Planting a Vegetable Garden? Make Room for Flower Bulbs!
Vegetable gardens are prettier and a lot more fun when they include flowers as well as vegetables. I have found that tulips and dahlias are ideal companions for vegetables. Read on to learn how you can combine flower bulbs with vegetables and enjoy a bounty of blooms from spring through fall — while still leaving you plenty of space for growing tomatoes, salad greens and other food crops.
Kick Off the Gardening Season with Tulips
Most vegetable gardens stand empty until the middle or end of May. Why not put some of that space to work and brighten up your spring with tulip bulbs?
Tulips like the same growing conditions as vegetables: fertile, well-drained soil and full sun. If you have planted these bulbs in other places around your yard, you’ll be surprised how much better they perform in a vegetable garden. When treated like royalty, tulips grow bigger and burlier, and the flowers are larger and longer-lasting.
In a vegetable garden, it’s easy to plant tulips generously — in groups of 25, 50 or 100 bulbs. This is the way tulips look best. And you’ll finally have enough stems to cut for indoor bouquets.
When choosing which tulip varieties to plant, there’s no need to worry about harmonizing colors, heights and bloom times. Let your creativity run wild and enjoy growing lots of different varieties. Plant the bulbs in blocks, keeping each variety together. Go for one long row with many blocks of color next to each other, or spread the blocks around the garden wherever there’s space.
Planting bulbs into a ready-made vegetable garden bed is a snap. Just dig out part of a row, place the bulbs and cover them up. (You can find step-by-step instructions HERE). Plant any time in late fall — there’s no need to hurry. November is actually the best time for planting tulips. By then you will have harvested the last of your summer crops, and there will be plenty of room for bulbs.
In early spring, the tulips will be up and getting ready to bloom even before it’s time to plant peas. If you included a range of early, mid and late season varieties, you’ll have flowers blooming for weeks, long before it’s time to plant warm weather crops. As the blossoms fade, just dig out the plants (bulb and all) to make way for your vegetables. When fall rolls around, start the process all over again with a fresh batch of bulbs.
Tulips are usually treated as annuals, because in most climates the bulbs don’t bloom reliably for more than one year. Can’t bear the idea of tossing them out? Allow the foliage to ripen and then plant a shallow-rooted crop like lettuce or spinach over the bulbs. You could also dig up the bulbs and plant them somewhere else. Learn more HERE about which spring-blooming bulbs are reliably perennial.
Add Dahlias for Flowers in Summer and Fall
Dahlias are excellent companions for tomatoes. The plants are similar in size and they require about the same level of care: regular watering and fertilizing, and occasional pruning and tying. Harvesting is compatible, too. When you’re out picking vegetables for dinner, you can pick a bouquet for the table at the same time.
Planting time for dahlias is spring — the same time as other frost-sensitive crops such as tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. You can grow dinnerplate dahlias between your tomato plants; decorative dahlias among your peppers, and border dahlias in your herb garden.
Though all types of dahlias will flourish in a vegetable garden, varieties with single flowers have an added benefit: bees! These daisy-like dahlias have pollen-rich centers that bees can’t resist. Attracting more bees to your vegetable garden will result in better pollination and higher yields for fruiting plants such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, squash and cucumbers.
As fall approaches, vegetable plants grow more slowly. Fruit production tapers off, and vegetable gardens usually start looking bedraggled. Dahlias, on the other hand, are at their best in early fall. They grow vigorously through the dog days of summer and then turn up their flower production as nights begin cooling down. The bittersweet days of fall are a little sweeter when you are still picking big bouquets of dahlias.
Once there’s been a hard frost, you have a couple choices. If you are in growing zones 8-11 you could leave your dahlias in the ground and enjoy them again next year. In colder areas, you can dig up the tubers and either store them indoors for the winter or compost them and plant new tubers next spring. Click HERE to learn about overwintering dahlias indoors.
Growing flower bulbs with vegetables lets you enjoy delicious fresh food plus beautiful fresh flowers. Do you combine flower bulbs with vegetables? Leave a comment and tell us about your favorites!
Shop HERE for tulips
Shop HERE for dahlias
Dear Kathleen,
I’d like to plant amaryllis between my veggies. I already planted herbs together with the veggies.
Will they grow well together?
I live in tropical country.
Hi Krisna. Gardeners in southern parts of the US often plant amaryllis bulbs in their flower gardens. If winter temperatures don’t fall below freezing, you should definitely give them a try.
Can you plant bulbs in the veggie garden and later plant veggies over them? How does this work?
Hi Robin – Tulips and hyacinths are the best bulbs to put in a vegetable garden. You can plant the bulbs in the fall, enjoy them blooming in the spring, and then when they have finished blooming you just pull out the plants, bulb and all, so the beds are available for planting veggies. The following fall, you would replant a fresh batch of bulbs. This is how flower farmers produce cut flowers — it’s like having a spring cutting garden.
Perennial flower bulbs such as daffodils, crocus, snowdrops and such don’t work in a vegetable garden — unless you are planting them around perennial edibles like herbs or asparagus, or have enough room to pair them with a row that is devoted to fall crops. These perennial bulbs use their foliage to store up energy for the following year’s flowers. So you have to let the foliage hang around until it yellows, which can be late June. That’s a conflict for planting vegetables — unless the crops aren’t being planted until midsummer (such as a fall crop of brassicas, kale and other greens). Hope this helps!
This was very helpful. I wanted to know if I could plant bulbs w/my asparagus and you answered it for me and then some. I also will be planting my Dahlias throughout my garden – Last year was my first attempt at dahlias and love the fall and winter color.
Thanks – Great to know! Dahlias love being pampered in a vegetable garden.
Can Calla lillies and tomatoes be grown together in same pot?
Hi Bobbi – Tomato plants are vigorous growers and will usually completely dominate whatever pot they are planted in. I think your callas will be much happier growing in their own container.
Hi Kathleen,
I’d like to plant some tulips in my vegetable garden for cutting. Do I have to dig up the bulbs after they’re cut? Or are there some veggies with shallower roots that I could plant over Them?
Hi Tanya – I always dig out the bulbs after they finish flowering. Space in my vegetable garden is at a premium, so when the bulbs finish flowering I am eager to get them out and plant vegetables.
If you want to try getting your bulbs to re-bloom next year, you need to leave the foliage attached to the bulb until it is completely yellow. It can be July before that happens. If that’s not a problem, then wait it out. Once the foliage is mature, give it a tug and it should pull right out. Then you could plant a shallow-rooted late summer/fall crop such as lettuce or spinach. If you try this, please leave another comment about how it works. Thanks!