Bees' Corner advice

Has nasturtium been mentioned yet? It's not perennial but might as well be for how easy it is to establish.

Apart from its gazillion other virtues, it is extremely popular with bumblebees. It also has the additional advantage of even feeding the bees during pouring rain, when the nectar of many other flowers is being washed away, because nasturtium produces many of its nectar rich trumpet flowers underneath it's extremely water repellent leaves. In a summer rain shower, you'll find all the bumblebees buzzing about in the nasturtium patch.

Oh and if you trim the nasturtium back, you can have the trimmings in your salad

 

Hello clueless! I have sown nasturtium outside and I will put it into the bees corner, thanks for the advice! I wanted to grow it for salads and the like, but if bumblebees like it, then it won't stay in the pot!

 

If you start it in small pots about now, and then plant outside in open ground as soon as it's outgrown its pot, then by the second half of summer there'll be enough to go round for both you and the bumblebees.

Word of warning though. Slugs and snails also love nasturtium, as do various caterpillars and aphids. The trick is, safety in numbers. Plant plenty, and then someone will make it to maturity. Once the get past the vulnerable seedling stage though, they tend to grow so fast that they can easily withstand a bit of nibbling.

 

I had massive problems with black aphids last year, to the point that the plants were so covered that I couldn't use them anymore . I tried picking them off at first but they soon became too many. I didn't want to use any insecticides because I wanted to use the plant in the kitchen. I ended up not being able to use any.

Let's hope this year is a bit less of an aphid nightmare.. or slugs.. or snails.. or any other annoying insects.

 

Without the bees we have a world that would be flora devastated, and so I just wanted to say THANK YOU for thinking of them and making a garden just for them and it's good to see bee friendly insecticides being developed and researched also.

 

I scattered some butterfly and bee seeds in early spring and tonnes of Borage came up, which the bees ABSOLUTELY LOVE!!!!!!!!! It's ALWAYS covered with them and so, I am going to let it self seed almost everywhere for them! Luckily I think it's a beautiful plant too, so I will be as happy as the bees to have it growing everywhere!