If you haven’t already, sow spider flower, Cleome spinosa, for an autumn showing. This long-blooming annual is grown as much for its beauty as its novelty, with its long stamens resembling spiders’ legs. It’s a tall, shrubby plant to 1.5m high, so position at the back of the border and deadhead regularly for repeat blooms. The flowers are pink or white and are easily grown by seed – or, if you can find them, seedlings from your garden centre.
This is a great plant to grow as a catch crop, or bug lure, because the flowers attract the dastardly green vegetable bug. Errk! you might say, but better on your cleome than your veggies!
Plant Now: Spider Flowers
January 16, 2011 by 2 Comments
How far away from your veggies would you recommend planting them? I want to lure them away from my tomatoes rather than tempt more to them 🙂
Hi Robert. In home gardens and small fields, catch crops can be planted around the perimeter of the garden. I visited a reasonably large organic garden where cleome were planted on the borders. The owner said she picked off around 20 green vegetable bugs a day (which she fed to her chooks). She also planted sunflowers as they too attracted the green vegetable bug when they went to seed. You can also plant cleome in large containers. To be doubly effective, insert a stake with a long piece of tubing, painted yellow, attached to the top to lure them in.