Flowers and the Bees

I like to plant flowers every year for the bees. I have lots of sweet alyssum, but one of my favorites is the zinnias. Even when I don't deadhead them they will continue to bloom wonderfully. But now the zinnias have no bees around them. I didn't see one there this morning. There are two reasons why.

The first would be this plant. It is a 9' tall Lemon Queen sunflower. I don't plant sunflowers anymore. I did the first year and after that they just come up. This spot is in my rock wall garden along the road. I never even had a sunflower close to this before, but I suspect a squirrel stole a flower from somewhere else and ate it on top of the wall.

Bees love these as much as the birds and the squirrels do. Yesterday when coming home I stopped in front of the driveway watching the goldfinch eat.

The other reason the zinnias have no bees are these yellow mustard flowers. I'm growing them for seed, but you would think I'm growing them for the bees.

The honey bees swarm the plants and one of my favorite things to do is go outside and stand right near them and listen to their buzzing. I know lot of people get freaked out by buzzing bees, but to me it does the opposite.

Now I tried to take photos of the bumblebees, but none of them came out well. So I'll show you a flower that doesn't seem to attract any bees. It is in the morning glory family - a sweet potato flower. Most don't flower for me, but the Garnet always puts out some pretty pink flowers that hide in the foliage. That was something I forgot when I put the a Garnet into my front door planter. I have other orange flowers in there and the colors clash badly. If my potted sweet potato experiment works out I'll have to do a pink or maybe a blue flower in there next year. But not orange.

I'm supposed to cut off the garlic chive flowers as scapes to eat, but I never seem to get around to it in time. And I really don't mind as it attracts a lot of different kinds of wasps. Above is a Great Black Wasp. They get pretty big at maybe an inch and a half (4cm). They have the prettiest iridescent blue wings. They don't often land anywhere. Mostly I see them hovering around the garden but they seem to love these flowers and it is the only place I can get a photo. They feed katydids, grasshoppers, and crickets to their young. And lord knows I have a lot of crickets around for them the feed on. I do love my wasps. Most of them are smaller wasps that eat caterpillars. And who doesn't like fewer caterpillars eating their veggies?

Bees

At my last garden I could go out in July and close my eyes. I could hear the buzz of the bees. Three were so many and so many different varieties that it was more of a steady hum than a real bee buzz. If I close my eyes in my current garden, I can occasionally hear individual bees, but usually only if I'm near the flowers and the weather is very nice.

Bees have been slow to find my garden. But a few are showing up. Above made me really smile. I don't think it pollinates any of my vegetables, but I do love metallic green bees. I had two types that showed up regularly at my last garden. This is the first and only that I've seen here.

Bumble bees are always the first to show up in the spring for me. Both here and at my last garden. They are busy workers and a real boon to my vegetable garden. They especially love my tomatoes and I'm happy for that.

No garden is complete without honeybees. One year I saw barely any, but this year they seem to be around. I can usually find one somewhere on a sunny day.

Many bees are just bees I don't know their names of like this small bee.

And some aren't bees at all but hoverflies. They are bee look alikes.

I'm guessing this is some kind of hornet. It isn't one that visited my last garden. I had white faced hornets there. I even had a nest near my raspberries one year. Luckily white faced hornets are pretty peaceful creatures. I hope this one is too. I've only been stung twice while working in the garden. Once a tiny little bee got stuck in my hair. I couldn't get it out. I was hoping it would work its way out before I went inside. Nope it worked its way to my neck. I was really shocked it could even sting me it was so tiny and its sting wasn't very bad. The second was digging in the soil with my hands planting something. I rarely use a trowel. Hands are my favorite tool. Well I ran into a solitary wasps nest. Ouch. That one hurt, but at least I didn't have to look for a stinger. I was sad to have disturbed it though. I count on wasps to help me out.

