Are you planning on spraying your roses for diseases like black spot or powdery mildew? Or for insects like aphids or thrips? If so then I wouldn't suggest mixing them in with anything you're planning on consuming! Even some so called organic remedies may still have toxic effects. I rarely spray my roses for anything and I still don't have any roses growing anywhere near my fruit and vegetable garden.

I think the question of whether vegetables and roses (or flowers generally) "go together" is a matter of artistry. Some combinations are likely to work together better than others.

My own personal aesthetic would not combine roses with sweet corn, but that's just me. On the other hand I can imagine combining at least some roses with lettuces. I also can imagine combining them with basil or swiss chard (especially a red swiss chard or {{gwi:263223}} swiss chard).

(Another vegetable candidate for an ornamental garden would be {{gwi:263224}}. The flowers, bean pods, and beans are all edible and in addition the flowers are pretty, if you like red flowers.)

If you spray your roses for insects & diseases you may not want to eat vegetables getting sprayed by those pesticides.

Aside from that it's probably mostly a cultural thing. My impression is that the French are more familiar with the idea of combining flowers with vegetables. I think Americans tend to assume a vegetable garden is utilitarian rather than beautiful and that the French are more likely to blur that distinction.

(By the way, I am well aware that as long as the roses haven't been sprayed with pesticides both rose petals and also rose fruits/"hips" are quite edible. I once made a garden salad for myself that included petals of Rosa rugosa flowers from the garden where I was living at the time (& since I was the one growing the roses I knew well that doing that was perfectly safe). It was delicious. :) )

No, that wouldn't happen.

(I assume you refer to powdery mildew of roses.)

Rose powdery mildew is actually a particular species of fungus, and it doesn't have the ability to infect lettuce. Even if that rose was infected with rose powdery mildew the nearby lettuces wouldn't ever be infected by that fungus, even if the rose powdery mildew spores landed on the lettuces.

I haven't thought about that. I will need to spray my roses to control those thrips during the summer time.

Growing vegetables seem to be a very popular hobby in my country. Every time I visit the garden center, I will see young couples buying a punnet of Tomatoe seedings etc.

In my old house I did tried growing sweet corns. They taste much better than buying them at the supermarket.

The thing about growing flowering plants such as foxgloves - they look nice - but you can't eat them. Do you know what I mean? Those flowering plants last for maybe once a year, and you have to sow the seeds again for next year or buy a punnet of seedlings again which cost about $5.

I think I will give it a try - something different for change. I will mix sweet corns with sun flowers and roses. Last year I had tried mixing delphiniums, foxgloves and roses together and I wasn't happy with the result.

jimmy, foxgloves will self seed. Sure you can resow them, but for me, that involves taking a spent stalk with seeds and shaking it all over the bed where I want more to grow. Also holly hocks will self seed, but you will get more if you replant collected seeds.

I do grow garlic among my roses. Because we don't eat the part above ground, I feel comfortable with it around roses. I also have chives around my roses, but I don't eat those (I have others that I use if I want chives in the kitchen).

You could plant veggies around roses if you did use pesticides that are rated for edibles. There are of course times where you may need to spray veggies for disease or insects. We did start a veggie garden this year, but it's not near our roses. We just picked our first pepper and tomatoes yesterday!

There also are edible flowers, but you have to learn what they are. Both delphiniums and foxgloves are toxic flowers.

Jimmy, I grew lot of edibles in my rose garden, wherever I could fit them - strawberries (keep an eye on them, they sure love to roam!), blueberries, determinate tomatoes, swiss chard, lettuce, garlic, carrots, even beans on a teepee, but, except for the strawberries and garlic, all were in pots, placed in any bare spot I could find. In spring and early summer everything looked wonderful together. By mid-summer, though, it became quite chaotic, but nothing compared to going outside and picking food fresh from the garden.
This year, I have a community garden, but it's still not enough room! I was on a waiting list for a second plot but unfortunately it doesn't look like I will get it :( Of course, optimist that I am, I started lots of extra tomatoes, peppers, squash, etc. etc.....sigh...back to the pots!

