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tn_veggie_gardner
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- Location: Hermitage, TN.
Where should I put all of these flowers?!?!? =)
I have been wanting to start a nice flower garden for a few years now. I usually grow one or two types in containers for my daughter. This year, I think I'm growing 11 different types! yay!!! =) Anyway, I don't know which ones are good container flowers & which are not. Also, I will have a lot of veggies (tomatoes, peppers, etc.) and some fruits all around the garden. Would any of my flowers be harmful to them? Also, would any of my flowers have any other negative effects (attract certain pests, harm any other plants, poisonous, etc.) on anything? Please check the most recent post on my blog linked in my signature for the flowers I am growing. Any & all help greatly appreciated! Thanks - Steve
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The Helpful Gardener
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- Location: Colchester, CT
All the flowers should be fine with two exceptions...
The Hibiscus will get HUGE and is a really hungry thirsty customer (does NOT play well with others) and the balloon flowers will go to seed in the most prolific way and you will be weeding them out and cursing the day you set eyes on them if you plant those around veg. But the others are all great pollinator attractors and would be famous...
HG
The Hibiscus will get HUGE and is a really hungry thirsty customer (does NOT play well with others) and the balloon flowers will go to seed in the most prolific way and you will be weeding them out and cursing the day you set eyes on them if you plant those around veg. But the others are all great pollinator attractors and would be famous...
HG
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tn_veggie_gardner
- Senior Member
- Posts: 175
- Joined: Wed Feb 17, 2010 1:49 pm
- Location: Hermitage, TN.
So many choices, so little space!!
It looks like the flowers you are thinking of are perennials. Are these going in with the tomatoes and other veggies? If so, will have to work around poreparing the beds, especially spring. Best to keep perennials with same, annuals with same.
One suggestion is to have one section just perennials. This could be a meadow type garden (daisy, black eyed Susan, cone flower, coreopsis, yarrow come to mind). If you mix a few in with the veggies, zinnias and marigolds are easy and make pretty cut flowers.
I usdually do annuals in containers to get optimum bloom and pretty. The 3 with pansies (violas) now will turn to summer color come May when they poop. I also stick basil in the summer containers, along with the flowers.
Another biggie to remember is not all perennials bloom at the same time. Most have about 1 month bloom time which means the garden is in constant change. Then some spread, some don't do well, so it is constant, and for me a fun game. Lots of trial and error, and I do both well.
Hope this helps
It looks like the flowers you are thinking of are perennials. Are these going in with the tomatoes and other veggies? If so, will have to work around poreparing the beds, especially spring. Best to keep perennials with same, annuals with same.
One suggestion is to have one section just perennials. This could be a meadow type garden (daisy, black eyed Susan, cone flower, coreopsis, yarrow come to mind). If you mix a few in with the veggies, zinnias and marigolds are easy and make pretty cut flowers.
I usdually do annuals in containers to get optimum bloom and pretty. The 3 with pansies (violas) now will turn to summer color come May when they poop. I also stick basil in the summer containers, along with the flowers.
Another biggie to remember is not all perennials bloom at the same time. Most have about 1 month bloom time which means the garden is in constant change. Then some spread, some don't do well, so it is constant, and for me a fun game. Lots of trial and error, and I do both well.
Hope this helps
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The Helpful Gardener
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- Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
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Actually, Susan, as more and more people adopt vegetables as a food security addition to their garden spaces, and as more people adopt low till/no till technique, and as we learn more about the benefits of interplanting and polyculture, a lot more of us are not segregating out gardens and finding multiple benefits in not doing so...this is an old idea; the tirbes of North America grew everything together; corns, beans, squash, lambsquarters, spider lilies, etc, with no tilling and little weeding, and this has been copied again and again by Ruth Stout, Emilia Hazelip, Masanobu Fukuoka and many others...
Seems that the root systems of existing plants can offer excellent benefits in tilth and biology that a tilled, prepped bed just can't, and of course as the bees continue to dwindle in number, pollination becomes a more critical component of good gardening, so having flowers that attract not just pollinators but many beneficials like syrphid flies and wasps, is a real boon for for the garden. Plus the lack of tilling increases the biological component of the soil in such an amazing way that the new plants are bolstered, not hindered by the lack of it...
We all have different ways of gardening. I, for one, am a lazy gardener, and I am happy to find and work methods that mean less work in the garden, not more. If Nature can perform functions in my garden like fertilizing, tilth, pollination, while at the same time adding bits to the puzzle like carbon sequestration (it is tilling, not plants that account for the huge loss of carbon in soils), then not only am I happy to do it that way, I am even happier to tell people how to do that.
There are many who will say that this won't work, or that won't work; I have been wrong too many times to do that anymore. I can make as many (or more) arguments for what TVG is doing as I can against it. I encourage this experiment wholeheartedly; it can draw inspiration from the French potager and the aforementioned gardeners in the past and in the examples of permaculture, nutrient density, and food intensive infrastructure just moving from the future into the present. Prior examples of gardening technique are as littered with bad ideas as good and we should not cling to any practices without trying alternatives first.
