We’re Planting Flowers

Since I was young, I’ve always loved growing flowers and enjoyed having fresh cut flowers on the kitchen counter. It makes the house feel fresh and clean even when you didn’t actually clean!

A landscape that includes lots of flowering plants and shrubs of different textures and colors is something to be admired. If time and resources were unlimited, I’d have fields of flowers with meandering garden pathways and benches for sitting to read a book.

So, this year, we’ve added a small market garden to our vegetable garden. We’re filling it with sunflowers, zinnias and some other summer varieties that will be blooming in July. I watch them grow everyday and look forward to bringing some to the market to share with you.

As a bonus of adding flowers, interplanting flowers in the vegetable garden is a natural way to deter destructive pests while being a safe haven for pollinators and “good” bugs. I know we all think we don’t want insects and bugs in the garden, but there are 100 beneficial creatures for every 5 destructive ones. We want all those good bugs! They help to produce more abundance of both food and flowers.

Since we don’t use pesticides or herbicides in our garden, it’s important to start with good soil, good drainage and a healthy diversity of plants to keep everything happy and productive. Each plant gives and takes from the soil and environment, making the garden a big community of living organisms.

And if you get the balance right, all veggies and flowers come out smelling like a rose.

This week at www.BuckeyeBarnTN.com, we have broccoli and salad microgreens, Knoxville’s prettiest chicken eggs and our human-grade dog food topper made from our pasture raised birds.