In my last garden, when the herbs bloomed especially coriander, my garden was flooded with small and large wasps of all kinds. When I had tomato hornworms they were usually found parasitized with wasp larvae. They really kept the bad guys down. Here I've seen exactly one yellow jacket (my least favorite species of wasp). I'm a bit worried about that.

Addendum. After writing this post I found some of the blue black wasps I've seen before. I'm happy they found the garden, but the coriander blooms brought them in. Taking a photo of them is hard. They never want to land, but just buzz about all day long.

Calm before the Storms

Today we are getting hit by three different fronts all colliding at once. My trusty weatherman has taken to calling it "hybrid storm Danny" since one of the fronts is the remains of tropical storm Danny. Danny is a warm weather system. We also have a nor'easter hitting at the same time. Nor'easters are storms formed by cold weather. So it will be a wild day.

Yesterday the wild life and your trusty gardener were preparing for the storm in own ways. The wild turkeys were roosting in the backyard woods occasionally taking a break to scratch in the dirt for bugs. They weren't too pleased by my going out to garden.

What are you looking at me for? Go mind your own business.

They decided to find a less busy spot to roost over the fence in my neighbor's yard. I wonder what they do during a big storm. Do they hunker down or do they start looking for the worms that rise to the surface during heavy rains?

The bees were busy in the sedum collecting nectar. This plant was swarming with bees. It was quite fun to watch. Sadly during the sunflower bee count there were no bees. Now I know where they all went.

I had another rush of busyness in the garden. I put in the last of the fall seedlings. I had 5 komatsuna, 2 tatsoi and a handful of lettuce plants that went in. My laundry room seems so dark now. The seedlings are all gone. The grow light is off - at least until next year.

No more eggplants

Then I ripped out my eggplant. The only one that was putting out nice eggplants were my Slim Jims and with the sun so low they are now shaded most of the day by my bean plants. I figured it was time to plant spinach and mache anyway.

I didn't plant the seeds yet. They might get washed away since we are predicted to have 3-5 inches of rain, but I did prepare the beds. I added compost to this spot and where some of the onions used to grow. Then turned it under. I'd been waiting for the weather to break before planting out and now we have some nice cool weather predicted. Now I just need to somehow keep the sowbugs and slugs from eating the seedlings before they are really up. I've never grown mache before. I got the seed from Michelle over at From Seed To Table. I'm hoping they will overwinter.

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day August 2009

In honor of counting my first bees for the Great Sunflower Project, I'm devoting this Bloom Day post to all the pollinators out there. I really needed to spend a couple hours out in the garden to try to capture the range of pollinators in my garden, but you get what you pay for, and no one has offered to pay me yet for blog writing. So you have the pollinators for the 15 minutes I was out taking photos. Hmm 15 minutes seems very appropriate since that is how long the Great Sunflower Project wants you to count your bees. Well onto the flowers.

Lemon Queen sunflower with a bumble bee

Music Box sunflower with a bumble bee

Tithonia (aka Mexican Sunflower) with a bee fly

Black-Eyed-Susan with a bee fly

Coreopsis with a moth

Dill with a honey bee

Cilantro with a bumble bee

Squash with a honey bee

If you want to join GBBD head over to May Dream Gardens.

Sunflowers and Bees

I don't know even where to begin to tell you about the changes in the garden over the six days that I was gone, so I'll start with something small. My Lemon Queen sunflower has started to bloom. If you remember from way back when, I had so much trouble getting this seed to germinate. I finally ended up with a solitary plant.

The Lemon Queen is important to me because I've been trying to participate in the Great Sunflower Project, which is a research project studying bees. Last year I never received the seed. This year it was touch and go if I would have any plants at all. But I succeeded getting my one plant to adulthood.

I stood next to the flower chosen and counted all the bees that visited in 15 minutes. None visited this flower or the other flower on the plant. Several bees visited the Music Box sunflowers and the tithonia that grow nearer to the ground, but nothing on my tall plant. I was wondering if I would find one or not. I do occasionally see bees on it, but my bee population is much lower than it was last year. I think the cool June was as hard on my bees as it was on my plants.

