Growing your vegetables is a great thing! Having your vegetable garden is neat as it doesn’t require you to buy your own constantly. Furthermore, you grow only the vegetables you need and you will also be satisfied with the fact that they come all natural.
But what many people face with when having their vegetable garden is the harrowing battle against flowers. Flowers will grow in a vegetable garden no matter what. Whether you want them or not, they constantly sprout out in various places of a garden. You should know that you are fighting a losing battle.
There are many benefits to keeping flowers in your vegetable garden. They can have all sorts of benefits for what you are trying to achieve. So here are some of the benefits of keeping flowers along with your vegetables in a garden.
Helps in Managing Weeds
One of the biggest benefits of having flowers in your garden is that it helps to manage the growth of weeds. You may not like having flowers in a garden, but it is much better than having weeds. Both of them can be pesky to clean out, but when weeds start to grow you will have a whole lot of problems on your hands.
The best way to manage the weeds is to let the flowers take over. When flowers start outgrowing weeds, they will form a natural shade across the ground which prevents weeds from spreading and growing. All those flowers essentially work as a living carpet and protect from all those pesky weeds.
Use as a Companion Flower
Flowering companion flowers have a lot of benefits to nearby plants, thus your entire vegetable garden. As a gardener, a companion flower provides all sort of additional services that benefit the other plants or vegetables around it. For instance, if you flower shrubs, they will provide shade to sun-sensitive herbs. Also, flowers with strong smell will camouflage the vulnerable crops around it.
A shop clerk from Flower Shops actually gave me some great advice regarding this topic. He specified that flowers like Chamomile have anti-fungal and antibacterial properties. This is the main reason it benefits other plants around it. But there are various more with the same kind of effects and each one of them is different.
Grow Edible Flowers
If you think that flowers do not have any nutritious properties, you are completely wrong. There are various kinds of edible flowers that can be used for eating and can be grown in your vegetable garden. You can use them as a garnish on your plate or go along with a salad. So flowers are not only there to look good but can have a different purpose altogether.
There are types of edible flowers which taste really good and also have a large nutritious benefit. Certain types increase the diversity of phytonutrients you eat. Some of the best edible flowers that you can use include cheerful calendula, nasturtiums, pretty pansies, and blue borage.
Use it as Fertilizer
Some of you did not know that certain flower strains can act as free fertilizer. Legume plants, from the pea and bean family, can deal with the nitrogen in the soil. These plants add nitrogen as they have a beneficial relationship with rhizobia bacteria. This bacteria is necessary for converting nitrogen in the necessary form that other plants can use and feed on. This may sound a little bit too technical to people who are not so familiar with gardening, but the bottom line is that it helps you fertilize your plants for free!
Some of the plants that can be used for this purpose include Sweet Peas, Lupins, Wynn’s Cassia, Barrel Medic, Peas, Beans, and Clover. Try growing a few of these and see the benefits to your garden.
Flowers as Pest and Disease Control
Flowers can act as a great way to control pests and diseases in your garden. It works best when you introduce a predator to a system to control the population of pests. This is essentially how flowers work.
They can also function to attract predatory insects and serve as an insectory or a food source. Many ladybirds and larvae feed on flowers so they will leave the other plants in your garden alone. You can also use flowers as a trap to attract unwanted insects and then remove them later along with all those “trapped” insects.
Health and Medicinal Purposes
One of the most important properties of flowers is that they can be used for remedial purposes. Different types of flowers have all sorts of healing properties. Depending on the ailment that you have and the purpose, you can use various sorts in different ways.
Nasturtiums possess powerful antibiotic and are good at boosting your immune system. The petals of Calendula are useful in making salves or lip balm. You can additionally make your own cosmetics and use flowers in various kinds of beneficial ways for you.