Deter Pests and Improve Pollination with Edible Flowers

My mom’s responsible for peaking my interest in edible flowers. I was a teenager in the early ’90s when she dropped a bombshell on us. You can eat pansies! Except she didn’t say anything at the time, she just nonchalantly put a salad in front of each of us at dinner time. We all had a different colored pansy or two placed just off center of the rest of the greens. It was beautiful and we all looked at each other, puzzled. She had picked pansies from her containers and created salads that were almost too pretty to eat. In addition to all the bright greens, there were vibrant purples, oranges and yellows and it was pretty cool.

I remember my brother asking what we all were thinking.

“Wait mom, we can eat this?”

And carefully, as if anticipating some horrible reaction, we nibbled a petal and realized it was pretty good. The slightly sweet, mild lettuce flavor fit the salad and made it something of a novelty. I doubt any of my friends’ moms were as avant garde in the kitchen. Keep in mind, there was no Food Network at the time. This was all her.

Thirty years later and I’m still wondering why anyone would bother with sugar sprinkles when you can decorate cakes and salads with petals.

Not convinced?

Fast forward to July 2023 when my daughters and I hosted a ladies-only garden party. The table was covered with delicious, homemade bites and yet our guests marveled over the borage ice cubes, eager to add the cubes to their watermelon mojitos. Some asked the same question my brother did over 30 years ago. I was surprised and a little shocked by their reaction. The simplest things often have the greatest impact. That night, borage ice cubes became on of those things.

And this got me thinking about edible flowers and how we don’t talk about them enough. I’m not saying you should use them to impress. They have a way of doing that on their own anyway. More than pretty faces, their value to the garden goes so much deeper. I love them in the vegetable garden where they improve pollination and attract beneficial insects that keep pests in check. As an organic gardener, a chemical free garden is important and edible flowers help me keep it that way.

Companion Planting with Edible Flowers

First off, what is companion planting? Certain veggies do better when planted with certain flowers. Sort of like when we’re surrounded by our favorite people. Life is better. The same is true for vegetables! As pretty as they are, flowers planted near certain veg crops act as armor, shielding their mates from pest attack. I employed this tactic last summer when my last two attempts at growing sweet corn were thwarted by corn worms. Third time was the charm.

Here’s how it worked…

Borage

The dainty, cucumber-flavored edible flowers attract predatory beneficial insects like lady bugs, parasitic wasps and lacewings that prey on other insects. It’s said that the scent of borage deters corn worms. Not a single ear in my Vego bed had a corn worm this year and I attribute that to the borage I direct sowed around the perimeter of the bed. The bees loved the flowers too!

Can I definitively say my corn grew to maturity worm free because of the presence of borage? Probably not. It may purely be anecdotal. But it does stand to reason that borage, having not been planted until this third attempt, had something to do with a successful harvest. Now if this year I have a raging case of worms with borage in residence, well we’ll have to revisit the topic. Until then, companion plant borage and corn.

Keep in mind, once you grow borage, you’ll likely always have borage. It’s a heavy seeder but then there are worse problems to have.

Nasturtium

In a study conducted by Iowa State University, nasturtiums were planted with zucchini. They analyzed the presence of squash bugs, a common pest that uses its piercing-sucking mouthparts to suck the sap from the leaves of squash plants. It can be especially devastating to young plants. The study compared plantings of the zucchini/nasturtium combo to beds that were just zucchini. In beds planted with the combination, there was a significant decrease in squash bug numbers as well as less damage to zucchini plants.

Nasturtiums are another edible flower you can direct sow in the garden. There are trailing and bushing varieties depending on the look you prefer. I love the way my favorite nasturtium, Tip Top Apricot, spills over the sides of my raised beds. The leaves and flowers are edible and pack a peppery punch, much like arugula. Bees love the flowers too. I order them from Select Seeds and you can find them here.

Chives

They’re prolific seeders but I love them nonetheless. I planted chives at the corners of my raised beds mostly for aesthetic purposes. This member of the onion family is covered in round purple balls in May and the pollinators can’t resist them. I love snipping the long green leaves for sprinkling on mashed potatoes or adding the flowers and leaves to butter for herbed butter when I have time. I’ve also steeped the purple flowers in champagne vinegar to make the most beautiful and tasty chive vinegar. I should give that a go again this May. It was a big hit on salad with a splash of olive oil.

