You don't have to sacrifice your lawn for a colorful flower meadow. Instead, you simply transform your former raised vegetable bed into an enchanting wildflower meadow - and thus ensure that not only bees and bumblebees feel comfortable with you, but also that natural green manure is used.

Flowers also feel at home in the raised bed

Flowers in the raised bed: ideal temporary use

A former raised vegetable bed, which has now largely rotted away, is perfect for housing typical meadow flowers such as poppies, cornflowers, corn radish, larkspur, chamomile, dyer's chamomile and marguerite. They thrive much better on nutrient-poor, loose soil than, for example, on a meadow. Before sowing, you do not have to re-layer the raised bed, instead you just fill in a lean substrate. With a bit of luck, unexpected surprise guests such as mullein, evening primrose or wild cardoon will also appear due to the seed flow. You can let the wildflower bed spring up again every year - the annuals mentioned self-seed - or simply reactivate the raised bed for growing vegetables if necessary.

Green manure with summer flowers

Marigolds, lupins, bee friends, sunflowers, mallows and clover are contained in many green manure mixtures, which you can use to cover your raised bed from time to time and thus ensure a supply of fresh nutrients. The lush blooms delight your eyes over the summer, after they have faded you can simply let the plants rot over the winter.

Suitable species for low-maintenance raised beds

Various summer flowers from the bedding and balcony plant range such as lobelia, summer sage, penstemon, spider flowers, zinnia, snapdragon, elf mirror, nasturtium or cape sunflower can also be cultivated in a raised bed, but they need a little more attention than the wild flowers already described. During the summer months you should regularly supply these flowers with suitable liquid fertilizer.

Colorful heralds of spring in the raised bed

If you plant the bulbs of tulips, daffodils, squills, grape hyacinths and other spring flowers in August or September, you can look forward to a wonderful sea of flowers the following spring. When the onion flowers are beginning to turn green in March, it is best to add gold lacquer, colorful primroses, forget-me-nots, daisies, horned violets and pansies. Once the splendor of spring is over, the onions can remain in the bed. On the other hand, faded pansies and the like are removed and replaced with annual summer flowers.

tips

If you keep the spring flowers as a preliminary culture in the raised vegetable bed, you should also remove the flower bulbs after they have faded and store them in a dry box until the end of summer. Then plant whatever vegetables you want.

Category:

Vegetable garden