ruthhope
Free Ranging
I think you have to experiment and find the answer for yourself as, I note, you are in England.
I'm a keen vegetable, and native plant gardener and as I have only lived in NE FLorida for 9 years, I am still learning. Then I added ducks!!
Well fed ducks by and large do not eat harmful plants. There will always be exceptions, but I trust my ducks. They taste and stop. I have native nightshade--Solanum americanum--in my garden which my ducks have never eaten. I currently have two rescues in a temporary exercise pen on my patio and I managed to have the pen up against the nightshade 2 days ago. Then I saw the two ducks pull leaves and start to eat them. While I held my breath watching, they stopped eating and there were soon a few pieces of the leaves in their paddly pool. Good ducks!!! My ducks are also good about not eating my datil pepper plants [which are likely to have toxic leaves] my green beans and other vines. But somebody [perhaps squirrels perhaps ducks] chews the sweet potato shoots.
My ducks are making a meal out of a nonnative sword fern that was everywhere. I was having difficulty removing it. They eat the leaves, and the little marble size tubors on the roots -- actually the tubors make a huge treat for my ducks. I did check it out when they started eating the tubors and I found that the fern is indigenous to Asia, and in Nepal the tubors are a big treat for children -- raw or roasted. Good ducks helping me eradicate it from my garden!!
They demolished a non-native lily's leaves last autumn but are ignoring the new growth. They will try and eat my century agave leaves -- spikey and tough, but the lower leaves are all scarred from repeated attempts at eating.
What the ducks are not eating is native petunia which flower in the spring and my ducks have no interest in. I checked on line and "no part of the petunia plant is toxic or poisonous if ingested." They are not decimating my scarlet salvia Salvia coccinea which I don't think is toxic [it's not toxic to small children] There is also a low growing native herbacious weed that I had been growing as ground cover and thought that they would love as it is juicy. Ignored. But this weed isn't one you would want to grow in pots! I have a couple of other local native flowering plants that don't get decimated by the ducks but they are not likely to be available to you in England [spiderwort tradescantia ohiensis and Spanish needles bidens alba]
So, if you want potted flowering plants -- try petunias and salvias!!! but then your ducks might have different appetites to my ducks!!
I'm a keen vegetable, and native plant gardener and as I have only lived in NE FLorida for 9 years, I am still learning. Then I added ducks!!
Well fed ducks by and large do not eat harmful plants. There will always be exceptions, but I trust my ducks. They taste and stop. I have native nightshade--Solanum americanum--in my garden which my ducks have never eaten. I currently have two rescues in a temporary exercise pen on my patio and I managed to have the pen up against the nightshade 2 days ago. Then I saw the two ducks pull leaves and start to eat them. While I held my breath watching, they stopped eating and there were soon a few pieces of the leaves in their paddly pool. Good ducks!!! My ducks are also good about not eating my datil pepper plants [which are likely to have toxic leaves] my green beans and other vines. But somebody [perhaps squirrels perhaps ducks] chews the sweet potato shoots.
My ducks are making a meal out of a nonnative sword fern that was everywhere. I was having difficulty removing it. They eat the leaves, and the little marble size tubors on the roots -- actually the tubors make a huge treat for my ducks. I did check it out when they started eating the tubors and I found that the fern is indigenous to Asia, and in Nepal the tubors are a big treat for children -- raw or roasted. Good ducks helping me eradicate it from my garden!!
They demolished a non-native lily's leaves last autumn but are ignoring the new growth. They will try and eat my century agave leaves -- spikey and tough, but the lower leaves are all scarred from repeated attempts at eating.
What the ducks are not eating is native petunia which flower in the spring and my ducks have no interest in. I checked on line and "no part of the petunia plant is toxic or poisonous if ingested." They are not decimating my scarlet salvia Salvia coccinea which I don't think is toxic [it's not toxic to small children] There is also a low growing native herbacious weed that I had been growing as ground cover and thought that they would love as it is juicy. Ignored. But this weed isn't one you would want to grow in pots! I have a couple of other local native flowering plants that don't get decimated by the ducks but they are not likely to be available to you in England [spiderwort tradescantia ohiensis and Spanish needles bidens alba]
So, if you want potted flowering plants -- try petunias and salvias!!! but then your ducks might have different appetites to my ducks!!