The Great Sunflower Project

Last year I joined the Great Sunflower Project. Which despite its name is not about sunflowers but about bees. It is a huge research project on bee populations. Basically what they did was let anyone sign up to help out. They would send you seed for the particular sunflower they want you to use. You grow them and count how many bees come to visit the flowers in a given amount of time.

That was the theory in any case. In reality I never got my seeds. They said they were on the way, so I waited. And waited. It turns out a lot of people didn't get seed or the seed didn't germinate. There are over 26,000 people participating, so it is not surprising that not everything went right. I was sad that I didn't get to participate since I feel understanding our bees better is a worthy goal.

I have another chance this year. I just got an email from them saying the hunt was on again. So I duely confirmed my address and am hoping for the seeds of "Lemon Queen" sunflowers to show up on my doorstep in about a month. I'll count bees during the summer and in the fall the birds will be happy.

Random News

Blooming news

Lots of my second round of dill (dill that germinated late or dill that was eaten to the ground by my swallowtails then grew back) was starting to flower this morning. I will have more than enough seed from the first round of dill plants that have been flowering for a while. So I harvested it and some chilies. I made it into more pickle juice in anticipation. It turned out to be way more than I thought, so I just dumped the rest into a freezer bag. I haven't a clue if it freezes well or not, but it can't hurt. I have nothing else to do with it right now.

I had other blossoms starting up today too. The first eggplant blossom opened up. Hopefully it will set. My yard long bean was also in flower this morning. I wish I had a photo. I went out later to take the picture, but alas, it must not flower during the heat of the day. It was all closed up. If you remember from way back when, I complained that my yard long beans haven't grown and weren't climbing the trellis like my other pole beans. And indeed they still aren't growing. The little plants really have no right to flower now. How is their bean going to grow? The plants are only about 6-8" high. Even if my yard long beans only get to a foot long, they would be dragging in the dirt.

My other beans are doing just fine. I have to pinch them out when they get past the end of the bean poles. They have been sending out lots of side shoots from the bottom that are starting to wind their way up the pole. I actually picked the first five beans today. They are covered in blooms. Soon I'll be inundated with them.

Insect News

The "moth" that was wondering what it was, is not a moth. It is a netwing beetle. Thanks WhatsThisBug.com. So I looked it up. It is a pollen and nectar eating beetle. So it is unlikely to be bad for the garden.

During the last couple of days I've been seeing black swallowtails in my garden. Are these my baby black swallowtails? I'd like to think so. I hope I'm not picking dill with swallowtail eggs on it. I don't see any, but then I've never seen any and haven't a clue as to what they look like.

I have green bees in the garden. Ok I had one green bee in the garden and had trouble getting a photo of it. It wouldn't stand still long enough for me. But his back is beautiful metallic green. I've also seen some blue bees in the garden, but haven't been able to photograph one.

I was very worried about the bees earlier this year. I really hadn't seen many except bumble bees. But now they are out in force. Where I had only seen one honeybee by the middle of June. Now I see them everywhere - on the mallows, on the coreposis, on the cilantro. Though I still find that my zucchini does better if I hand pollinate it and the only yellow squash I've gotten was from hand pollination. So I've taken to it again despite the bees. The positive aspect is that I can pick all the male blooms and eat them if I like.

Miscellaneous News

My carrots have come up. Their germination is a little spotty, but not too bad. I may have to sow more seed in a week, but maybe more will come up before then.

I planted some Sugar Snap Peas and Mammoth Melting Peas behind my carrots. I'm hoping they grow fast before the fall. I've never tried growing fall peas. At 70 and 75 days until harvest, it will be well into late September before I get any. We usually don't have our first frost until the end of October or the beginning of November, so I'm hoping I can get a month and a half of peas before the frost kills the blossoms.