Power Plants For Heathy Gardens
/
Borage
We really believe in toxin-free growing—as we hope our 100% Organic and Local Spray free produce section shows! Organic farms use a wide range of creative and effective all-natural strategies to ensure their crops are healthy and substantial. Many of these can work in your yard or balcony too! Whether you’re growing in small pots or giant plots, one really easy and super gratifying thing you can do is incorporate companion plants into your garden. Companion plants are like helper plants that may not be your end goal for what you want your garden to produce, but they can really help you reach those goals. They can attract not only pollinators but predatory beneficial insects like wasps, ladybugs, and hoverflies, that will make a meal of the insects that want to make a meal of your crops, and generally significantly increase the biodiversity of your garden. We’ve had a late growing season this year because of all the cool weather and rain so it’s definitely not too late to introduce some new friends into your green spaces—garden centres still have lots of starters on hand. And it’s actually a great time to have a look at what’s working well and what isn’t and to start making some notes and plans for what you might want to grow next year. You can simply plant your companions in the general vicinity of your desired crops, from establishing them right in the same beds, to strategically placing a potful nearby. Here are a few key plants you might want to consider adding to your mix.
Yarrow
Yarrow is a star companion plant because it attracts both pollinators and beneficial predatory insects, and it also repels harmful critters like aphids with its odour! The fact that it can grow up to 3ft high means it can provide shade for smaller plants, and it can even help regenerate soil because it grows well in poor soil, and can be mulched back into the ground at the end of a growing season where it becomes an enriching compost! Yarrow comes in a beautiful variety of pink, purple, and white shades and has a long history of medicinal herbal use.
Borage
Like yarrow, borage has a whole range of benefits. It’s another powerful pollinator attractor, and is particularly repellant to tomato hornworm and cabbage moth which makes it a great companion to tomatoes and strawberries. It also makes fantastic compost and—very important to note around many of these parts—is deer proof. Borage is also entirely edible, which is especially exciting with respect to its gorgeous star-shaped blue flowers that make a stunning addition to a salad or garnish for a dessert!
Cosmos
Cosmos too provide food and habit for pollinator and beneficial insects, but they attract rather than repel aphids. This means you can use them as ‘sacrificial plants’ that will draw aphids (and also slugs) away from your other plants. But they will, in turn, also attract aphid predators like hoverflies and ladybugs to the area, which can help neighbour plants. Cosmos are also lovely cut flowers for bouquets and vases that will keep on blooming until frost as long as you keep picking them!
Calendula
Another plant with a long history of medicinal use, calendula also helps the health of your soil—and by extension the roots of your plants—by releasing a chemical that repels harmful nematodes. When calendula are established they can provide nectar for pollinators through the growing season and they can also mask the smell of the plants they are close to, which can help prevent pest from finding their way over! Calendula is well known as an edible bloom that, like borage can enhance foods like salads and desserts, and it can even be dried and used like saffron to add beautiful colour to dishes like rice!
This is some general information to hopefully pique your interest, but your local garden centre is definitely a fantastic resource for helping you work out which plants will be best for your space!
Yarrow