Pretty and Useful

I’ve added a few more flowers to the garden. Today I planted marigolds, alyssum and salvia. At $1.50 a six-pack, I couldn’t resist.

Not only are all of these flowers pretty, they are also useful to detract pests and attract beneficials.

The marigold’s job is to keep bean beetles, squash bugs, thrips, tomato hornworms, and whiteflies away from my produce. Also, I like the splash of deep yellow breaking up all the green in the garden.

I’d never encountered a thrip or a whitefly, so I hope they continue to stay away from the garden. Thrips suck the life out of plants and munch on the fruit. Ick.

Whiteflies are teeny tiny and feed on the undersides of leaves. I don’t think we’ve had a problem with this and I want to keep it that way.

The alyssum smells good, smothers weeds and attracts the aphid-eating flower fly, which looks more like a bee than a fly. What more could I ask for from a flower?

I tried to plant salvia from seed last year, but had no luck. It’s job is to attract butterflies and look beautiful. It is also said to attract hummingbirds and we have a few that hang out at our house.

I planted two in every section of the herb spiral and one or two in each section of the kitchen garden. I’ll also put marigold seeds down, but for some reason I cannot get many of them to grow. At least not quickly enough to be of any use.

I did get a pretty big marigold to grow from seed in the herb spiral last year. I let it go to seed so hopefully I’ll have another one this year.

Flowers so gorgeous
A natural pesticide
Pretty and useful