This is a follow on to the thread I started earlier about planting birdseed. Cheap birdseed is a mixture of desirable (like sunflower) and undesirable (like thistle) seeds so perhaps it makes more sense to plant specific seeds that produce bee friendly flowers.
Besides sunflowers, what other cheap seeds will produce flowering plants that bees will find attractive. The goal would be to have flowers throughout from spring and summer, and into the fall if possible, that will attract and support the local bee population. If you were a bee checking the Bee OpenTable for restaurants, what would you like to see on the menu?
need plants that flower though out the season. Dandelions are typically the first to flower. Clover is is a good one also. Sun flowers are nice, but they will destroy all other plants within six feet, plant sun flowers in an area by themselves. Sunflowers in the future are hard to get rid off, they are good at reseeding themselves year after year. I would go with a few fruit trees too, not cheap tho. The veggie garden works well for the mid summer. Bees like water also, put a few floating corks in the bird bath for them to rest on. Google "bee friendly plants". Their are plants that flower in the fall, off hand I cannot think of them, perhaps "black eyed Susan"?
Avoid pesticides of all kinds, especially for the lawn! Let the dandelions and clover grown in your lawn. When the grass is mowed, it will still look green.
Have a look at Monarda (bee balm). Budlea(butterfly bush) is a woody shrub, but it self sows freely. Don't turn the henbit under until the bees get a chance at it. Bees love mint flowers but it taints the honey. The plant that covers more of the season is clover. Add some white Dutch seeds to your lawn, toss some tall clover seed into those edge areas along with the buckwheat. Having bees visit your property means larger crops.
I haven't found that to be true. They cohabitate with my potatoes, parsnips, and curcubits with no problem. I've never had negative interactions between sunflowers and other plants.
(with a nod to the news) Sunflowers can be used to extract toxic ingredients from soil, such as lead, arsenic and uranium. They were used to remove cesium-137 and strontium-90 from a nearby pond after the Chernobyl disaster[13]
I found sunflower roots to be shallow and not deep. Perhaps due my poor soil conditions and I am taking the slow and low cost to soil improvement. We are talking about those six foot types?
I imagine every plant does have companion plants. I never thought about root crops like potatoes and parsnips. All of my root veggies are all in raised beds. Sunflowers stalks are like corn, so low vine like crops would also make a good companion. But then squash are very hardy plants. So I stand corrected once again :)
However, if planting Sun Flowers I would lookup for companion plants. I will still say there are plants like tomatoes that will not work next to Sun Flowers.
Then look out for the price of sun flowers seeds and masking tape to go through the roof. Japan will be buying a lot of seeds and tape. If they absorb toxins, will the seeds be safe to eat?
Make it hurt worse. I'm watching News Line NHK and they are reporting radiation leaks. So far they are telling people not to panic, but to leave the area as fast as possible =:Oo
I've grown zinnia's along with sunflowers and the bees really like them. I've found a bee asleep on a zinnia bloom more than once in the early morning hours. Grew cosmos last year and that was popular too. And okra - many creatures love okra.
I've found that my bees highly prize the blossoms from the mustard & turnips that overwintered. Also, who could forget the squash family? I commonly see
Read that Russia has okayed extra fuel to Japan and that this act of goodwill my loosen up their relations when this is calmed down. Big +
Also read 1923 tsunami in Japan had MAJOR impact on formatting WWII. Maybe a - ................ Found
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Had
Black Swan events over the past decade ? Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon; ? 78% decline in the Nasdaq; ? 2003 European heat wave (40,000 deaths); ? 2004 Tsunami in Sumatra, Indonesia (230,000 deaths); ? 2005 Kashmir, Pakistan, earthquake (80,000 deaths) ? 2008 Myanmar cyclone (140,000 deaths); ? 2008 Sichuan, China, earthquake ( 68,000 deaths); ? Derivatives roil the world¹s banking system and financial markets; ? Failure of Lehman Brothers and the sale/liquidation of Bear Stearns; ? 30% drop in U.S. home prices; ? 2010 Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, earthquake (315,000 deaths); ? 2010 Russian heat wave (56,000 deaths); ? 2010 BP¹s Gulf of Mexico oil spill; ? 2010 market flash crash (a 1,000-point drop in the DJIA); ? Surge of unrest in the Middle East; and ? Thursday¹s earthquake and tsunami in Japan.
Do you have an emergency plan ready for when things get dicey . . . ? Why not? The time to do drills is before the blitz, not after.
.................... Flooding down under did not make the list wonder why.
In California, we have 2 nuclear sites, San Onofre, and Diablo Canyon which set on the San Andreas Fault line. Since weather moves from west to east, a melt downs at either plant, à lá Chernobyl, would send a toxic plume all across the country.
cosmos, annual, very productive seeds, also very ouchy if you grab one and it sticks you. get the yellow, orange, reddish mix (the pink, red, white varieties don't produce as well when it comes to seeds).
the bees swarm them from mid-summer on up until early frosts knock them back.
often i have harvested seeds or tagged plants (when i was selectively pressuring the color scheme) amid many different species of bees. inches from my face, arm, hands, etc. only stung once when i grabbed some seeds and didn't notice i'd also grabbed a flower with a bee in it.
plant seeds directly in warm soil (here that is last week of May/Early June) under a half inch of soil. water in after planting and keep moist. will usually sprout within 4days to a week.
i harvest seeds as soon as they turn black and spread out. i select from certain plants to continue encouraging variety. easily more seeds than i can ever use. very productive plants.
i leave the stalks up all winter as a decorative windbreak. in the spring i have a trench to pile them in and then bury it to decompose. this season i will probably bundle and burn them under a pile of dirt to encourage some charcoal production.
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