Guilt-free gardening: Letting herbs to to flower

There's benefit in letting some of your herbs go to flower. Not if you plan to use them in cooking, which requires keeping the flowers pinched off to retain their flavor. So my basil doesn't get far in blossoming--if I can help it.

But dill, fennel, cilantro, parsley--you don't have to feel guilty about getting behind in harvesting these herbs because the flowers are food for beneficial insects.

If you don't already have some, trying adding dill to a spot close to your veggie garden. Preferably a designated Beneficial Garden.

Dill is easy to grow and the flowers attract lacewings, ladybugs and Ichneumon wasps, hoverflies, and tachnid flies--all good bugs.

Buying herbs this time of year (mid-June) is a little problematic, but I often find the only time herbs look all fresh and perky at the nurseries is when I'm not ready to plant.

I wanted to buy another dill for my garden, but considering the bedraggled state the herbs were in at the nursery, they should be free. I consoled myself that those herbs left too long in their 2" pots needed me to save them. I wanted to take them all home. Maybe not in the same warm, fuzzy way I want to adopt all the kittens at Pet Smart. But if they were free, I would have.

I was a little embarrassed by my plant choices at the check out counter. But I had my reasons. The dill was already flowering. I could already imagine ladybugs and hover flies waiting in anticipation for a tasty snack.  

Garden note: Good bugs love umbel type (Umbelliferae) flowers, a family which includes nice feathery green foliage of anise, caraway, carrot, celery, chervil, coriander, cilantro, cumin, dill, fennel, Queen Anne's lace, parsley.

Trucking in beneficial flowers

I tend to think that time stands still while I'm gardening. When I go out to 'check on things', it will only be a few moments and I'll go back inside to work on my writing projects.

Funny how time keeps moving for the rest of the world while the universe pauses in the garden.

Anyway, here's what I bought yesterday for the Insectary.

Those little six-packs are deceptive. I had 32 plants to get into the ground! I worked until almost sundown and finished up this morning.

The plants are all from the beneficial list: Coreopsis and Osteospermum (African Daisy) in the gallon pots, small varieties of zinnias and asters in six-packs, plus Sweet Alyssum, which I included because of its long blooming season, providing food all summer long for my adult beneficials!

Naming your garden | from my beneficial plant journal

The beginnings of my Insectary Garden

With over two acres to maintain, I don't have a garden. I have garden areas. The 'area' I'm working on now is a spot I managed to salvage from the rocks and fox tail and Bermuda grass, but never fully developed. I used it to plant things I didn't know where else to put.

The comfrey is maturing now as is the fennel, lemon geranium and pineapple sage. It's the perennial 'bones' my Insectary Garden, kind of like a salad bar for the otherwise carnivorous beneficial insects. I plan to fill the rest of it with annuals--members of the daisy family and wildflowers.

It's managed to survive my neglect, like it was waiting patiently to become something more when I had the time. Now that it has a name, it has a whole new new identity. The name invites me to take care of it better.

Yesterday I was able to spread out some nice organic garden soil around the fennel, comfrey and lemon geranium and I had my first beneficial inspect spotting--a tiny lacewing on the downy green fennel and a lady bug on the comfrey.

Hey, I'm not even done yet and they're already here!

Creating an Insectary Garden to attract beneficial insects

I'm creating an Insectary Garden to attract beneficial insects to our property. I have a spot on the south side of our veggie garden which curves around rather like an upside down question mark. It already has a mature comfrey and several fennel plants on one end, a Mr. Lincoln rose bush, butterfly bush, some lemon thyme, sage and a red geranium.

So I have a good start, but the bare spots are worse than bare. They're rock hard, depleted and full of weeds and Bermuda grass. I have a lot of work ahead of me, but I'm excited about this new project.

I've been studying beneficial insects and how to attract them for years, so I have some things in place. But ever since I came across the idea of planting an special garden for them, I have a renewed enthusiasm for this particular aspect of organic gardening.

Fennel is a good insectary plant as it is a member of the Apiaceae family. Formerly known as the Umbelliferae family. I like the old name better because it has umbrella in the word, which is how the flower of these plants are shaped, only upside down. Members of this family provide the flowers needed by parasitic wasps.