Friday, June 25, 2010

pollinators

beeNext time you harvest your vegetables, pick up fruit from your trees or collect seeds for next year's planting don't forget to thank your diligent worker bees. Since 80% of the pollination is done by insects, welcome them in your garden and make sure they feel comfortable. Please, please, please don't use insecticides, since they have catastrophic effects on bee communities. Plant flowers rich in nectar to entice flying insects - good examples are honeysuckle, garden phlox (first photo), marigolds, geraniums, roses, holyhocks (second photo), dahlias, sedums, roses, beebalm, raspberries, and mint.




If you want butterflies to come to your garden make sure you have butterfly bush (there is a reason it was given that name).  If you want the butterflies to stay in your garden plant fennel and dill to provide them with a home (butterflies lay eggs on the seed heads of these herbs).

Just in case you haven't seen it up close, here is a picture of how insects help with cross-pollination.  Yeap, that's actually pollen.pollination

Bees are essential if you have fruit trees, since with a few exceptions they depend on cross pollination (mostly done by flying insects) to bear fruit. Some trees, like sour cherries and the "Conference" pear tree variety, are self-fertile. Most apple trees are not: they need pollen from a different apple tree, or even a different variety of apple tree to bear fruit.

Also, keep in mind that for plants that have male and female flowers on different plants, such as holly, melons, cucumbers, and squash, for instance, the bees are essential for pollination. If you have only one holly plant in your garden, of if you have two plants that are both male or female, you will never see the familiar berries, which are produced by the female plant. As a rule of thumb, one male holly for four female hollies is a good proportion, and they need to be in close proximity(less than 30 feet).

Some plants, such as tomatoes and peppers, are self pollinating, but they still benefit from the assistance of bees in cross pollination.

All in all, please remember that a lush, thriving, fertile and abundant garden is all-a-buzz. If bees and butterflies come to your garden, pat yourself on the back. You will see a bountiful harvest in the fall.
Posted by all-year-garden at 10:19 PM

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)

Page

the art of waiting

You walk along the garden path one morning, look around and wonder where did it all come from. Naturally, you planted them all, or nearly all, with a few pleasant surprises here and there of self-sown perennials that sprung out from under annual growies before you got to notice them. Otherwise, though, the tall, stately beauties surrounding you are always taking you by surprise, because the first lesson in humility that is served to obstinate gardeners is the unwillingness of living things to develop according to your plans. They have their own internal clocks, their own environmental sensitivities and a completely different relationship with time than you. So, those lupines that you planted and thought dead sprung up on you two years later, after you planted cosmos over the following year, which self-seeded, and now both plants are gracefully mixing together in a fluff of stringy and palmed leaves, taking over an entire portion of your garden that you were intending for a completely different purpose this year. Or the snapdragons whose seeds you spread evenly over an area, but they decided to all come out bundled together to the left of the patch, leaving the rest of the dirt barren. Or the lily-of-the-valley that you tried to start from roots in the same spot for three years in a row, and now it decided to come out all at the same time and completely take over. Maybe you were planning, but your garden begs to differ. And when the garden and the gardener have different opinions, the garden usually wins. The struggling plant that you moved because you needed the space and didn't feel like throwing away now thrives in its new location with a vigor beyond expectations. Sun loving plants keep blooming in the shade behind the house, in a place that, of course, is not a showy feature of your garden. After a while, the oddities and surprises of your garden become familiar and dear to you, like an old friend's little idiosyncrasies warm up your heart after you haven't seen her in a while. A sense of peace descends upon the wiser gardener, a sense of acceptance that in this dialogue with nature, nature has something to say back to you. If those plants that you failed to recognize when you transferred them outdoors and planted them at the front of the flower bed turned out to be tomatoes, or if the sun garden you neatly organized according to height and flowering season exploded into a jumbled jungle of healthy growth, or if the miniature zinnias developed into four foot tall tree-like structures, or if all those tens of berries you saw on your strawberry plants were gone the second they turned slightly ripe because squirrels and rabbits believed in sharing, enjoy it, allow it, embrace it. If gardening only taught me one thing it would be the art of waiting. If you have enough patience and time, things kinda turn out the way you planned, sort of, eventually.

your private outdoors

Sitting at the table under the tree canopy, a book in one hand, the other hand mindlessly rubbing your temples, you lose track of time. The splotches of light filtered through the branches above move slowly opposite the sun path, while the day merges into evening. The light becomes gentler, more tired, almost horizontal. Around you two full walls, one half wall, a tree for a roof, and a balcony: your private outdoors. Noises come and go, the chirping of birds, the passing cars, people chatting while walking their dogs, the syncopated rhythm of joggers, the soft rubbery noise of bicycle wheels. The words on the page start fading as the evening shadow descends into the night, the contours are less precise, the contrast becomes nonexistent. Your cat comes around rubbing against your leg to remind you of dinner. The kids go in and out of the house abruptly, slamming doors, running down stairs and giggling plenty. Night flowering plants release their fragrance in the warmth of the day's end, and as light becomes more scarce, the sounds and scents intensify. The cat settles down in your lap, purring. Eerie little blue solar powered garden lights dot the darkened contours of the plant masses, and you discern more than you see the familiar garden path, the lilac bush, the archway above the gate. White flowers look like reversed shadows in the headlights of passing cars. The heavy summer night air, thick with humid fragrance, slowly cools down into a breeze.