Dear Helen: I would like to grow some flowers for cutting in my vegetable garden this year. What annuals will yield good cut flowers from an outdoor seeding?

A: Some of my favourite and most easily grown annual cut flowers are calendula (pot marigold), larkspur, cosmos, sunflower, lavatera and clarkia. All can be seeded this month, as the soil begins warming. Sunflowers combine nicely with tall 'Sensation' cosmos and are well suited for growing along a northern edge of a vegetable plot (where they won't shade out the vegetable plantings).

For their beauty and fragrance, sweet peas reign supreme as summer cut flowers. If you can arrange a simple support of netting or a short length of wire fencing alongside a plot for growing sweet peas on, seed or purchase transplants now.

Taller zinnia and marigold varieties are good cut flowers too, but they require warmth and should be seeded outdoors late this month or transplanted in May. Nasturtiums make cheery, spicy-fragrant little bouquets and are suitable for use as a vegetable plot edging. Young nasturtium leaves add a nice peppery taste and the flowers add colour to salads.

Another very simple route to your cut flower garden would be to grow a ready-made cut flower seed mixture. These are commonly available.

Dear Helen: Wireworms are very destructive in my small vegetable garden. The potato traps I put out catch large numbers of the larvae but not enough to save all my plantings. What else can I do?

A: Wireworms are a common scourge of vegetable gardens, especially in plots that were previously grassy areas. The adult beetles prefer to lay eggs in grasses. The larvae that develop from these eggs take three to five years to grow into adults, which are called "click" beetles for the clicking sound they make when flipping back over from a position on their backs.

The most extreme damage to plants from wireworm feeding on roots, tubers, large seeds and plant crowns occurs during the spring and fall, when the larvae feed close to the soil surface. In summer and winter, they burrow more deeply into the soil. Planting late, as the larvae begin diving, helps to avoid some wireworm damage.

Planting fall rye as a cover crop is not a good idea where there have been wireworm problems. The plants attract adults to lay eggs.

In the spring, before planting, fork over the soil several times and pick out wireworms, whose light and shiny, yellowish brown colouring makes them easy to spot. Missed ones have a good chance of being devoured by birds.

In between soil-turning sessions, set out both potato and carrot traps (to cover more wireworm appetites). Skewer chunks of the roots on sticks and place them in the soil with the stick left above the soil line as markers. Pull them up and remove feeding wireworms every few days.

Dear Helen: Are salad green blends called "mesclun" suitable for my container garden? Can I cut the plants all summer?

A: They are perfect for large containers, and are available in many variations. Depending upon the predominant plants, the taste will be mild and sweet to highly tangy. Common components are leaf lettuces, endive, kale, arugula and Asian greens like red mustard. West Coast Seeds lists eight mesclun mixes.

The blends are designed to be cut a few times before being pulled up. For an uninterrupted supply or greens, keep a relay of containers going with each container being reseeded every few weeks through mid-September. Mix in a little fertilizer and fresh planting mix before each re-seeding.

hchesnut@bcsupernet.com