Tips on how to attract more bees, butterflies, birds and other pollinators
Native plants such as the California poppy are especially attractive to native pollinators. Kathy Morrison
This is another installment in our weekly Food in My Back Yard series.
Happy Pollinator Week! Celebrate by doing something nice for bees, birds, butterflies and other plant helpers.
If you want to grow food, you need pollinators. Making your edible garden more attractive to pollinators will help make that garden automatically more productive.
Created with the unanimous approval of the U.S. Senate in 2008, National Pollinator Week raises awareness of the importance of pollinators to our food supply – and planetary health. This 18th annual commemoration, officially June 16-22, focuses on what individual home gardeners can do to keep bees buzzing, butterflies flitting and hummingbirds zipping from one flower to the next.
Those aren’t the only pollinators that are busy in our gardens, farms and wildlands.
“Birds, bats, bees, butterflies, beetles, and other small mammals that pollinate plants are responsible for bringing us one out of every three bites of food,” say the organizers. “They also sustain our ecosystems and produce our natural resources by helping plants reproduce. Without the actions of pollinators, agricultural economies, our food supply, and surrounding landscapes would collapse.”
Pollinator Week’s official website – https://www.pollinator.org/ – boasts a wealth of information on pollinators including who does what with which flowers and crops. It also includes some surprising facts such as the importance of flies, beetles, moths and other insects in pollination. (Bees, butterflies and hummers aren’t the only ones feeding off flowers.)
Here’s a sampling of that advice:
* Any outdoor space can become pollinator habitat – even a window box or a curbside median strip. Some spaces are more suited than others; flowers tend to need at least partial sun. Select a site that’s protected from strong wind with available water.
* Not only plants require water; the pollinators need a drink, too. Incorporate water features (such as a small fountain) or shallow water dishes in your garden to help thirsty bees and birds. Some butterflies appreciate a little mud. Some native bee species require a little bare ground for their nests.
* Native plants do the best job of feeding native insects, say the pollinator experts; those California flowers are what are native pollinators naturally crave.
* When planting for pollinators, group multiples of pollinator-friendly plants together; that forms a larger target that’s easier for them to find. It also makes pollinating more efficient.
“If a pollinator can visit the same type of flower over and over, it doesn’t have to relearn how to enter the flower and can transfer pollen to the same species, instead of squandering the pollen on unreceptive flowers,” say the experts.
* Pollinators need food over weeks and months, so use different plants that will extend your garden’s bloom season from early spring to late fall.
* Different plants attract different pollinators. Plant a diversity of plants to support a variety of pollinators. Choose plants with different bloom colors, fragrance and season of bloom as well as different heights – some pollinators like tall plants while others will go after groundcovers.
* Pollinators tend to gravitate towards certain colors and shapes. Bees love bright white, yellow and blue. Butterflies like bright colors, too, but favor red and purple; they need a flower that forms a landing platform (butterflies don’t hover). Hummingbirds see red – scarlet in particular – as well as orange and bright white. Hummers prefer tubular blooms.
* To help gardeners pick the right plants for their potential pollinators, Pollinator.org offers detailed gardening guides and garden recipe cards with specific plant suggestions. These wonderful resources are available for free download.
Sacramento and the upper Central Valley is part of the 24-page garden guide for the “California Dry Steppe Province,” one of scores of agricultural regions nationwide. Here’s the link: https://pollinator.org/PDFs/Guides/Calif.Dry.Steppe.May.2024.rx6.pdf
Comments
0 comments have been posted.Sacramento Digs Gardening to your inbox.
Food in My Back Yard Series
July 8: Tear out that sad plant or baby it? Midsummer decisions
July 1: How to grow summer salad greens
June 24: Weird stuff that's perfectly normal
June 17: Help pollinators help your garden
June 10: Battling early-season tomato pests
June 3: Make your own compost
May 27: Where are the bees when you need them?
May 20: How to help tomatoes thrive on hot days
May 13: Your plants can tell you more than any calendar can
May 6: Maintain soil moisture with mulch for garden success
April 29: What's (already) wrong with my tomato plants?
April 22: Should you stock up on fertilizer? (Yes!)
April 15: Grow culinary herbs in containers
April 8: When to plant summer vegetables
April 1: Don't be fooled by these garden myths
March 25: Fertilizer tips: How to 'feed' your vegetables for healthy growth
March 18: Time to give vegetable seedlings some more space
March 11: Ways to win the fight against weeds
March 4: Potatoes from the garden
Feb. 25: Plant a fruit tree now -- for later
Feb. 18: How to squeeze more food into less space
Feb. 11: When to plant? Consider staggering your transplants
Feb. 4: Starting in seed starting
Local News
Thanks to Our Sponsor!
Sites We Like
Garden Checklist for week of June 29
We're into our typical summer weather pattern now. Get chores, especially watering, done early in the morning while it's cool.
* It’s not too late to add a splash of color. Plant petunias, snapdragons, zinnias and marigolds.
* From seed, plant corn, pumpkins, radishes, winter squash and sunflowers. Plant Halloween pumpkins now.
* Keep your vegetable garden watered, mulched and weeded. Water before 8 a.m. to reduce the chance of fungal infection and to conserve moisture.
* Water, then fertilize vegetables and blooming annuals, perennials and shrubs to give them a boost. Feeding flowering plants every other week will extend their bloom.
* Don’t let tomato plants wilt or dry out completely. Give tomatoes a deep watering two to three times a week.
* Harvest vegetables promptly to encourage plants to produce more. Squash especially tends to grow rapidly in hot weather. Keep an eye on zucchini.
* Pinch back chrysanthemums for bushy plants and more flowers in September.
* Harvest tomatoes, squash, peppers and eggplant. Prompt picking will help keep plants producing.
* Remove spent flowers from roses, daylilies and other bloomers as they finish flowering.
* Pinch off blooms from basil so the plant will grow more leaves.
* Cut back lavender after flowering to promote a second bloom.
* Give vegetable plants bone meal or other fertilizers high in phosphate to stimulate more blooms and fruiting.
Powered by California Local
