The Top 5 Reasons To Have Flowers In Your Vegetable Garden
If you're planning your vegetable garden, don't forget about the flowers! Adding flowers to your vegetable garden has a ton of long-term and short-term benefits from the blooms to the soil. Year after year in our gardens, we always make room for beautiful blooms. We've narrowed down our top 5 reasons that we always make sure and have flowers in our garden.
Reason 1: Bring On The Pollinators!
The first and arguably most important reason to plant flowers in your vegetable garden is to attract pollinators. A pollinator is an insect or animal that carries pollen from male plants to female plants to aid in fertilization. These critters are attracted to the flowers in your garden and will subsequently help to pollinate your nearby vegetables, helping to increase your yields and pollination rates. Even planting pollenless or low-pollen varieties like ProCut® Sunflowers are still beneficial not only for their beauty but also for their nectar and keeping all those helpers coming back.
In short: pollinators are the rock stars of the garden and they absolutely LOVE flowers. So the more flowers, the better.
Reason 2: Get Some Help With Weeds
In addition to attracting helpful pollinators, planting flowers densely can help suppress weeds in your garden by shading your soil from the sun. Keeping the sun off of your soil is extremely helpful with weed suppression because the shade that the flowers and foliage provide keeps those pesky weeds from being able to germinate. The root systems of the flowers are also usually quite a bit stronger than those of weeds so they will out-compete them with ease.
Reason 3: Improve Your Soil Health
For years people have been using different flowers as cover crops to help keep nutrients in the soil. In addition to that, planting flowers in spaces that would otherwise be empty in your garden will help with soil erosion, and help keep your soil from getting too compacted.
The real standout flower for helping your soil has got to be sunflowers. Depending on the size of your garden and how much space needs to be taken up next to your vegetables, there are so many varieties of sunflower that will suit your needs. If you have a smaller spot, the Sungold Dwarf Sunflower is a perfect choice and if you have a crop of delicate lettuce that could use some protection from the scorching summer sun, you could try planting the absolutely stunning Firecracker Sunflower.
But what makes sunflowers so special in helping the overall health of your soil is their unique ability to siphon nutrients out of the soil that other flowers can't. Sunflowers have a really deep tap root and root system that can break into layers of soil and bring them closer to the top of the soil for other plants to use. They're also very salt tolerant so if you've found that your soil has a buildup of salt from either living near the coast or perhaps overusing fertilizers, planting sunflowers can help out!
Pro Tip: Plant Your Strawberries In The Fall. Here's Why:
Reason 4: Share The Love!
Sending flowers to your loved one for Valentine's Day or a beautiful arrangement as a get-well gift for a friend in need is inherently ingrained in all of us as a symbol of love, friendship, respect and so much more.
But to take that even a step further and present someone with a hand-picked bouquet of fresh wildflowers that came directly from your garden and into their hands can deepen that symbol even further. And the best part is that you don't even have to have a reason or a holiday to share these beautiful fruits of your labor. Come harvest time, it's a great excuse to call up a friend or neighbor to tell them that you have a little surprise for them and catch up on old times or just simply to let them know you're thinking of them.
If you've ever grown a vegetable garden, you know that one of the best feelings is sharing your crop with those around you. Whether you are selling at a local market or just have a love of growing your own food, adding flowers to that mix will surely put a smile on the faces of those around you.
Pro Tip: Plant Your Strawberries In The Fall. Here's Why:
Reason 5: Flowers Are Just Downright Pretty
Regardless of if you're planting your garden in the spring, summer, or fall, there is a flower that will make your already luscious garden that much more beautiful. From the medicinal benefits of Calendula to the amazing wine you can make from Roselle Hibiscus there are a million reasons to plant flowers. But our favorite is looking out over our garden and the joy it brings to our hearts to see such beauty all around us.
So whether you have a single container of tomatoes or a hundred acres of corn, planting flowers alongside your vegetables is a no-brainer.
