Beauty and the Bugs - Keeping Your Veggie Garden Happy

Photo by Elizabeth Famellos

I didn't have much interest in growing flowers in my veggie garden. I only wanted veggies because I could and would enjoy eating them. Flowers I thought just took up space that could be better used for my urban gardening efforts for growing tomatoes, basil, sugar snaps, etc.

I then discovered edible flowers. I wasn't sure about eating an edible flower, that just sounds weird. Supposedly they can be quite good. Yes of course I'm going to have to try some.


In the extensive research I tend to immerse myself in when I decide on a new project (Oh didn't you know I have to read every single thing on a subject before I can take one little step, I think it has something to do with my perfectionist gene that I keep trying to splice out of me but it persists in staying firmly in-bedded within), I discovered something not just important but very important. Your vegetable plants need garden bugs.

Bugs - creepy, crawly, flying bugs.

The good bugs (I know, that's like an oxymoron) that will help pollinate your veggies and in order to attract those good garden bugs you need flowers, lots of beautiful flowers.

I have to keep my budget low so I decided to stick with mostly duel (and sometimes triple) purpose flowers like Marigolds (keeps bad pests away, encourages good pests, and it seems you can eat these as well), Lavender (I love the smell and use it for many things), Calendula (which it seems is also a type of Marigold), and Yarrow (this one has many uses).

It seems that some herbs can bring in pollinators as well such as Cilantro (after it goes to seed/flower).

I guess I was wrong, there is room in my garden for flowers to entertain those - wonderful - bugs.

You can find 21 Best Plants for Pollinators to discover some of the helpful flowers for your garden.

If you are interesting in eating flowers, want more info and a list of edible flowers you can check out 42 Flowers You can Eat.

Do you have flowers in your garden or do companion planting? How much research do you dive into before a project or do you just dig right in and figure things out as you go along?


Seed Savers - Seed Exchange

Do you have lots of flower seeds but not enough veggie seeds or want a larger variety of veggie seeds? I'm looking for people in the Atlanta and North of Atlanta area that would like to trade seeds and/or seedlings. My only requirement is that the seeds came from plants that were free of pesticide and aren't GMO. If you are interested, let me know in the comments below or tweet me at @apoetskitchen.

Morgan Dragonwillow is a writing rebel, foodie, urban gardener, recovering perfectionist, poet & author that (mostly) doesn't let her fears get in the way of her passion for writing and creating. She is team leader at @StoryDam, creatrix of  #OctPoWriMo You can find her writing and dancing into a wild and juicy life at morgandragonwillow.com. She lives in Marietta, Ga. with her loving and patient partner, their dog that thinks she's a princess, and the cat that reminds her that she isn't.

You can also find her on Google+

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