Why Marigolds are beneficial for your garden

Early in the season I had some major problems with some of my plants getting eaten by bugs ( I haven't found out what the bug was :-( ) Since I am strictly an organic gardener, I refuse to use any toxic sprays to solve the problem. So what is the best way to maintain your garden organically? 

Companion Planting!

If you haven't heard yet, Marigolds are one of the best flowers to plant in your garden for that purpose. They are very easy to grow and they look pretty ;-)

Marigolds take care of:

- Aphids

- Mexican bean beetles

- Squash bugs

- Tomato hornworms

- White flies

- Thrips

- Root rot nematodes (attack roots of strawberries, potatoes and tomatoes)

Look at my bean trellis now!

And when the season is over, don't remove the Marigolds. Just simply leave them in and turn them over. They will rot and kill anything harmful that might have entered your garden. Next year I will plant them everywhere!

My Veggie Garden in June

I have been very active in the garden and on my Facebook page and I feel very bad that blog slipped my mind for the past few weeks. So here I am, back at my keyboard and how else to begin again than with some garden progress report ;-)

Here is my new experiment: Companion planting all the way in this bed. I have 4 rows of carrots, 3 rows of tomatoes, and 2 basil plants. I heard that all of these go well together so I am hoping for the best results. I bought some organic tomato plants (the bigger ones on the picture) and the smaller you see are from my indoor green house. They looked dead when I was putting them in but I guess they caught their second wind. Next i need to get tomato cages.

Here is the basil beauty, doing well.

Climbing beans got hit by some bugs early in the season... the first leaves got eaten. So I planted some marigolds and that took care of 90% of the problem as you see.

This year is the first time my raspberry bush got huge. We have tons of small berries starting to show but I hope the birds will not eat them before we do. The bush is in a remote spot in the garden so it is easy for them to get to it without being disturbed :-(

I love these visitors!!!

Some snap peas coming up on their trellis. 

and so are the climbing beans... well slowly...

Last year I had great luck with the soy beans (edemame), and it so happens that we love this vegetable so much that I devoted most of my bed to it this year. I am hoping for the same result... you can see cauliflower peeking out right by the fence in the same bed.

Oh, how I love my irrigation system... 

Cucumbers (I already pulled the extra ones out.. with heavy heart)

Squash and some more cucumbers... I will have to come up with a trellis for these cucumbers. I just love this ladder bed...

Say hello to my volunteer tomato from last year... I don't have the heart to pull it out so it will be keeping company to the eggplants. They like each other...

You can see most of the garden here...

My strawberry bed is by the porch for the kids to access it easily... First year for those!

This is the only snail I will let stay in my garden ;-)

How is your place coming along?