Flowers in my garden

I mentioned a while back that I was going to include more flowers in my garden this season as I want to attract more insects to the vegetable garden. This may seem a little counterproductive to pest control but I hope it will indeed do just that - control pests.

The other reasons are to promote pollination by giving the bees and butterflies lots of good food and for beauty. I may be strange but I do find vegetable and herb flowers beautiful. Not a well tended rose garden beautiful, but as I walk through all the green foliage I see little bursts of colour here and there as some of the herbs begin to flower I marvel at the different colours, shapes and purposes.

Calendula, seen above, is such a gorgeous flower that I have planted for the last few years. They are edible flowers, bees love the dark center landing pad and I collect the petals for my soap making. I have normally planted a ring of them around the pond, but this year I gave them the circular bed at the pool below the fig tree. They have grown prolifically here and are a huge burst of colour in our rather drab back yard.


Most of my borage has died down now and has been added to the compost heap. It will self seed all over the garden, I even see some leaves popping up from the last addition of compost to the beds. Most of it I pull out quite small, a few will be left to grow to flower stage. The flowers can be eaten in salads or on cheesecakes and they have a light cucumber taste. I have been told that you can also scrape the prickles of the leaves and slice them into fritters, but have not tried that yet!

I have a few Bulbinella plants around the place. The bees love this plant and so do I when something makes me itch when working in the garden. Its also cooling and soothing for sunburn, cooking burns and animal stings.

A lot of the flowers around the garden are simply because they have been left to go to seed. My coriander is about to do that and I will soon have the delicate white flowers to enjoy and eventually seeds for sowing and cooking.

It is the same with the dill below. We use very limited amounts of fresh dill in our cooking. But I love the blooms and we can save the seeds for recipes later in the year. Dill has the most beautiful delicate leaves which we chop finely into yoghurt when eating Greek dishes. We don't eat much fish due to our boys being allergic, but when we do having fresh dill is a winner.

Nasturtiums seed themselves all over the garden in late winter and he flower has always been one of my favourite. I normally have a few small vases of them scattered around the home. They are also a spicy addition to salads and the leaves are used in juices every now and again. We have little black beetles that like to bury themselves head down into their narrow throats and gulp up the nectar.

Nasturtiums are a wonderful way to protect brassicas from the white cabbage moth as these girls will lay their eggs on the undersides of the nasturtium leaves and their little caterpillars will munch away happily.

I also have loads of sage growing in a few places. The flowers are not the most astounding but sage leaves are superb with pork. Sage is also a great companion to carrots so my son planted some with his carrots in his square foot garden.

I also collect the sage leaves and use it in a sage and lemon grass soap which is one of my favourite bars.

Besides for the herb flowers I have also planted sunflowers around the pond. Its a little later than normal, but each year these tall beauties reach up around the pond and show off their faces to the sun. This is what the will look like in summer:

Do you grow flowers specifically in your garden?

Trying Square Foot Gardening

Square foot gardening has always intrigued me, but I never took up the idea as it seemed to fiddly and also I must admit to being a traditional kinda gal. About 3 weeks ago my youngest son asked if he could be given a bed to grow his own vegetables.

This boy is a very picky eater. He eats lots of what he likes and gags down tiny amounts of what is necessary for his health. I thought it would be a good idea for him to grow his food choices, with a little direction from me :)

I know that looking at an empty bed and deciding what should go into it can sometimes be a little daunting for the new veggie gardener so I was looking for some options and remembered square foot gardening. I sent him some links and videos to watch and it was a hit!

Youngest sat down and planned out his bed using the SFG mode on the planner and then we headed out to buy his seeds, compost and seedlings. I have wanted to take him to the amazing Soil for Life garden for a long time, and now I am glad we waited as it was a wonderland for him.

The sign says: "Pedal me to water our garden"

The bike is connected to the rain water tank and a pump which waters the closer beds. Being a kid engineer he was fascinated!

This hosepipe holder was interesting to me...it was planted up with yarrow and the pipe wound around the outside of the tyre. Amazing repurposing idea.

A compost teepee which when full can have creeping veg planted in it.

The nursery where he chatted with the workers and chose his seedlings

After purchasing his seedlings and the seeds from the lovely Sarah in the shop we headed home.

We do not have exact square foot beds as we are using our existing raised beds but he measured off his blocks and used twine to mark them.

Then following his plan he planted out his seeds and seedlings. He included some companion plants like dill and spring onions around the carrots and other flowers to attract pollinators.

A square foot bed of small beginnings. While it looks empty as a lot was planted as seeds we hope for some good growth over the next weeks which will keep his interest up.

I am not sure I would go for SFG as a complete system, although there are many attractive elements to it. On many levels this is a try out for me and a healthy project for him, we will see where it leads us for the next season.

I must have a chuckle as I have already done my summer plan on my normal system, so if this bed produces what everyone promises, then I will be back at the drawing board.

Do you SFG? How do you find your yields?