This Pollinator-Friendly Flower Will Work Wonders In Your Vegetable Garden

Vegetable gardens take a lot of hard work, but with a little elbow grease and some patience a vegetable patch will reward you with a lovely harvest of fresh food for you and your family. However, what can be frustrating is when you work hard all summer only to get a meager harvest out of your garden at the end of the year. There are a few reasons this may happen including low rainfall and a lack of essential nutrients in the soil; however, another cause of low yield gardens is a lack of pollinators. Pollinators — like butterflies, bees, and birds — are important for your vegetable garden because they are necessary for certain plants to produce healthy and large veggies.

One easy way to draw more pollinators to your garden is to plant pollinator-friendly flowers around it. This works because the bright color and sweet smell of the flowers will make the area more attractive for pollinators — and once they are near your garden, they are more likely to make a pit stop on your other plants. Pollinator-friendly flowers can include native plants like bee balm or medicinal herbs like chamomile and lavender like chamomile and lavender; however, one great pollinator-friendly flower to plant near your vegetable garden is none other than the bright and sunny marigold. This is because marigolds are not only tough to kill and pollinator-friendly but are also one of the plants that can naturally repel pests.

One way that marigolds are said to keep a garden safe from pests is by covering up the smell of vegetables with their strong aroma thereby drawing pests to them instead of your other plants. Although there is no research proving that marigolds help lure away specific pests, most gardeners believe that this trick works with tomato hornworms, cabbage worms, squash bugs, whiteflies, and aphids. Because of this, marigolds are sometimes called a trap crop because they catch annoying pests and keep them away from more valuable veggies. To create a pest trap with marigolds, you can plant rows of marigolds between your vegetables or plant the flowers in a perimeter around your entire garden.

Another way that marigolds can keep your vegetables safe is by repelling nematodes. Marigolds are able to do this because the roots of this fragrant flower release a chemical into the soil that kills nematode eggs. This is especially beneficial for bulb and root veggies — like onions, carrots, beets, potatoes, and garlic — which are particularly susceptible to nematode damage. However, because marigolds can only kill nematode eggs, this trick works best when you plant your veggies the next year in the same location where you had planted marigolds the year before.