Vegetables Love Flowers
Companion Planting for Beauty and Bounty
by Lisa Mason Ziegler
Quarto Publishing Group - Cool Springs Press
Home & Garden
Pub Date 27 Mar 2018
EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9780760357583
PRICE $21.99 (USD)
FTC Reviewed for Quarto Publishing Group - Cool Springs Press and Net Galley
Description
Fight garden pests and increase your yields the natural way with this tried and true technique!
Planting vegetables and flowers together is one of the oldest ways to create a healthy, bountiful garden, but there's more to the method than you might think. Vegetables Love Flowers will walk you through the ins and outs of companion planting, from how it works to which plants go together and how to grow the best garden for your climate.
With the right information and some careful planning, you can help your plants thrive--and beautify your garden in the process.
Review: Vegetables Love Flowers Companion Planting for Beauty and Bounty
Author Lisa Mason Ziegler with The Gardners Workshop is a home gardener and cut flower farmer. She starts this book off by introducing readers to the idea of growing flowers in your vegetable garden to attract beneficial insects and increase yields.
Timely planting is discussed. Unfortunately, everything here is going in the ground late this year due to the cold temperatures that affected planting times.
My husband and I have started seed indoors but have never tried the soil blocking that the author uses. We use to start your plants in a small greenhouse, but it got destroyed in a storm, so we've been planting out from packs we purchased from a nearby nursery. We plant our vegetables in rows and stagger our annuals as they need room to spread out.
Yesterday, we spent time moving some of our raised vegetable beds closer to our perennial beds. We planted loose leaf lettuce and will plant the packs of tomatoes later this week.
There is an excellent section on mulching and weed prevention in general. It also goes on to talk about fertilizing and the use of compost and what it contains.
The benefits of having beneficial creatures in the garden are discussed in detail in this book. Ladybug larva will eat the harmful insects, like aphids. Spiders and wasp also feed on harmful insects, while other flying insects aid in pollinating blooms. Bird feeders and bushes will attract birds that are good at preying on harmful insects too.
We use protective coverings when there is a danger of frost and we've already planted. But this read also goes into detail about row covers and the use of hoop houses.
We have beds of hosta and last year the slugs were strong invaders, so, one thing I might try this year is the authors trap for slugs and snails.
New to me was the section on creating habitats for many reptiles. We have frogs around here that hang out in our small garden pond. But it has been years since we've seen any snakes in the garden.
Overall, I felt this book was a quick and easy read. The thing I most enjoyed was the depth of detail about companion planting and the vivid images that went along with it. You can read more about Lisa's making of this book here.
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