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what's up
songbird wrote:
Terry Coombs wrote: ... I've been trying to get borage (and other stuff) started here , supposed to bloom later than most of the stuff here . I need something that blooms into the summer heat , we have a dearth of nectar sources after about mid-July , and often no nectar flow in the fall . Bees gotta eat , and feeding them sugar syrup gets expensive . if you don't have meadowland/open areas i'm not sure how well most flowering plants i can think of will do. I have power line easements about 60-80 ft wide thru the woods , they get pretty good sun . bee balm and the related bergamot are later blooming. I planted some bee balm , never came up - maybe next spring . some asters. russian sage. There are some asters around , growing wild . if you start it now buckwheat should be blooming in 4 - 6 weeks (needs sunlight). for next year's blooming i would mix in with that some white clover, red clover, alfafa, and birdsfoot trefoil. then you could mow this field in patches to keep some of it from flowering earlier and then it could be left after the first or second cut to bloom later. it will take a few years for the alfalfa and trefoil to really get established. for the immediate and shorter term buckwheat is a good stopgap plant and a good nursery plant for the clovers, trefoil and alfalfa... songbird I'll have to check out the buckwheat , they've been saying on beesource.com that some varieties don't produce much nectar . I did scatter some sweet clover seed , didn't come up . Neither did the borage , bee balm , penstemon ,or the hollyhocks - I may have waited too late . I have reserved some of the seeds I bought , planned on scattering them this fall in hopes they'd germinate next spring . I'd love to crowd some of the grasses out with other stuff that's more bee-friendly . -- Snag |