1, manganese, magnesium, B6, niacin; salve made from leaves can be used for insect bits
Feverfew: can be taken for fevers, swelling from bites and stings, or made into a tea for headaches
Nasturtium – has antibacterial properties and vitamin C
Calendula has countless benefits in the garden as a trap plant, a edible and medicinal flower, and the taller varieties can be used for cut flowers.
Beyond nutritional value, several flowers can be used as edible garnishes to add color and interest to your homemade dishes. Nasturtiums, begonias, calendula, carnations, clover, cornflower, impatiens, marigolds, pansies, phlox, snapdragons, and sunflowers are all flowers that can be added to your garden for attracting pollinators and then harvested to compliment your dinner!
5. Cut Flowers
The final reason for planting flowers among your vegetables is my personal favorite: harvesting the blooms to brighten your spaces, indoor and outdoor. There’s no doubt flowers make your garden space more aesthetically pleasing, and they can be cut and brought inside to cheer up your indoor spaces as well!
Planting flowers can bring joy, whether left outside or in a bouquet brought inside.
If planting flowers for cut flowers, make sure the varieties you plant are bred for cutting and not for containers. Some flowers, like zinnias and snapdragons, are bred for either decorative container planting OR cutting, and mixing them up will not get the results you’re looking for. Generally speaking, flowers for cutting should reach a height of 24” or more, and many seed companies will label their packages with a scissor icon indicating the variety is good for cutting.
Easy favorites for a cutting garden include zinnias, snapdragons, sunflowers, and cosmos. Read more about choosing varieties for your first cut flower garden in a past article, “Easy Annuals for Your First Cut Flower Garden”.
Planting flowers has undeniable value. Whether you need a natural pest deterrent, to attract pollinators to your garden, improve soil health, or add beauty to your indoor and outdoor spaces, planting flowers in your vegetable gardens this season will not disappoint!
Michelle VanderHoek owns and operates Willow Creek Flower Farm, which opened in 2021. Located north of Winnemucca in Orovada, NV, the farm provides locally grown flowers and select nursery plants, as well as beginning gardening and cut flower tips. Find more gardening advice, flower farm content, and buy locally grown bouquets @willowcreekflowerfarm on Facebook and Instagram.
