Push for Flowers in the Vege Garden

So you're ready to plant your seedlings - carefully germinated and tended by you for the last couple of weeks. You pop them in your beautifully prepared soil, full of nutrients, and wait for the magic to happen.

You wait - your flowers start opening and you start imagining all the wonderful recipes you're going to make but then.... the flowers start going brown and dropping off - not a fruit to be seen anywhere! Your flowers haven't pollinated. Not only that, there's a bunch of little green insects on your new shoots. It's a nightmare! 

You can help them along with a small paintbrush if you want. Or, you could plant pollinator plants. Things like Calendula, Tagetes, Borage, Alyssum, Bee Balm, Nasturtium, Poppies and the like.  Why? Well it looks pretty cool but these type of plants play a very important role in your vege garden.  

Not only do they attract beneficial insects for pollination - like bees - but they also attract ladybirds, lacewings, aphidius wasps and pirate bugs, all of which do a great job of eating up some of the common nasties like aphids, mealy bugs, caterpillar eggs, whitefly and thrips. Additionally, some plants act as attractants for those nasties - Nasturtiums are very good at that.

Ensuring your garden has a good balance of these helpful flowering plants will go a long way to seeing you rewarded with the stunning produce you've been dreaming of. You'll also end up with flowers for picking, and even some to pop in a salad.