This spring Tyler planted sunflower seeds in our garden, not knowing if, how or when they'd grow. We have so many little creatures in our yard that could potentially dig up seed or eat the seedlings after they've sprouted.
Thankfully they left the sunflowers alone, and now we've got a fantastic crop of these beauties!
We not only have the typical yellow variety, but a colored sunflower as well. It is most popular with the bees!
I read that the success of sunflower as a crop for seeds and oil depends totally on bees. I also read that sunflowers require a pollinator (bees) to move pollen from one flower to another.
So yay for sunflowers in our garden that the bees have pollinated! And yay for bees that have more places to gather nectar!
My brother, Mike, is in the bee keeping business and his company, Glory Bee, has a program called "Save the Bee".
Their website says, "Our planet’s food supply is absolutely dependent on pollination. One out of every three bites of food Americans consume come from a plant visited by bees or other pollinators. Honey bees pollinate essential crops critical to our good health and produce millions of dollars of honey every year."
As I'm looking out into our yard I'm thinking that we could plant a lot more flowers next year to help the bees around us! There are a number of people with beehives (and truth be told, Dave wants to have them too as he grew up with hives!) that live in our area so we'd be helping them out.
So Tyler, let's figure out how to plant more next year! ๐ป ๐ป ๐ป ๐ป ๐ป ๐ป ๐ป ๐ป ๐ป ๐ป ๐ป ๐ป
Yeah, we love honey bees but also love bumble bees and all of the other pollinators. At a recent conference I attended some local bee enthusiasts have talked vineyards into planting sunflowers as the single best plant for pollinators this time of year.
ReplyDeleteYou might check to see if there is a list of plants or trees that are recommended for pollinators in your area. The suggestion is to choose plants based on when they are blooming so there is something available spring, summer and fall.
I'm always so happy to stop and notice the bees!