The books / Planting for Bees / chapter 10 of 21
A strip sown too late
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- A quarter hectare in a circle of 1,260
- Reading a bloom window
- Where the year sags
- The gap is worth more than the peak
- Nectar plants and pollen plants
- Willow, the first pollen
- Phacelia, six weeks from seed
- Borage
- Sowing for a date
- A strip sown too late
- White clover in the grass
- A meadow takes two years
- Lavender is for the bees, not the jar
- Heather, the gap's own honey
- Fruit trees and the years before blossom
- A lime tree for the next keeper
- Black locust
- Ivy on the fence
- Nothing to water, nothing dies
- What a planting can name on the jar
- Siting the hive matters more
Phacelia sown in September makes good green manure and little else. The plants may just come through a very mild winter, but prolonged frost normally kills them, and anything that does flower in the new year flowers in spring.
Spring is where a strip adds least to what is already out. The willows, the fruit blossom and the dandelions are out, the main flow is coming, and a strip of phacelia in April is one more flower in a crowded month. The money is spent, the plot is taken, and the gap it was meant for has come and gone.
This game keeps the rule simple.