In hopes of improving my polination in spring, I’ve been trying to plant some flowering native plants that keep the bees fed before fruit blooms and after my fruit finishes up. I’ve got some Hellebore to help early when nothing but my pluots, plums, and apricots are blooming, but I’m not sure what to plant for summer once the blackberries/strawberries and chives (oh god I have more chives than anybody needs or wants) are done.
I’ve got some coneflowers and a maypop, but that’s about it. Anybody have some good suggestions? I might dig up some of the chive plants and maybe move them, plus I’m not real fond of this frondy fernlike plant I’ve got. I don’t think it flowers.
RIght now all my non-fruiting plants are in a strip that separates the berry bed from the rest of the lawn, so I’d rather have plants that don’t get all that tall or something I put in the back yard that is at best half shade to full shade.
I find Chive to be very invasive.
Cilantro flowers attract bees like crazy. In my yard cilantro bolts by June and keep flowering for a good while. Bees go nuts for them.
I think the native asters and goldenrods are the best in the fall.
Multiple sowings of buckwheat can provide good summer forage. White Dutch clover sowed in the lawn would be good.
Many others…
I second all these plants as excellent pollinators and companion plants but you guys forgot bee balm (Bergamont) and it makes an excellent companion plant and tea with anise hyssop. However Trees are really what our native bees need and things like jujube persimmon are excellent summer flower trees (As are black locusts or lindens but probably ignore if you got alot of wild ones near you) then for fall flower trees The korean Bee Bee tree (z6) is great as well as the Seven sun flower tree that may be hardy to zone 4.
@RichardRoundTree I love linden trees. I have been reading about how people used to use the flowers for tea, and supposedly a chocolate substitute. Around here the japanese beetles have really been destroying them. They all end up defoliated by the end of the summer. Makes me wonder if they will eventually die out. Some people use pesticide spikes, inserted in the tree to kill the j beetles, and i wonder if it also kills pollinators.
Yah . ,!
I wonder.?
A single act like that could potentially kill many ( most ? ) bees ,pollenators , benefital s , etc for a mile.
Linden is very attractive to nectar loving insects.
Could be like bait to the last supper. ?
I assume it would 100% kill or harm pollinators and beneficials, I very much like and use Grub b gone for the j beetle larvae and feel the most effective approach would be city wide applications of this and milky spore (maybe a half for half pay option with citizens to apply on there own as well as park applications) and city wide j beetle traps. I know they think about doing that here for J beetle and Emerald ash borer. Beneficial nematodes also work for both of these pest but with how far they travel i think we need a concerted effort to get them under control.