Tag Archives: beneficial insects

Parsley Gone to Seed -for the beneficials!

I let my Italian parsley plant go to seed because I wanted to attract beneficial insects to my other veggie plants. You probably hear the term ‘beneficial insects’ a lot. I know I do, but what the heck are beneficial insects?? Well, the two benefits that “good” bugs can bring to the garden are either eating other bugs that are considered pests or being pollinators. So predators and pollinators are what we want in our bug population. These types of insects are attracted to certain types of flowers and some of their very favorites are the flowers of herbs and greens from your food garden that have gone to seed. So it’s not always a bad thing to let your cilantro or lettuce bolt, as long as you know that it’s no longer tasty as food for you (bitter!), but now is serving another purpose- contributing to the health of your garden!



Filed under food gardens, me in the garden, potted gardens, victory gardens

Container Victory Gardening

Home food gardens are more popular now than they have been since victory gardens during WWII. 40% of the food consumed in this country during that time was produced in home and community gardens! Though they’ve never been a bad idea, in fact I’ll talk about why they’re such a good idea in a moment, they fell out of favor with the majority of people for various reasons- the main one being inconvenience.

When a person could buy almost any type of produce they wanted, at almost any time of year, from their local supermarket- that was pretty darn convenient compared to the relative inconvenience of maintaining a vegetable garden!

Personally, it wasn’t until just two years ago that I started my own. I just assumed they were too time-consuming for me, or… too inconvenient. Ironically, what finally got me growing my own was our local Farmers Market. I simply got used to eating delicious, nutritious food and wanted more access to it!

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Filed under food gardens, jobs, me in the garden, potted gardens, Uncategorized, victory gardens