General Schvantzkoph wrote:

This is a follow on to the thread I started earlier about planting
birdseed. Cheap birdseed is a mixture of desirable (like sunflower) and
undesirable (like thistle) seeds so perhaps it makes more sense to plant
specific seeds that produce bee friendly flowers.

Besides sunflowers, what other cheap seeds will produce flowering plants
that bees will find attractive. The goal would be to have flowers
throughout from spring and summer, and into the fall if possible, that
will attract and support the local bee population. If you were a bee
checking the Bee OpenTable for restaurants, what would you like to see on
the menu?

cosmos, annual, very productive seeds,
also very ouchy if you grab one and it
sticks you. get the yellow, orange, reddish
mix (the pink, red, white varieties don't
produce as well when it comes to seeds).

the bees swarm them from mid-summer on
up until early frosts knock them back.

often i have harvested seeds or tagged
plants (when i was selectively pressuring
the color scheme) amid many different
species of bees. inches from my face, arm,
hands, etc. only stung once when i grabbed
some seeds and didn't notice i'd also
grabbed a flower with a bee in it.

plant seeds directly in warm soil (here
that is last week of May/Early June) under
a half inch of soil. water in after
planting and keep moist. will usually
sprout within 4days to a week.

i harvest seeds as soon as they turn black
and spread out. i select from certain
plants to continue encouraging variety.
easily more seeds than i can ever use.
very productive plants.

i leave the stalks up all winter as a
decorative windbreak. in the spring i have
a trench to pile them in and then bury
it to decompose. this season i will
probably bundle and burn them under a
pile of dirt to encourage some charcoal
production.


songbird