Flowers!

Scarlet clover

I love flowers!  They fill me with joy and bring sunshine to my soul.  There are few things I love more than watching bees on flowers.  If I could, I would fill my whole yard with flowers, but they produce very little food and as much as I love beauty, I am painfully practical.  It's a good thing that flowers are both beautiful and practical.  Since flowers attract pollinators and pollinators help food to grow it's a fantastic idea to have flowers growing all over your yard and even amongst your food crops.  Whether you are a traditional gardener, or have a food forest or permaculture, flowers will help increase your food production and beautify your yard.

Yarrow

Bees come out when the air temperature starts to hit about 50.  They are one of the first insects I see every year in my yard and they are on the look out for two things, food and water.  We have a little dish full of rocks (so they don't drown) and water that we set out for the bees as soon as we see the first one.  It's common for us to go outside on a Spring afternoon to find a dozen bees drinking from our little bee dish.  I wish I could give them food as easily as I give them water.  My permaculture yard is still just a baby, we are only in our 2nd year.  I have started to plant flowers, but I don't have nearly as many as I, or the bees, would like. I am working on it.

I have two focuses for my flowers, everything else is a bonus.  I want flowers to be blooming in Spring, Summer, and Fall so there is a food source for the bees all the time.  I also want to have all of my flowers be perennial or reliable self seeders so I don't have to replant them every year.  Last fall I planted scarlet clover as a nitrogen fixer and the bees just loved them in the Spring!  They also made great jelly...and then I killed them.  Don't worry, I will replant and this time they will survive because I learned my lesson.  I haven't noticed that the bees particularly like the yarrow that grows voluntarily in my yard, but I love it.  I do have heavenly smelling roses and I planted two salvia bushes last fall, as well as a triple blooming lilac bush.  The salvia are fall blooming only so I decided to buy a couple more that are summer blooming.  I have them by my grapes to try and entice more pollinators, although they seemed to do a pretty good job this year.  Black-eyed Susan's are growing in pots to plant strategically so I can take advantage of their long roots to help prevent erosion on my berms.

Wild sunflower

For now though it is too hot to plant anything outside.  It would take so much water to keep seeds moist long enough to sprout and get big enough to survive a hot day and it's nearing 100 around here with little shade to help with the harsh weather.   I am starting flowers in pots and moving them outside when they are big enough to handle the heat.  But don't be surprised if you see me outside every day this fall planting bulbs and flowers to feed the bees next year.