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.

Guilds

 

My brand new baby guild.

Guilds are my focus right now.  This is a baby guild, it will look vastly different in a year or so.  A guild is a group of plants that all work together to create a healthy, natural environment.  Remember that with permaculture we are trying to mimic nature and create an environment that is as self sustaining as possible.

Ok, so if we are mimicking nature there are some things we need to keep in mind.   The forest doesn't have a single tree, then 20 feet away another tree with nothing in between.  We need a ground cover on the bottom.  Just like wood chips, a ground cover helps to protect and enhance the soil, providing shade and keeping it cool so the soil stays moist longer.  Some ground covers pull double duty by protecting the soil, but also helping deter pests (creeping thyme) or by adding nitrogen (micro clover).  These suppressor plants also discourage weeds from growing. In a guild, and in permaculture really you want to pick plants that fill more than one function, at least 2, but hopefully 3 or more.  At the end I'll list some of my favorite plants to use.

More mature guild.

So, the first function is the ground cover, the second function is nitrogen fixing plants, these can be trees, bushes, small plants, flowers, or ground cover.  The purpose, of course, it to help your plants and soil be healthy, they act like living fertilizer.  Here's a pro tip, if you plant pretty scarlet clover, don't mow it down to the ground to get another crop of flowers, you will just kill it.  Ask me how I know.  Just dead head the flowers to encourage more blooms, drop it at the base of the plant and it will add nitrogen as it decomposes.  Whatever you choose to plant, it will only add to the healthy of your soil and plants if you cot off bit and drop them, that way the dropped bits are decomposing and adding nitrogen, but the roots underneath that die off also add nitrogen.

Now for one of my favorite functions, attractors.  These are flowering plants that attracts pollinators like bees and butterflies.  They add to the beauty of your garden and many also deter unwanted pests, or add nitrogen to the soil. More bees visiting flowers means more bees pollinating your fruit blossoms and that means more fruit.  Make sure to plant a few different kinds so there is always something in bloom.  You don't need something in bloom all the time around ALL of your trees but a smattering all over the yard will make sure there is always a food source and the bees will love it.

Now that we have talked about attracting friends, how do we deter...not friends?  That's where deterrent plants come in.  They smell strong and confuse or bother pesty bugs.  Think marigold in the garden, but all over.  Herbs are great for this because the strong smell can cover up the smell of your yummy fruit tree and confuse icky pests like coddle moths and aphids.

Mulchers are next.  These are plants that grow profusely and you can chop off parts to use as mulch without killing the plant.  Comfrey is probably my favorite because of it's cell regenerative properties.  The kind I have grows quickly and large, it's tripled in size in the last month, but isn't spreading.  It gets big without taking over.  Mulchers, because they often have large leaves also help shade the soil and add another drip line.

Last but not least, accumulators.  I call them miners because they pull nutrients up from deep in the soil and when they die or leaves fall off those nutrients go back into the top layer for all of the other plants.  The big deep roots also help to aerate the soil, break up compacted soil, and make title tunnels for water to travel down.  

Here is a chart I found immensely helpful, along with a link to the site I found it on.  I love the easy to read chart.  I have used this chart as a reference in the four guilds I have already made and in planning the next ones.

Real quick, here is a list of my favorite guild plants and why I love them:

• Creeping thyme-I love the smell and the flowers are so pretty.  It also spreads fast so it covers up that soil in no time.  I also would like to add creeping mint, but I haven't tested it.  I want to put it near my house where the smell will chase away hornets since I'm afraid of hornets.  Jerks!
• Hairy vetch- it grows crazy fast which is great because I just want to cut it down to add nitrogen to the soil.  It grows fast and i love the little purple flowers.
• Comfrey-as I said, it grows fast so you can chop and drop the leaves, but the cell regeneration is UNREAL.  We used it twice, once for stitches and once when my husband sliced the tip of his finger off with a mandolin slicer. ><  I feel like they both healed twice as fast using a comfrey leaf poultice.  I'll never be without it again!
• Black Eyed Susan's-this pretty flower has DEEP roots.  I love them because my berms have steep sides, I'm not entirely sure I made them right and I need something to help prevent erosion. These are the flowers for that.

I could go on, really.  Ask anyone in my family, I am pretty obsessed with plants.  What's not to love!?