Thursday, 24 May 2012

Growing Flowers From Seed: Companion Planting

Growing vegetables affords the gardener a myriad range of beautiful sights, with plants consisting of a different shapes, sizes, textures, form and colour.  However, combine these plants with flowers and you have a quintessential English garden.

Along with vegetables, I'm also growing a range of flowers this year.  I enjoy the challenge of gardening from seed and the huge sense of achievement that it brings.  The commitment and dedication to nurture plants and flowers from seeds is great; thus so is the reward.

As well as the colour and beauty that flowers bring to the garden, they can also be fantastic for the vegetable grower!  Companion planting is an age-old technique employed by gardeners as an organic alternative to chemical pest deterrents.

I'm growing French marigolds because I like them, but also because they are the perfect companion plant for tomatoes, which I am also growing.  Tomato plants are highly susceptible to whitefly, which can damage a whole crop.  However, whitefly detest French marigolds and thus avoid them like the plague!  Not only do the marigolds keep whitefly at bay; they also make the garden look very pretty!
In addition to marigolds, I'm also growing a range of flowers from seed as a challenge, to add colour to the garden in summer and also so that my wife can have a nice supply of flowers for the house.  I am growing the following from seed:

Malva
Sweet Pea
Morning Glory
Convolvulus
As always, progress will be documented here on the London Vegetable Garden blog, as well as over on Twitter and our Facebook page!

13 comments:

  1. I always wondered how this companion planting thing actually worked, so I think I'm going to give it a go to see how it works. Trying to grow veg in my little London flat too :-)

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  2. Great blog! Nice to know that the whiteflies will not like my marigolds (although mine are mexican not french).

    Me too Hannah (growing veges in SW London), I just planted my baby tomatoes out into their grow-bags last night, exciting times :) This is the first year I have tried it so fingers crossed.

    Wikipedia has a great list of companion plants, I have been checking it in planting things out as I only have a few grow-bags and would like to plant things that will compliment one another and not fight, esp as they will be growing quite close together...

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  4. We have Marigolds in our allotment too as they supposedly attract ladybirds too. It might be by accident but we have found Nasturtium to be good "sacrificial" plant, all aphids in our allotment sit on nasturtium and are really not interested in anything else. Nasturtium also produce edible flowers with nice peppery taste.

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  6. Handy post for planting. I'm going to give it a go to see how it workson our cabins.

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  9. You may wish to create labels for the veggies so you know what is where, the easiest way to get this done is by taking the particular seed packages (when you open them be cautious to just cut off a small sliver from the most effective so you never wreck the picture) Then poke to a small whole Gladys Parson at the very top and bottom of the package to slide the stake through, and voila you have a sweet rustic label.

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