There is a great opportunity for gardeners to grow edible ground covers instead of regular cover plants in the garden and control weeds. By using such plants, lawns can be replaced with lettuce leaves, berries or herbs to benefit from their numerous benefits. In addition, such a ground cover can also act as a living mulch, helping to retain moisture and eliminate weeds over bare garden soils, as well as protecting against erosion. You can therefore consider starting to grow such ground cover plants just in time for the beginning of spring so that you can enjoy a graceful kitchen garden later. Here are some ideas and tips that can help you.
What makes edible ground covers so beneficial in the garden?
If you expand your existing garden with a fruit or herb garden like this, the strenuous gardening could be more worthwhile. Train fruit-bearing ground covers to grow among other garden plants or even in garden beds. This ensures that your entire garden area is covered and protected from unwanted weeds. At the same time you can water orCutting your plants fresh berriesand pick herbs for your cakes or tea preparations.
Additionally, edible ground covers can be hardy and provide beneficial protection even in harsh weather conditions. This also gives you nutritious and easy-care plants that can transform your garden area into a valuable and sustainable place. So, planting edible groundcovers not only allows you to replace mulch with beneficial plants, but also creates a synergy. This ensures that a symbiosis is created in your garden from which you can benefit on both sides. Here are some of the many benefits you can get from such cover plants.
Enhance gardens with fruit-bearing plants and herb plants
The so-called green manure ensures that your garden soil remains fertile as it promotes the microorganisms beneath the soil surface. As already written above, you can also save water for irrigation because such ground cover stores moisture. Another benefit is that some of these plant varieties will keep garden pests away while attracting beneficial insects like bees. With such a plant cover you also save money, as it is cheaper than buying conventional mulch such as straw or wood chips. This option also allows you to convert the available free garden areas into kitchen gardens.
The best part, however, is that edible ground cover gives you fruits, herbs or lettuce leaves. This means you can look forward to a richer harvest all year round, making cultivation even more worthwhile. However, you also have to choose a suitable growing location, as some edible ground cover plants, for example, cannot tolerate shade. Others also need more space so that they can cover the entire floor area by spreading. What also makes such cover plants excellent is their effect against the spread of weeds, as the latter cannot grow. You also don't have to use too much soil fertilizer because the soil nutrients remain in it. To benefit from all the benefits described above, it is recommended to plant herbaceous edible ground covers. Below are some of the best examples of this.
How ground cover is created through edible berries
When it comes to wild strawberries or wild strawberries for the garden, such varieties can also be used as fruity and edible ground cover. In addition, you can look forward to a longer flowering period. The runners of strawberry plants form their fruits as crowns and can be easily grown from seeds. However, you can also propagate these from cuttings and they will bear either white or red fruits. As ground-covering garden plants, they can provide reliable protection against weeds thanks to their dense foliage. Another advantage is that these strawberries grow non-invasively and can withstand any soil conditions. Their growth habit is also low, with the fruits ripening above the foliage.
In addition, such wild strawberries can be expected to produce abundant fruit. They will gift you with fragrant and intensely tasting fruits if you grow the plants in shady and moist garden areas. You can then use your harvest for numerous types of jams and preserves. These are perennial plants that cannot withstand frost but thrive again in spring. Other suitable edible ground cover plants are wild blueberries and cranberries, which, however, taste a bit sour and are more suitable for juices etc.
Enrich the vegetable garden with lettuce from ground cover plants
Some representatives of wild and leafy lettuce can also be used as edible ground cover in the garden. Most of them spread quickly to keep your garden soil weed-free while you enjoy a bountiful harvest of lettuce before the winter season. If you want to grow new plants, they can also be grown from runners after picking the leaves and leaving the roots in the ground. Plant varieties like sorrel are a good example of this, but you can also try other types of leafy salads like lamb's lettuce.
Even dandelions, usually considered a weed, are suitable for growing as a cover crop that you could use in salads. All of its parts are edible and contain valuable nutrients that are also used in medicine. You can also use it to make pesto, for example, which you can add to many pasta dishes. In addition, such plants are suitable as ground cover because they are low-growing and hardy perennials.
You can also grow most of them in raised beds and quickly grow them to a height of up to 30 cm. They also prefer partial shade and do not require extensive plant care. You can enjoy green ground cover like this all year round and plant the cuttings in various areas in the garden that need to be filled if necessary.
Grow spices and herbs as edible ground cover
Last but not least, you can use some wild plants for teas and spicy foods after growing them as edible ground covers. The best examples are oregano, mint, thyme and sage, although you can also use many other varieties such as lavender as herbaceous cover plants. When it comes to sage, for example, it is a frost-resistant and drought-tolerant herb that is perfect for making tea and can add a subtle flavor to some dishes. The shoots of sage grow horizontally and retain moisture in the soil.
Another recommended variant is mint, which can also be planted in moist growing locations. This means you can fill empty garden areas with aromatic herb plants, which also grow quickly in shady areas and are easy to care for. However, one downside to mint is that it can be invasive. Grow the plant with tall growing vegetables or other such intercropping to prevent this problem. As a versatile plant variety, mint can be used to prepare cocktails, soups, salads or teas and improve their taste.
Also read:Edible ground cover plants: ornamental & useful plants in one
