🌷 Growing Flowers vs. Growing Vegetables 🥕

Have you ever thought of growing both flowers and vegetables in your garden? While flowers add to the overall beauty of your lawn, vegetables can fill your pantry and dining tables. 

Sure enough, growing these two can be really fun and functional, but is it really best to grow both flowers and vegetables? How do we know if it’s better to grow just one of them? How can both grow properly? 

In this blog, we’ll try to explore the difference between growing flowers and vegetables, including tips and tricks on how you could grow them properly.

When to grow flowers and when to grow vegetables?

The first thing that you should consider in growing flowers and vegetables in your garden space. In general, vegetables need more space than flowers. While flowers grow tall, vegetables tend to grow bushes and branches all over their space. Most vegetables grow larger roots, too. 

In short, you need bigger soil beds and more plant containers when you want to grow vegetables. If that is impossible for your lawn, then you should opt for flowers or planting bags.

Another thing that you should consider is the time you can dedicate to gardening. Growing vegetables require more time and commitment than growing flowers. There are lots of perennial flowers which don’t need to be replanted every year. On the other hand, you constantly need to replant vegetables and check on them almost every day. 

The next thing is your health. If you or any of your family members have allergies to pollens, then you should definitely pass on growing flowers.

Lastly is the cost of gardening. Growing vegetables can be profitable, but they’re more susceptible to crop loss because of the risk of planting. On the other hand, growing flowers have a better success rate. Plus, you can also make money out of flowers. Why not start up your own bouquet store using your own flowers!

What is the difference between growing flowers and growing vegetables?

One of the major reasons why vegetables need more attention than flowers is that they’re more susceptible to pests. Because they’re generally edible, various kinds of insects, pests, and worms will feed on them. This will require you to use pesticides every now and then. You can opt for organic pesticides to ensure that your veggies remain edible, but these brands cost more than the generic ones.

On the other hand, most flowers only have bees, which is even something they actually need!

The next thing is their exposure to the sun. In general, vegetables need better sun exposure compared to flowers, except for some kinds such as sunflowers, marigolds, and geraniums. So, in order to have a successful vegetable garden, you have to set up your plant bed to direct sunlight. In growing flowers, you are free to consider aesthetic purposes in their placement.

Soils are great considerations as well when it comes to gardening. Flowers tend to need more complex soil compared to vegetables. Most vegetables need rich loam soil, preferably 50% compost and 50% topsoil. On the other hand, some flowers need sandy loam soil. You could also include a good amount of peat in your compost and topsoil mixture.

Lastly, it's best to water your flowers between 6:00 AM to 10:00 AM in terms of irrigation. This timeframe has less risk of evaporation. Resist the urge to water your flowers again within the day as it may be dangerous to their growth. 

Watering your vegetables will depend on the moisture of their soil. You can stick your fingers to the soil, and once some compost adheres to your fingers, it means that the soil is still moisturized, and you can skip on watering. If not, you should prepare your garden hose. 

Since you can stick with a regular schedule in watering flowers, you can say that it has better irrigation process than vegetables.

So, have you decided if you would plant vegetables or flowers? Whatever it is that you’re growing, remember that gardening would always be a fun and fulfilling hobby!