Cool plants to have around!

Last week I promised to show you some beneficial plants. Here are two. Both have featured strongly in my time at Growing Communities. The first is the mallow tree. This furry-leafed tree gives a certain softness to the site, though that’s not the reason it is beneficial…

This plant grows pretty rampantly at Allens Gardens. We have to decide where we will let it grow otherwise I think it might just take over! It’s good because it attracts aphids and because it attracts aphids, it also attracts ladybirds – always a good insect to have around. Here you can see the ladybird larvae munching on dem aphids…

This particular tree got heavily attacked earlier this year….but though it didn’t look so good, it did mean that all the plants around were blissfully healthy…

If you are worried about how the mallow survived, don’t be concerned, I can tell you it fairly quickly returned to good health.

The next plant I am going to show you is the teasel. It’s beneficial in many ways, mostly because it attracts birds who love its seeds. It’s actually a bit of a carnivorous plant – no, it doesn’t eat the birds! – water collects in its crevises, flies fall in and the plant takes their nutrients as they drown.

The teasel at Allens Gardens has taken up a good portion of one of our long bed – here it is in June this year.

And here it is now…

As well as being beneficial by attracting birds and the bugs that would otherwise ravage our sweet salad leaves, growing these plants at Allens Gardens and our other sites means that we ensure the biodiversity so necessary in organic gardening. And that’s pretty cool, me thinks…

Weekly stats…
Grower: 1 | Apprentices: 2 | Volunteers: 7 | Support workers: 1 | Vistors: one mother and child | Potential volunteers: 1 | Friend: 1, who came for lunch | Dog: 1

Harvested from the site…
Salad greens & edible flowers: 10kg | Basil: 120g | Tomatoes: 6kg

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