HG
Seems that the root systems of existing plants can offer excellent benefits in tilth and biology that a tilled, prepped bed just can't, and of course as the bees continue to dwindle in number, pollination becomes a more critical component of good gardening, so having flowers that attract not just pollinators but many beneficials like syrphid flies and wasps, is a real boon for for the garden. Plus the lack of tilling increases the biological component of the soil in such an amazing way that the new plants are bolstered, not hindered by the lack of it...
We all have different ways of gardening. I, for one, am a lazy gardener, and I am happy to find and work methods that mean less work in the garden, not more. If Nature can perform functions in my garden like fertilizing, tilth, pollination, while at the same time adding bits to the puzzle like carbon sequestration (it is tilling, not plants that account for the huge loss of carbon in soils), then not only am I happy to do it that way, I am even happier to tell people how to do that.
There are many who will say that this won't work, or that won't work; I have been wrong too many times to do that anymore. I can make as many (or more) arguments for what TVG is doing as I can against it. I encourage this experiment wholeheartedly; it can draw inspiration from the French potager and the aforementioned gardeners in the past and in the examples of permaculture, nutrient density, and food intensive infrastructure just moving from the future into the present. Prior examples of gardening technique are as littered with bad ideas as good and we should not cling to any practices without trying alternatives first.
HG
I spoke too soon without more details. Sorry! Perhaps if Steve gives some ideas of his existing beds, how he prepares them, what is going in, etc. Also the over-all design (veggies in rows, blocks, random etc)
As for Native gardening, there was (is) some soil preparation. The 3 sisters (corn, beans, squash) grown together. So the whole bed isn't tilled, but each hill worked. Tools were fashioned from sticks, antler, deer shoulder blades and more. Garden tools (hoes etc) show up early on trade lists from the Euro market. Some things like Sun chokes (Jerusalem artichoke) won't stop once in the ground. As a side note, I hope to put in a few this year (where they won't take over everything!).
As for Native gardening, there was (is) some soil preparation. The 3 sisters (corn, beans, squash) grown together. So the whole bed isn't tilled, but each hill worked. Tools were fashioned from sticks, antler, deer shoulder blades and more. Garden tools (hoes etc) show up early on trade lists from the Euro market. Some things like Sun chokes (Jerusalem artichoke) won't stop once in the ground. As a side note, I hope to put in a few this year (where they won't take over everything!).
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The Helpful Gardener
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- Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2004 9:17 pm
- Location: Colchester, CT
Already have my J-chokes in last season and looking forward to more this year...
The majority of native gardening in this area was done on top of last years garbage midden (sheet composting of a sorts) and corn didn't even show up here until about six hundred years ago; the main food crop for this area before that was lambsquarters (I am planting two different varieties this year), both the greens, and the seed was ground into a grain. Not a lot of cultivation needed there. The Sisters was a later deveopment for Northern America; it is a South/Central American crop really. Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, And Steel has an excellent treatment of this movement of food, and Joseph Cocannouer's [url=https://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/weeds/WeedsToC.html]Weeds, Guardians of the Soil[/url] has somoe excellent sections on native weed cropping techniques that preclude tilling altogether...
Tilling is what depletes a soil of carbon in the first place. We could solve our current crisis (nearly 400ppm) simply by putting carbon back into the soil where it belongs instead of gassing it off as CO2 9really that's the whole issue in a nutshell, isn't it?).
Tilling encourages gassing off of carbon as CO2 through increased mortality of biology and the attendant decomposition; not tilling encourges it to stay in place as increased biology which can safely loop both nitrogen AND carbon at a safely controlled rate, regulated by sufficient plant cover. Instead of carbon going into the atmosphere from tilling, and nitrogen and phosphorus going into our water from chemical fertilizers.
So not tilling helps the planet as well, makes the occasional perennial plant in your rows a lot easier, not to mention that a lazy gardener like me can spend more time in my kayak. So it has a a lot going for it; I encourage everyone to try it, and we'll be happy to help...
HG
The majority of native gardening in this area was done on top of last years garbage midden (sheet composting of a sorts) and corn didn't even show up here until about six hundred years ago; the main food crop for this area before that was lambsquarters (I am planting two different varieties this year), both the greens, and the seed was ground into a grain. Not a lot of cultivation needed there. The Sisters was a later deveopment for Northern America; it is a South/Central American crop really. Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, And Steel has an excellent treatment of this movement of food, and Joseph Cocannouer's [url=https://www.journeytoforever.org/farm_library/weeds/WeedsToC.html]Weeds, Guardians of the Soil[/url] has somoe excellent sections on native weed cropping techniques that preclude tilling altogether...
Tilling is what depletes a soil of carbon in the first place. We could solve our current crisis (nearly 400ppm) simply by putting carbon back into the soil where it belongs instead of gassing it off as CO2 9really that's the whole issue in a nutshell, isn't it?).
Tilling encourages gassing off of carbon as CO2 through increased mortality of biology and the attendant decomposition; not tilling encourges it to stay in place as increased biology which can safely loop both nitrogen AND carbon at a safely controlled rate, regulated by sufficient plant cover. Instead of carbon going into the atmosphere from tilling, and nitrogen and phosphorus going into our water from chemical fertilizers.
So not tilling helps the planet as well, makes the occasional perennial plant in your rows a lot easier, not to mention that a lazy gardener like me can spend more time in my kayak. So it has a a lot going for it; I encourage everyone to try it, and we'll be happy to help...
HG