Best Flowers To Grow To Double Your Vegetable Produce

Introducing flowers to a vegetable-garden comes with perks beyond simply adding beauty. Flowers can be used in companion-planting to help deter pests and attract beneficial insects such as pollinators. Interplanting also saves space and time, as you can grow and tend to more of your plants in one place. Here are 5 of the best flowers to add a new dimension to your vegetable-garden. 1.Cosmos Few flowers grow as easily and bloom as profusely as cosmos. And those blooms can be put to practical use in the vegetable garden, as they attract many helpful-insects. For instance, if you want to draw in green lacewings, choose a white or bright orange variety, such as 'Cosmic-Orange'. Green lacewings are voracious eaters, vacuuming up all sorts of soft-bodied insects, including aphids, scale, and thrips. Thus, they are considered a beneficial insect, and making them at home in your vegetable garden will help to prevent pest problems. 2.Lavender It's not difficult to find a reason to plant some-lavender. In addition to its beautiful-blooms and much-loved fragrance, the herb can be used to repel several common vegetable garden pests. Deer tend to avoid it, along with many insects, including ticks. Of course, having lavender around doesn't guarantee a tick won't bite you, but it should cut down on the number of ticks in the area. In addition, moths—including those pesky green cabbage moths—also find the scent offensive. Even mice typically find somewhere else to snack. 3.Marigold Marigolds do not get the respect they deserve. They deter pests both above and below the ground, and they look great doing it. Ring your garden with marigold-plants, and rabbits will think twice before crossing the line. Plus, confuse Mexican bean-beetles by interplanting marigolds with bean plants in your vegetable garden. Marigolds have also been credited with repelling squash-bugs, thrips, tomato hornworms, and whiteflies. Some marigolds even exude a chemical that kills root nematodes in the soil. However, if nematodes are a problem, you will need to leave the marigold roots in the soil at the end of the season. 4.Sunflower Sunflowers are a perfect flower for the vegetable-garden. They make great trellises for climbing plants, and they have lots of nectar to attract pollinators. Unfortunately, sunflowers also tend to attract squirrels, which can be a problem if you are growing them to save the seeds. However, a coarse-leaved vegetable, such as squash, planted beneath the sunflowers can go a long way to deter animals. 5.Zinnia Nectar-rich zinnia flowers are magnets for bees and other pollinators. They are also popular with hummingbirds. The paler, pastel varieties seem to be attractive to Japanese beetles and can be used as a trap crop. On the other hand, you might not want to plant anything that attracts Japanese beetles unless you already have a problem you're trying to solve. Moreover, planting zinnia flowers in the vegetable garden gives you the opportunity to use them as cut flowers without having to worry about the gaps left behind from your cuttings.

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