Planting Vegetable Plants as Ornamental Plants

Mrs. Stoney always says if you can’t eat it, she doesn’t want to take care of it.  Now that may be a little extreme but for a lot of years now we have gone really light on the annual flowers in our yard and heavy on the edible plants.  We have experimented over the years with planting different veggies in our flower beds.  This year we are trying sweet peppers.

Pepper plants work out really well as decorative plants.  The dark green leaves and small white blossoms fit in really well in our flower beds.

We had about a dozen peppers this year that were ready to be planted out, but we didn’t have any garden space for them.  So we choose to plant them in the flower bed up front.

After struggling for a few weeks all it took was a shot of organic fertilizer and they snapped right of of it and are turning into very beautiful plants.  And the bonus is this bed will now provide us with a great harvest of peppers that will make it to the freezer and last all winter!!

This flower bed is looking pretty sparse this year because we moved in too late to really get many annuals started, so the peppers are really helping.  I think pepper plants will be a part of this flower bed every year now.  They add a nice “taller” plant and a different colored leaf!

In years past we have tried several different vegetables in our flower beds with varying success.  Cabbage plants look great but when the head is ready to harvest you loose the whole plant.  We have also tried broccoli and lettuce always looks great mixed in with flowers.

What types of vegetables have  you tried planting as an ornament plant in your flower gardens?