Plant · P-313

Fennel Bulb

Foeniculum vulgare var azoricum

Fennel is one of the most complete plants around - every part is edible, from the aniseed-flavored leaves and swelling bulb base to the digestive seed and parsnip-like root - and its umbrella-shaped flower heads are a magnet for hoverflies, lacewings and parasitic wasps, the predators that keep garden pests down. It runs on two different calendars depending on what you want from it: sown late in the season it stays vegetative and swells a bulb before bolting, while a spring sowing bolts to flower and seed quickly, which is exactly the point if seed or a flowering insectary clump is the goal. It is also mildly allelopathic - it inhibits beans, tomatoes and kohlrabi growing nearby, and cross-pollinates badly with dill - so it wants a bed of its own rather than a spot in the vegetable garden, though left to self-sow freely it becomes a standing insectary and butterfly host for free.