Jeff Layman wrote:
Hypatia Nachshon wrote:
It's not really OT, since the dire predicament of the pollinators
that give us our "daily bread" is of concern to home gardeners as
well as to consumers of commercially-produced food, organic or
otherwise.

The "pollinator" which gives us our "daily bread" is the wind. No bees
or other insects are involved. All cereal crops AFAIK are wind
pollinated, so our staple foods are not affected by the bee population.

What you know is incorrect. All plants are pollenated by wind to some
extent but wind alone doesn't do a very good job. Grain/forage crops
still rely *primarilly* on insect pollenation... you obviously don't
live in farming country for if you ever walked about wheat/corn/hay
fields you'd see more insect polinators at work than you can count,
and their noise is deafening. Relying on wind alone most of the
pollen would be blown away, that's why I installed central air, the
interior of my house was coated yellow everywhere, and I got rid of
the window screens, couldn't see out through all the pollen anyway.
Now I never open windows. My property is surrounded by thousands of
acres of grain and hay fields, my property was in grain and hay too
when I bought it, but was too dirty, noisy, and ugly; with the insects
all day and the frogs all night couldn't sleep or talk in normal
tones, and after the crops were harvested when there was no snow all
I'd see outside was stubble... now I mow those fields so they are
lawn, much nicer. But there's still lots of pollen, trees and wild
flowers produce more pollen than crops. I still can't understand how
the people here live with no AC and open windows, they can't keep up
with dusting/vacuuming, and they insist on hanging their wash
outdoors, they wear yellow clothes, I mean as much as possible they
buy yellow clothing so folks don't notice the pollen. Just beginning
to green up here... much nicer in every way than hay fields, at dusk
my fertilizing tenants appear:
http://i57.tinypic.com/28iyg6b.jpg
http://i59.tinypic.com/spufwh.jpg