The books / Planting for Bees / chapter 9 of 21
Sowing for a date
All chapters
- 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
A strip is sown for the day it will flower, not the day it goes in. Take the gap's dates, take the plant's days from seed to flower and its days in flower, and count back. The sowing that puts flowers right across the gap is usually a narrow week, and a fortnight early or late leaves one end of the gap bare.
In this game one strip sown in its week closes part of the gap. Two strips nearly close it, and at the middle of the gap they roughly double what the bees find.
The best sowing for the August gap is around Jun 15 for phacelia and around Jun 3 for borage. A plot can book the sowing ahead: the seed is paid for when you book, cancelling gives the money back, and the strip goes in on its day without you.