FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Flowering food plants are the best of both worlds and are a treat for both bees and people,
The gardening experience is best when it does a lot of things at once: like fruit-bearing plants that attract pollinators when they are in flower.
Everyone, it seems, wants to serve the pollinating community of bugs, bees, hummingbirds and songbirds by planting more flowering plants. And why not? More than 30 per cent of our food plants are pollinated by nature. The more we encourage the good guys in the garden, the better for all of us — including the farmers who grow much of our food.
The benefits of providing an assist to your local pollinators are not limited to your property or balcony.
Fact is, the bee who visits your borage, or starflower, is just as likely to fly up the road to see about some raspberry bushes on the same day. Honeybees foraging for pollen and nectar will travel up to 16 kilometres in one day.
For gardeners who want the best of both worlds — plants that produce flowers and food — consider planting flowering food plants:
Spring flowering edibles: Apples, pears, plums, cherries. Virtually all tree fruits bloom in May and early June.
If you plant ornamental nonfruiting trees, like purpleleafed plum or Japanese cherry, double flowers should be avoided since their petals make it hard for bees to get inside where the pollen is produced.
Early flowering berries include currants, strawberries and blackberries.
Early summer: Asparagus, borage, coriander, chives, bush beans, peas, peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins (all members of the squash family) and autumn fruiting raspberries.
Midsummer: Borage, marjoram, nasturtiums (eat the flowers for a peppery flavour), runner beans, oregano, mint, thyme and rosemary.
Late summer/early fall: Nasturtiums, runner beans, borage and sunflowers (eat the seeds). Borage is on the list for every season except early spring and produces one of the most sought-after flowers by foraging pollen collectors.
Borage honey is lighter and sweeter than what you’re used to.
Also on the list, but easy to overlook, are sunflowers.
Their bright, sunny faces are frequently visited by pollinating native bees and honeybees. They bloom for an extended period and then the seeds are set and ready for harvest.
Or you can just leave them for songbirds to feed on.
The sound of foraging adult finch and their young squeaking away, using their two-note song, will stay in your head all winter.
It becomes a useful reminder of sunnier days in the garden.
Flower to plant ratio: When you plant, look for heavy flowering edibles that provide a high flower-plant ratio. Cherry tomatoes and borage (once again) fit the bill nicely.
Mixing up varieties that bear fruit at different times also helps to support the pollinating community. Plant Julybearing raspberries and September/October-bearing varieties to spread out the flowering times and harvest. Everbearing strawberries provide similar benefits.
Hotels: Once you’ve fed the pollinators, consider providing habitat and water for your beneficial insects. A shallow dish filled with pebbles for insects to perch on as they drink works well. Butterflies prefer to suck water from mud, which is why you often find them at the beach.
Most of our veggie crops will go to seed if we leave them long enough. Radishes and mesclun mix will shoot up a flower which matures in a few days into a cluster of seeds. If you have an excess crop, why not let it flower?
Mark sows peanuts each season for this reason. They’re members of the pea family and have attractive bright orange flowers for a couple of weeks each August.
Not only are homegrown peanuts a real treat when roasted in the oven, the flowers are a novelty almost no one can identify. Except, of course, the pollinators.