I’ve been interested for a while in finding ways to make use of flowers to increase the biodiversity in my vegetable garden. To be honest, I’m a complete novice when it comes to flowers, and I don’t really have an interest in them unless they serve some clear purpose.
Some years ago, when the Seed Ambassadors visited Europe, I got some of Alan Kapuler’s tagetes seeds from them. As I recall, there weren’t many seeds left by the time it was my turn to take some, and of the few seeds I got only one or two germinated. I don’t remember what happened to those…
Alan Kapuler is known for tagetes. When placing an order with him a few years ago for some other things, I also ordered some more of these too. They’ve been sitting around, and now this year I had a couple of goals to accomplish.
- The first was to provide some flowers suitable for bees and other pollinators to collect pollen, and for this I chose borage.
- I also have some perennial weed issues in my garden, and I was hoping to address this by somehow solving underlying problems, or with companion planting or biodiversity.
Last year I had some bindweed in my garden, slowly encroaching on a neighbor’s garden. With some apologies, I explained the situation to her and said I would do what I could, but expected some of it would come into her garden anyway. Without saying a word to me, she planted some Tagetes minuta, a wild plant in our area, along our fence. The result was quite impressive. All the bindweed within about a meter of the fence died.
I’ve since read some things about using tagetes to kill bindweed, but to be honest the information available is a little conflicting and vague. Some sources say particular species of tagetes are more effective than others. Almost all sources mention that no benefit is achieved until the plant has been growing in the same place for at least 3 months. Anyway, it seemed a good year to grow some of Alan Kapuler’s varieties and put them to the test. He offers T. patula and T. erecta. Several of them were planted in places very infested with bindweed.
T. patula
T. erecta
Borage
The tagetes haven’t been in place for a full 3 months yet, so it’s probably a little early for conclusions, but not much seems to be happening yet. I did notice none of the tagetes are becoming engulfed in the bindweed, as if the bindweed instinctively knows not to grow near them.
Does anyone have any experience with tagetes and bindweed or tagetes and anything else?
Does anyone have other suggestions or ideas for combining flowers and vegetable gardens, for purposes of making use of biodiversity?
Very interesting! We have bindweed growing in our raspberries and even though they don’t do much damage there, every now and then some spreads, so I’ll try growing some tagetes under the raspberries.
Interestingly, we never hbad bindweed until the neighbour sprayed the meter on his side of the fence with herbicides. It killed the grass on half a meter on our side and weakened our berry bushes, but since then bindweed is thriving where we never had any in our garden before!
I have bindweed in the garden for the first time this year – I have no idea where it came from. I have been pulling it out as I see it, but it’s easy to miss amongst things like broad beans. I too hardly ever grow flowers, although I do let Calendula seed freely as they are so good at attracting hoverflies and I have planted breadseed poppy this year. I will, however, try planting tagetes as soon as I can get some seeds… they’ll probably rot though in the current wet weather.
I’m interested that you describe Tagetes minuta as a wild plant in your area, and therefore self seeding. The plants I have grown have been, I presume, day length sensitive and have never set seed, so if you have ones adapted to your climate, I would be very interested to obtain some. You can of course plant it as a herb too – it’s none other than huacatay, one of the premier Andan herbs.
excuse typo – Andean. Think I got huacatay right 🙂
Did I mention I was a complete novice when it comes to flowers??
Anyway, I seem to be confusing marigolds with daisies. I think the wild flower in the area is a wild daisy. My garden neighbor was growing both tagetes and daisies last year, side by side and I seem to have conflated them. Anyway, this is all memory from last year, and the flowers aren’t there anymore.
My neighbor did tell me she was growing tagetes, but didn’t mention the species. From pictures on the Internet, I think it was T. minuta, but I can’t be completely sure… She probably bought the seeds.
I’ve been growing single-flowered, rather wildish T. patula for a few years; a nice, sturdy blend, with shades from orange to dark red. We love them!
I have an allotment where I have issues with bindweed and couch grass. Keen not to use weedkillers, I’m trying to find out if these Tagetes minuta are safe to grow with fruits and vegetables. Or should I grow them a distance apart?
Any advice would be both welcome and, appreciated.
Danielle 😊
Hi Danielle,
Thanks for the comment. I don’t suggest eating the plants, but otherwise they are perfectly safe. They can be safely grown alongside fruits and vegetables.
As with all companion planting, some plants like each other and some don’t. You have to experiment a little with this, or look for hints elsewhere on the Internet.
If you have problems with bindweed and couch grass, you may have a general problem with compacted soil. You might also try addressing this with plants like broad beans or rye as a winter cover crop. Of course if gardeners around you use herbicides, this will cause problems with weeds in your garden too.
Good luck with the allotment, and best wishes for your 2020 garden.