Roses

I love roses, especially my rugosas whose flowers attract tons of pollinators and hips swell larger every year. Rose petals and their hips are edible. But one caught my eye while I was attending the Proven Winners Creators Roundtable back in November 2022. They introduced a rose bred specifically for flavor. At the time, it wasn’t available to the public but I was sure to throw a request in for a sample as soon as they were available.

By Spring 2023, I had a Flavorette Honey Apricot rose growing in a container in the veg garden. It perfumed the entire space all summer. General rule of thumb, the more fragrant the rose the more flavorful it will be. It produced non-stop and I never deadhead it. No black spot, no powdery mildew. Just lots of edible flowers. While I didn’t detect a honey apricot flavor (perhaps my palate isn’t that sensitive) I found the taste of the petals more pleasing on newer flowers.

Adding to the interest of this edible flower are the breeders behind it. Traditionally a male-dominated industry, a team of female rose breeders from Pheno Geno based in Serbia and the Netherlands joined the ranks. Their line of culinary roses was recognized by Proven Winners and underwent extensive field testing before making its official debut to the U.S. market this year. Be on the lookout!

Signet Marigolds

In 2015, I was scouting Uncommon Ground, a restaurant in Chicago’s Edgewater neighborhood, with a rooftop farm. It was the very first of it’s kind to be certified organic and I was there to write and produce a story about it for Country Gardens magazine. Two years later it would make it to print (it’s a two-year process from concept to completion) The story received a Silver Award from GardenComm, an association for professional garden communicators, which at the time was called the Garden Writers Association, GWA for short. You can find that story in my portfolio.

It was there that I encountered Signet or gem marigolds for the first time. Smart Pots overflowing with these darling little edible flowers were scattered across the roof top and did double duty. Pollinators enjoyed sipping from them and the chef used the orange and yellow flowers to garnish salads and drinks.

The myth among companion planting enthusiasts however is that marigolds deter soil nematodes. While not entirely false, it’s not really applicable to the home gardener, especially those in northern climates. Nematodes are common soil dwelling roundworms and most don’t pose much threat to plants. The one of most concern in the vegetable garden is the root-knot nematode. They trigger the formation of galls on the roots of many plants including beans, carrots, eggplants, melons and tomatoes. Galls inhibit the plant’s ability to uptake water and nutrients. The result is a weakened plant with poor yield.

For northerly gardeners like me and perhaps you, such nematodes likely aren’t present in our soil. They prefer tropical and subtropical environments with long hot summers. As eager as we are for soil to warm up in spring, that’s exactly what keeps root-knot nematodes in check in most gardens. They’re much more common in southern gardens. But if you suspect root-knot nematodes, dig up a struggling plant and inspect the roots for galls.

Marigolds as nematode control are most affective in gardens when used as a cover crop. Let’s say you’ve determined that your corn bed was crawling with root-knot nematodes and they were responsible for your poor harvest. The following year, you would plant that entire bed with marigolds for the whole growing season in northern climates and two to four months in southern ones. Contrary to what I often hear, marigolds don’t repel nematodes. Instead, they poison them when the nematodes feed on their roots. With nothing to eat but marigold roots, their demise is imminent.

By the next growing season, your garden should be free of nematodes or their numbers so greatly reduced that they’ll have little affect on your plants.

Marigolds are another easy plant to grow and I direct sow them every year. I’m especially fond of these Lemon and Tangerine Gem marigolds from Botanical Interests.

Squash Blossoms

Last but not least, squash blossoms! They’re absolutely delicious stuffed with cheese and fried. The next time you visit an Italian restaurant and see them on the menu, give it a go. That’s how I first experienced them. While dining at the Italian Village in Chicago, my husband and I ordered them as an appetizer and our tastebuds were in heaven.

I have yet to prepare stuffed squash blossoms. Perhaps it’s worth experimenting with this summer. But I can tell you the bees love them. Pollen-covered bee butts early in the morning are a frequent discovery in these large yellow blossoms.

I can’t imagine a better place to catch a snooze than in a beautiful flower!

Have you experimented with edible flowers? I’d love to know which ones you’ve grown or plan to grow. Tell me in the comments.