You don't have to sacrifice your lawn for a colorful flower meadow. Instead, simply transform your former raised vegetable bed into a magical wildflower meadow - and thereby ensure that not only bees and bumblebees feel comfortable with you, but also natural green manure.
Which flowers are suitable for a raised bed?
Planting a raised bed with flowers is ideal for wildflowers, spring and summer flowers. Use former raised vegetable beds for natural green manure with summer flowers or plant onion flowers in raised beds for colorful signs of spring.
Flowers in raised beds: ideal temporary use
A former, now largely rotten vegetable raised bed is ideal for housing typical meadow flowers such as poppies, cornflowers, corn wheels, field delphiniums, chamomiles, chamomiles and daisies. They thrive much better on nutrient-poor, loose soil than, for example, on a meadow. Before sowing, you don't have to re-layer the raised bed; instead, just fill in a lean substrate (€12.00 on Amazon). With a bit of luck, unexpected surprise guests such as mullein, evening primrose or wild teasel will also join you through the arrival of seeds. You can let the wildflower bed re-emerge every year - the annuals mentioned seed themselves - or simply reactivate the raised bed for growing vegetables if necessary.
Green manure through summer flowers
Marigolds, lupins, bee friend, sunflowers, mallow and clover are contained in many green manure mixtures that you can use to grow your raised bed from time to time and thus provide a supply of fresh nutrients. The lush flowers delight your eyes over the summer, after they have faded you simply let the plants rot over the winter.
Suitable species for low-maintenance raised beds
Various summer flowers from the bed and balcony plant range, such as lobelia, summer sage, penstemon, spider flowers, zinnias, snapdragons, elf mirrors, nasturtiums or cape sunflowers, can also be easily cultivated on a raised bed, but require a little more attention than those already described Wildflowers. During the summer months you should regularly supply these flowers with suitable liquid fertilizer.
Colorful signs of spring in the raised bed
If you plant the bulbs of tulips, daffodils, squills, grape hyacinths and other spring bloomers in August or September, you can look forward to a wonderful sea of flowers the following spring. When the onion flowers sprout their first delicate green in March, it is best to add gold lacquer, colorful primroses, forget-me-nots, sweethearts, horned violets and pansies. Once the spring splendor is over, the onions can remain in the bed. On the other hand, spent pansies etc. are removed and replaced with annual summer flowers.
Tip
If you care for the spring flowers as pre-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 the vegetables you want.
