liRe: Self care by growing a garden

[Smc]

Hi @CheerBear. 🙂

There are a lot of flowers that will grow well with the company of vegetables. I mix mine up through the garden. At the moment I've got one patch growing fennel, garlic, silverbeet, nigellas, snapdragons and a poppy or three. In another spot, I've got broad beans and sweet peas sharing the same trellis. I don't grow sweet peas with edible peas in case the pods get mistaken, but they're quite different from broad bean pods so I consider that safe enough.

The flowers, as well as looking nice, are a great drawcard for bees and other helpful insects. A lot of the pest eating insects are carnivores when they're "babies" but the adults feed on nectar, so flowers encourage them to breed up in the garden. Ladybirds are one of the best pest controllers- they eat little sap suckers like aphids as if they were potato chips. 

The thing to remember when planting flowers with veggies is to choose ones that won't crowd each other out. Poppies are actually a bit unsuitable, because they release a chemical from their roots to discourage other plants from growing, but the odd one here and there doesn't seem to hurt. (Same goes for sunflowers. But you could get away with growing a few in between strong growers like zucchinis.) Low growing things like alyssum and violas can be good around carrots, onions. garlic or beans, because as well as being low enough not to bother the veggies, they help keep the soil a bit cooler. In the case of beans and garlic, you can plant both at the same time. With carrots and onions, you need to get them started and grown to medium size before putting in the flowers because the young plants are so small.

Some veggies are also quite pretty in their own right. Beans can look great when they're flowering. If you plant Scarlet Runner beans, the red flowers look like sweet peas, and even smell sweet. If you let parsley go to flower, it looks a bit like gypsophila, and coriander has pretty flowers too. Plus they'll then form seeds and give you plenty of plants for the next year.

I don't have any current garden pics handy, but from a few years ago, here's a kohlrabi plant sharing a bed with alyssum, dianthus, violas and calendulas.

[Smc]

@Adge, I can so relate to that.

I've lost more plants than I like to remember due to being so busy/stressed/depressed that I either couldn't find the energy to see to things, or simply forgot. A day or two of forgetting to water in summer can be disastrous. 

I'm trying to make an effort now to get the garden more productive again, because I know that despite the emotional inertia I'm fighting, getting out there does me a lot of good. The "tough survivors" kind of give me encouragement that I've still got the "good bones" in place ready to be filled out again.

[Adge]

I saw Strawflowers in your picture @Smc I love strawflowers, I used to grow them years ago.

They're like a big everlasting daisy, with really tough flower-heads that you can keep as dried flowers...

They're easy to grow from seed too. I even collected the seeds from the finished (old) flowers, & planted them.

I had several year's worth (several generations) of them, that way...

Adge

[CheerBear]

Hey @Former-Member, and thank you 🙂 It's so nice being able to take food straight from the garden and into the kitchen. Hope the day went well for you.

@Adge - it's great to bump into you here! I just googled your rose - so pretty. I put a photo up of one of my favourites in the Community Garden in LE a week ago (I think). So many beautiful roses 🙂

@Appleblossom that sounds lovely. Garden and library - pretty good day!

Hi @Smc. Thank you so much for sharing that info! That's so helpful. It's funny that you mentioned alyssum and violas, as I have them around the bottom of a few pot plants and they're so sweet. I had planned on heading to Google to check out whether they could go in the patch. It's great to hear they can. I had cosmos and marigolds in there at the start of the year. I forgot how tall cosmos grows and planted them in the wrong place. But they were beautiful. So much pretty colour in that bed - thanks for sharing 🙂

[Adge]

Rosemary is very tough (drought hardy), once it's established. I've still got 2 Rosemary bushes, one with pink flowers, & one with blue.

The leaves smell lovely when you crush them between your fingers. Technically rosemary is a herb, although I've never used it for cooking.

Olive trees are really tough & drought-hardy too, although they're very slow growing. I've got 2 small olive trees, that have not grown a lot in 10 years....

Lavender is another tough plant with a lovely smell, & pretty flowers. Unfortunately none of my Lavenders seem to survive (I've been through quite a few)...

Adge

[Former-Member]

@Appleblossom
Garden + library = satisfaction

[Former-Member]

@Adge
Thinly sliced potatoes, olive oil, garlic, bruised rosemary leaves mixed together put in dish with potato slices flat and baked 180deg approx 1hr is a good side dish.

[Former-Member]

@CheerBear
Got a small section of weeding done today, liberated some windflowers that a friend gave me (Japanese anemones).

[Appleblossom]

I have been making a lot of rosemary tea lately, better than wasting it. It needs to be well stewed, but apparently is a good tonic for the gut.  I keep a pot on stove for a couple of days  and have less instant coffee so thats another plus.

Yes @Former-Member it was a good day and puss is sitting on my arm as I type.

Will fall into bed soon with a good book

[Smc]

@Adge, the flowers in

the picture are calendulas, but you're right, they do look like strawflowers. I havent' grown those for a long time, but it so happens that I've currently got one in a pot waiting to go into the garden. Only one now... maybe many next year? 🙂 

I've found that the most hardy lavender is Lavandula dentata "Allardii", aka Mitcham Lavender. It grows bigger than most types of lavender, needs a good haircut in autumn so that it doesn't get woody, but mine have kept growing and flowering through "droughts and flooding rains".