We’re trying something new this year: planting marigolds in the vegetable garden.
I’ve read about the benefits of marigolds in several gardening books, and am hopeful our little experiment works.
Some of the benefits of planting marigolds in the vegetable garden include:
Marigolds help to repel bugs, especially mosquitoes and gnats.
Marigolds can keep pesky rabbits out of your garden.
Marigolds will keep moles out of your garden, as they dislike the taste of the roots.
Marigolds draw beneficial insects (bees, etc.) into the garden to pollinate the vegetable flowers.
Marigolds draw beneficial insects that will eat up some of the bad bugs you don’t want on your vegetables.
Marigolds won’t crowd your veggies as they grow. Marigolds are good neighbors.
We planted marigolds around the perimeter of our vegetable garden bed two weeks ago:
We’re just starting to add in our vegetables:
We’re planting tomatoes, hot peppers, pumpkins, corn, basil, rosemary, ornamental gourds and nasturtiums. There’s nothing tastier than fresh veggies in the Summertime!
One note of caution: Marigolds attract spider mites which you don’t want in the vegetable garden. We don’t like to use any chemicals on or around our veggies, so any treatment has to be natural and organic. Simply taking a hose to the marigolds will knock the spider mites off, no problem.
Want to learn how easy it was to create our raised vegetable bed? You can click on the image below to get the complete tutorial:
Do you plant flowers among your vegetables?
July 11th update:
After six weeks, I’ve put together an update for you, along with my observations! Click on the image below to read:
~Laura
I am going to get some marigolds for my raised beds ๐
Amberjane recently posted…50 things you can Compost
Let me know how it goes Amberjane! ๐
Laura / Pet Scribbles recently posted…Make a Patriotic Glass Luminary!
My dad did this in his garden for years. He told me to do it when we first put in our garden 4 years ago. It works great. I tell all my friends about this. Hope your experiment works.
Thanks Chris – I’m very happy to hear this, as it gives me that much more confidence this will work! Love how cute the bunnies are, but not when they start partaking from the garden. ๐
Laura / Pet Scribbles recently posted…70 Nautical Decor DIYs
I’ve been planting Marigolds for the last couple of years in my allotment. When they’re in, I get a lot more fruit on my squash plants due to the bees that they attract. Plus, the big marigolds look really beautiful and their colours are amazing!!
So glad you shared this, Kate! I agree that they add lots of beauty to the vegetable garden, especially now when the plants haven’t matured yet. And I’m all for attracting more bees to our yard, it’s a win-win for all of the flowering plants!
Laura / Pet Scribbles recently posted…Plant Marigolds in the Vegetable Garden!
We planted 5 doz marigolds among our tomato plants and as a boder in two of our flower beds. I am hoping for increased yields due to good pollination in our tomatoes as I can at least 70 quarts of hole tomatoes other than those we eat fresh.
Wow Astrid – that’s wonderful you’re able to can so many of your tomatoes! That’s something we hope to do in the future, as previous seasons we had grown way too many tomatoes. We scaled back this year. Definitely keep me posted if you get any increased yields from the pollination/marigolds! I’ll do the same here on LCI! ๐
Laura / Pet Scribbles recently posted…DIY Faux Flowers: no green thumb required!
How do you dried marigolds for the seeds?
I love marigolds in my garden. Easy care and they come back the next year. Just snap off the dead bloom and it makes the plant bloom like crazy. I too had lots of tomatoes. Gave some to my mail lady, trash pickup and work.