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Julia’s veggies - Organic veggies Healthy Growing, Healthy Eating

This is the second year in a row that we have been blessed with reasonable summer temperatures

and plenty rain. It does mean, however, that we have lots of weeds growing amongst the vegetables
but it is small price to pay for the abundance of edibles that we have right now. I have been particularly
excited this growing season because there is no sign of pumpkin fly and so my squashes are
growing like mad and not getting spoilt as in previous years. Another development is that there is
now a restriction on the importation of a number of vegetables from outside Botswana, including
tomatoes and lettuce. This makes it even more imperative for you to grow your own! We are in a
new, fresh year so I thought I would start us off with something different in this issue and look at
the role of herbs and edible flowers when growing vegetables organically. by Julia Farmer

Pics of Edible flowers, Herbs and Companion planting. Julia.Farmer & Pixabay

Herbs & Edible flowers: In nature plants often do not grow in isolation and those
that grow well together will thrive. Different parts of a plant have different roles to play in
these symbiotic relationships. Here we will look at how we can make use of some useful plant
combinations when choosing herbs and edible flowers to accompany our vegetables in our
organic food garden.

Herbs and edible flowers can improve the organic veggie garden in different ways:

As a companion plant:
• Many strong-smelling herbs and some edible flowers can help to deter and confuse pests
from attacking tasty vegetables, e.g. chives planted with lettuce, marigold planted with beans.
• Some herbs can be used a sacrifice, known as a trap or catch herb. The pests are attracted
to the herb and then it is removed and burnt, e.g. nasturtiums attract aphids away from
other plants.
• Tall herbs can provide shade to shorter vegetables, e.g. dill planted with lettuce.
• They can improve the flavour of the harvested vegetable, e.g. basil planted with tomatoes.
To attract beneficial insects
• Edible flowers and those of many herbs, attract the all important pollinators, such as bees and
butterflies, e.g. calendula, marigold and borage.
• The flowers can also attract the terminators – such as wasps, spiders, ladybirds and assassin bugs,
e.g. borage, calendula, coriander, dill and clover.