Pollinators in the Garden
arbordave (SE MI)
7 months ago
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peren.all Zone 5a Ontario Canada
3 months agolast modified: 3 months agoarbordave (SE MI) thanked peren.all Zone 5a Ontario CanadaRelated Discussions
Needed bees to pollinate my garden...what do you charge?
Comments (9)Sue, I read your page and it sounds like were doing the same thing, although you are on a much bigger scale. Are house is an old mill house that runs along the river across from an old mill on a dead end street, so we have houses on both sides, but the woods kind of flow into the back yard. Most of the level part of our yard as well as some of the sloping part has been turn into garden space for vegetables and flowers.Our front yards are entirely flowers. My wife did a splendid job, planting poppie,wild geraniums,coreopsis,sunflowers,evening primrose,lavender, and much more. In the back we have our beehives at the top of the hill. We are constantly working to improve the soil and will definitely leave this little patch of earth better off than we found it. As far as your bee questions, some beekeepers will charge you for pollination. In these cases, it's a way of earning part of their income. When that's the case, the beekeeper will promise you a strong hive, bring it before the crop blossoms, and pick the bees back up after the bloom, then find another crop to pollinate. $75 to $100 per hive is not unusually high for that service. On the other hand, as you have done, you can often find an agreement that is mutually beneficial to both of you. A beekeeper is looking for a place to put a hive or two and your looking for some bees. This situation works when there is enough forage for the bees, besides the pumpkins you have, and they can get a good balance and variety of pollen and nectar sources. In that case, the hives can be left there year round and it's a win-win situation. I have a question for you which I've posted on the pset forum and haven't gotten a good reply to. Do you know of anything that prevents vine borers other than chemical sprays? And also,one of my hives is near a field where pumpkins are grown. Are any sprays typically used during the bloom when my bees would be working the flowers? Tony...See Morepreventing spontaneous 'self-cross-pollination'
Comments (2)In hot areas a plastic bag can heat the flower beyond the pollen receptive or development temperatures. It only takes an hour or so for the pollen to grow tubes & do its job but if you keep the flower covered all day that could be a problem. You can also just place a cap of aluminum foil over the pistil. Roll a bit of foil around a toothpick, slide it over the pistil. If it is for protecting your own crosses remove the stamens and some people even say remove the flower's petals to keep pollinating insects away. You only need a pistil & ovary for the flower to produce seed. Sometimes ants can be the culprit. If they are in your daylilies you can put a ring of petrolium jelly around the base of the scape to keep them from climbing it....See MoreInvite Pollinators to Your Garden
Comments (3)From the name of this article, I thought it was another calling from Mrs. Taryn Evans, who has been a 'local' crusader for native pollinators. But while this article talked about providing pollen sources and not disturbing homes, it fell short of mentioning providing homes for the natives, aka Bee Houses. I first heard... er... read about Bee Houses while flipping through a publication from the Wildlife Habitat Council/Audubon Society and then shortly after heard about Mrs. Evans giving a 'class' on these Bee Houses, which she builds and sells, at a local FNPS chapter meeting... which I missed. There are a few websites with general guidelines on building Bee Houses to not only 'invite' the native pollinators, but encourage them to stick around. Here is a link that might be useful: Building Your Own Bee House...See MoreInteresting RHS study re plants for pollinators in gardens
Comments (4)Thank you for this, Woody. We have an interesting set of variables in the UK - although we are an island, we have been enthusiastically importing plants for 500 years - I was at my local botanics the other day, lurking round the 'chronological' beds and was startled to see the history of plant arrivals laid out so clearly - but then, as a maritime nation with imperial ambition, not so surprising. We also suffered late glaciation in the last ice-age which severely limited native diversity, certainly from mainland europe, so we basically squeezed a fraction of geological time into a few centuries of avid collecting...and finally, the gulf stream has blessed us with a mild and temperate nation - although we are somewhere on the same latitude as Moscow or southern Scandinavia (z5), the oceanic currents have lifted us into a forgiving z8. We are also very small (but crowded, with only 1/40 as much landmass as the US. Consequently, while the debate regarding natives, invasives and ecological diversity has been elevated in the US, native plants have never really gained much traction here - not least because of the general paucity of garden-worthy contenders...so we are coming at this issue with entirely different assumptions and expectations...for which |I am glad since, although I lack formal scientific training, I do have eyes to see which are telling me that life is both tenacious and adaptable. Not having the vast and empty land masses in the UK, we have never really taken the issues of invasive plants to heart, apart from a small number of obvious contenders, most of them aquatic - Flora and I have often commented on the continental differences here and in the US - so we are coming at this question purely in terms of pollinators. An example which chimes with my personal experience: I garden in the one tiny part of the UK which still hosts the swallowtail butterfly - for one reason or another, this butterfly has gone down an evolutionary dead-end of depending on one difficult and elusive food plant...which also only grows in this area of undisturbed waterways...and as such, they are rarer than hen's teeth - I have seen only one (this June) in my entire life...and yet, the continental swallowtail has a much wider range of caterpillar food plants (although still in the apiaceae family) and, as climate changes are afoot, we are seeing odd sightings of this warmer-blooded butterfly cousin...and so butterfly conservationists are quickly planting up more umbels since if the 2 species have a chance to meet, to breed or even, in extremis, our butterfly may be forced to adapt - LIFE WILL FIND A WAY. And not only do I enthusiastically grow fennel (one of the continental's favourite foods) I am also growing milkweed because you never know. Conversely, in order to deal with one of our more troubling invasives, Japanese knotweed, plans have been afoot to bring in a particular variety of Japanese beetle which predates on this plant...and we are assured that as soon as the knotweed plants are completely eaten, the beetle will also die out. I am not reassured...although this is not THE japanese beetle of wanton wholesale plant destruction (we are told) I cannot help being sceptical that these 'biological controls' are simply going to lie down and vanish. Life is also tenacious....See Morearbordave (SE MI)
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3 months agolast modified: 3 months agoarbordave (SE MI) thanked prairiemoon2 z6b MAperen.all Zone 5a Ontario Canada
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