Judith

Last year I had a 'compost tomato' plant that sprung up among my roses. It was one of our best producers. I suppose it liked all the sun, fertilizer and water my roses got.

As has been mentioned, spraying your roses for anything impacts the plants you intend to eat. NOTHING systemic! I've known too many who have poisoned themselves by spraying systemic products and that includes Bayer Rose and Flower control you dump into the ground. My other resistance to growing things like tomatoes and corn around roses would be shade and restricted air flow. While most of the diseases which infect one won't transfer to the other, many insects will and roses shaded by other plants WILL develop problems with either fungi or insects. Nor will they perform as you had hoped. Keep those things in mind, leave enough room for root invasion, air, light and potential chemical intervention (both ways) as well as fertilizer application (fortunately, rose formulations are tomato types so they can often use the same things) and you should be good to go. Kim

I have one bed that I edge each fall with a lettuce mix. I plant the seeds very thickly and harvest leaves (not the whole plant) while very small. It makes a beautifully lush border and yummy salads. I also have onions, garlic chives, eggplant, and bell peppers mixed in my beds. I have done yellow squash (the first year I had a terrible infestation of snails, but not the second year), zuccini, and cukes up a leaning trellis. They sprawl too much without support. Red okra is really pretty also.

Corn should be planted in blocks, not a single row, according to the seed packet. I grow flowers in my veggie garden, but I don't grow veggies in my flower gardens. Too hard to harvest, too many pests.
Renee

Bingo on the corn directions.

It's not nice to say, but those of us in the Corn Belt often have a private giggle at folks who plant a single row of corn & late in the season start asking why they don't see ears developing.

If you like a neat border that looks like tall, apple-green wavy grass stalks, plant in a single row. If you're looking for yummy sweet corn, plant a series of rows in the shape of a square or rectangle.

Unfortunately, most of us have moved so far "from the soil", we don't know things like corn requiring wind to blow the pollen to the silks of other ears for pollination. If you want a tall border, plant sunflowers. There are many heights, colors, forms available and they're easy. The stalks are a good thing to chop up into a compost heap, too and you have the bonus of the edible seeds. Kim

Too true! We so often take local knowledge for granted.

I love the idea of sunflowers as a tall border. I can't remember where I saw pictures, but there was a website that talked about planting a sunflower maze. Those are really neat if you have kids.

Thanks for asking the question ! LOL. I really did have to laugh, but mostly at myself. I had an empty "rose hole" in a bed along the fence carved out of glacier slurry where I moved out a rose that was not doing well in that spot last year waiting for me to find the right rose to plant in that bed. I looked at it this spring and decided to grow a tomato plant in that empty hole until I found the right rose ! Yup, I have a tomato plant with it's cage growing in the midst of my roses. It's fine by me for this season....I'll have the raised bed finished for next season.... and hope I've found the right rose for next season and the tomatoes can go into the new raised bed next year. I am so looking forward to those sweet beautiful tomatoes, I don't care if it looks good as a companion plant this year ! I have labeled it my new experiment in companion plants and am still laughing. What's the use of gardening, if you can't have fun ?

Smiles,
Lyn

PS... I do have a no-spray garden.

Smiles,
Lyn

Sweet corns can be hand pollinated. When I was a teenager, I hand pollinated my corns after watching a gardening segment on TV and it worked. You collect the pollens from the tassel and brush them onto the hairy part of the corn. Hopefully it works this time.

Roses & veggies - definitely a combination of personal taste (pun acknowledged!) I have some underground veggies (radishes, carrots and onions) intermingled with my flower garden, and am happy with them there. I also mix in herbs with the flowers - oregano, rosemary and celantro, and would include more if I actually cooked! I had started including a few tomato plants with the flowers but just didn't like the way they looked, so off they went back to the veggie garden, along with the squash, califlower, broccoli, artichokes, corn, and asparagus. Actually, the asparagus ferns are quite nice, and I'd be content mixing them in the flower garden as well.