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what's up
Terry Coombs wrote:
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 . seeds? some asters. russian sage. There are some asters around , growing wild . the white smaller ones are earlier bloomers here than the later purple ones. the purple asters are about the latest flowers we'll see along the roads. 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... 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 . depends upon the plant, but many seem to do better when planted later in the summer and into the fall, but some need disturbed soil, others need some action to get the seeds down in far enough, others need a bit of fire or heat, others need the cold and frozen time that winter can provide. patience and watching areas you've put things to see what sprouts when... sometimes adding some potted plants will help get a patch established. oh, besides buckwheat, radish works well as a nursery crop as it also grows quickly. some varieties of flax are very nice to look at too, but it might be too late to plant them down there (golden flax seeds i like more than the black seeded types). radish blooms the second season (as also the purple top turnips, beets and chards). songbird |
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