 Hi there and welcome to the channel. So in today's video we are going to be planting up a whole pile of flowers today and we're going to talk about why you should be adding flowers into your vegetable garden. So introducing flowers into your garden has a lot of perks besides just adding beauty and color to your garden. Flowers can be used to deter pests and attract all sorts of pollinators. So we're going to go through a bunch of flowers that I'm going to be starting here today from seed and talk about why they are a benefit in your vegetable garden. One of the favorite flowers that I like planting and putting amongst my vegetables in the garden is the nasturtium. I have a couple different colors here today that I'm going to start from seed. These are also very easy to collect seeds from in the fall. I just didn't do it last year but I definitely will try to do that this year. So it is said that the scent from the nasturtium helps repel pests. I like to plant these around my tomatoes and peppers. I find the nasturtiums really spread around once they get into a garden space so I like to just put them right into the ground as opposed to containers just to let them really spread. We are about a month away now from last frost date which is mid-May. We're in mid April here. Most of these flowers I'll be putting out probably towards the end of May once they're well-established and I've done some hardening off with them. So the cosmos and the zinnias are another couple great flowers that attract the bees and the hummingbird. They make wonderful cut flowers as well. You can see zinnias have a whole bunch of beautiful different colors. I collected some of my pink zinnias seeds last fall so I'm going to try planting a little bit of each of these. The sweet to lesson was something that I've often bought and just used as a filler in my pots for my flowers to go with my flowers. I didn't realize that the elitism was also a great flower to have in your vegetable garden. Especially the white color they say attracts the most beneficial insects to your garden. It also is very effective as a living mulch because its shallow roots hold the soil in place. The elitism flower is supposed to make a good companion flower to plant along with your potatoes. So this is something I plan once these get well-established here I will transplant them directly into the ground amongst my potato crop this year. Something else I want to introduce more of into my garden is native grasses and ornamental grasses. So these are some that I'm going to try starting from seed today that make a really pretty flower in pots or in your flower beds. So this is the ornamental ruby grass and the bunny tail grass. I'm also going to try some of this amaranthus which is not really a grass but I like to use it as a centerpiece in a lot of my flower pots. It makes a really pretty flower. So I'm going to be starting each of these from seed. I also had started some of this ruby grass in the milk jugs using the winter sowing method. So that is still sitting outside no signs of sprouting yet. So hopefully in the next few weeks we will see if this works in the winter sowing method. So both the native grasses and the flowers also help to maintain a healthy garden ecology by holding the soil in place and by feeding the beneficial soil organisms when their roots die back. So here in the Saskatchewan Prairies we are lucky to have very long days of sunlight starting now. The days are always getting longer every day. Sun comes up around 5, 5.30 right now. So being able to put all my plants here in a sunny window is a great way to get a lot of flowers going without having to use any grow lights. And of course if you don't have the time or the space to start flowers indoors yourself a lot of these are easy to find at the greenhouse or grocery stores, the big box store sells most of these types of flowers that are great for your garden. Sometimes I just directly plant my flowers right into the containers that I'm going to be setting them outside in. These are my impatience that I actually saved last fall from cuttings. So I grew these impatience all winter indoors and then took cuttings a couple months ago, rerouted them and now I'm putting them back into these pots to go outside again this summer. Stranium, I just put it in the garage every fall and let it die off and bring it back out in the spring. And as you can see it's really taken off. I probably will take a bunch of cuttings off of this and try to multiply it into several more plants to go into the garden. Merry Golds are another flower that are really easy to collect seeds from in the fall and they are a great companion plant to put into your garden. I like to just direct sew them into these old coffee cans that are kind of rusted up and rustic looking. They seem to like growing in there and then once they get going just set them out in the garden in different areas. You can move them around. Merry Golds are very good for deterring pests from your vegetables. These are some strawberries that I purchased from a local greenhouse just as bear root crowns. I got a package of 24 of them. I think they were only about 75 cents a piece. Brought them home and potted them up and I got two or three different containers going plus a whole bunch of extra more that I can probably put directly into my garden. I like to plant strawberries in with my asparagus. Strawberries in asparagus are supposed to be good companions in the garden as well. Some other flowers that I'll be just directly sewing into the garden are poppies. Lots of sweet peas. Sweet peas can be direct sewn into the soil. Fairly soon they don't mind a little bit of cold in the spring so I got a couple varieties of those. Those of course attract the bees and the butterflies and sunflowers. I'd love to have those all over the garden as well. Some of these I may start indoors but a lot of them can be directly sewn into the ground as well. Some of the things that I included in my winter sewing jugs this year was borage and calendula. Both are great for attracting the bees and also from deterring pests. I should also mention that in addition to flowers your herbs that you may be growing in your garden are great companions amongst your vegetables. Basils are great to plant close to your tomatoes. Things like the dill and the cilantro if you let them go to seed and let them bloom they make a great attractor to a lot of pollinators to your garden. So to be sure to add these to your vegetable garden as well. So it could be that I maybe want a little overboard on the amount of flowers that I've started indoors this year but I really cut back on the number of vegetables, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers that I've started indoors and I think you can never have too many flowers in your garden. There's always a spot that you could stick them somewhere. So this is what the garden is looking like today. It's still pretty cold here on the Saskatchewan prairies but the ground is slowly starting to warm up and I'm excited to get outside and start getting my garden ready. So hopefully on the next video we will be outdoors checking out my garden getting it ready for the summer. I hope you enjoyed watching this video. Please don't forget to leave a comment, hit that like button and subscribe so that you don't miss out on the next video coming to the channel. Thanks for watching.