Multi-tasking pollinator plant spotlight: Buckwheat
Summer buckwheat plantings provide benefits for bees, ecology, wildlife, and humans.
Before I take you through one of the Swiss Army Knives of cover crops, I’m sharing a milestone. My short story collection ROSE WINDOW published this week. Way back in 2009 I received a scholarship to attend the 11-day Southampton Writers Conference and be part of the late Melissa Bank’s short fiction workshop. (Stories from one of Bank’s books were adapted into the 2007 film SUBURBAN GIRL starring Alec Baldwin and Sarah Michelle Gellar.) During the first few days in Banks’ workshop, I wrote a story—included in the collection as “The Roast”—about a family on the East End of Long Island. I felt like the Grant family characters were making themselves known rather than me inventing them. Told through 16 stories, ROSE WINDOW follows their family saga over 3 generations. Family secrets, a hidden inheritance, self-kidnapping - every generation keeps something from the next. Although this collection doesn’t have a single honey bee in it, there are a few food-centered stories like “Apple Cake” and “The Roast” - and the main characters in “Sisters” have a unique way of storing their food in the city. While you won’t find much gardening in the book—“Asylum” includes time in a greenhouse.
Multi-tasking plants for pollinators webinar recording
Last week I presented my Top 5 Multi-tasking Pollinator Plants at the June HiveTracks webinar. You can watch the webinar recording. (My presentation starts at the 20:45 mark.)
One of the plants that I highlighted was buckwheat. I’m an impatient gardener and buckwheat is one of those encouraging plants that produces in a short time. From seed to bloom you only need to wait 40 days. With that quick growth you enjoy:
Living mulch - If you don’t choose to plant something in bare soil, Mother Nature will. Adding buckwheat as a cover crop or border plant in your growing space means that it takes up space so that weeds don’t. Buckwheat’s leaves help shade the soil. This can help prevent excessive evaporation. It can also help shield your next seedlings from getting scorched by the sun if you’re interplanting successions of summer or fall fruits and veggies.
My preference: I like adding buckwheat as a cover crop after potatoes, and interplanting it with watermelon or squash and an additional flowering plant like sunflowers or cosmos.
A dense patch of volunteer buckwheat popping up in my garden this month. Nutrient cycling - Buckwheat helps draw up nutrients so that neighboring plants with shallower roots can access them. If you need to remove the buckwheat cover crop before it’s finished its growing cycle, you can chop-and-drop buckwheat at its base to let the aerial parts break down on the soil surface and allow the roots to decompose in place for soil aeration…
Soil aeration - Buckwheat’s roots can help break up compact soil. At the end of the growing season after the first frost hits, buckwheat’s roots will decompose over the colder months, opening airways in the soil and channels for water to travel - allowing for greater ecology and improving soil health.
Nectar production - In my region of North Carolina, we experience a major nectar dearth in the peak of summer. Buckwheat is a quick cover crop that can provide a food source for pollinators when they can’t find many other plants producing nectar.
Seed collection or wildlife or livestock feed - After buckwheat flowers and seeds form, if you’re able to harvest the seeds before birds get them you can hull and process them for buckwheat flour, cook as buckwheat groats, sprout as nutritious microgreens, or supplement chicken treats or other livestock feed. I leave most of the buckwheat intact and let wildlife enjoy the seeds - everything that’s left re-seeds and voluntarily helps to cover bare ground in the garden year after year.
Edible leaves - A great substitute for spinach in pasta dishes or rice bowls, buckwheat leaves are abundant at a time when many greens have bolted in the summer heat. I pick random leaves from various buckwheat plants to limit plant stress. I add them to a few meals each week - recently I added them to a pinto bean side dish.
Buckwheat leaves add some extra nutrition to summer side dishes. Honey harvest - Honey bees use buckwheat to make a dark, rich honey known for its high antioxidant levels and STRONG flavor. Not many people enjoy the flavor of buckwheat honey on its own, so it’s often used in baking.
Buckwheat honey health benefits
According to research published in 2020 in Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, buckwheat honey’s rich phenolenic density and carbohydrate content could attribute to its benefits on gut health. The piece shares that “carbohydrates of honey provided health benefits by selectively supporting the growth of indigenous Bifidobacteria in the gastrointestinal microflora tract and reducing the gut pH as a result of the production of lactic and acetic acids. Honey seems to inhibit the potentially deleterious bacteria from existing among the intestinal microflora. Therefore, honey can be used to overcome various gastrointestinal diseases and endow the beneficial management of gut microflora.”
About a decade ago, the first data related to the antibacterial efficacy of buckwheat honey on hospital-acquired pathogens was published. The research about buckwheat honey showed that honey produced in the United States was effective in managing infectious bacteria. Clostridioides difficile (also referred to as C. diff) is an extremely contagious bacteria that causes intestinal infections and diarrhea. C. diff is known for being resistant to antibiotics. The study showed buckwheat honey’s “remarkable broad-spectrum” benefits for managing other bacteria beyond C. diff support. It found buckwheat honey “exhibited bactericidal effects on MRSA, VRE, E. faecalis, K. pneumoniae and P. aeruginosa.”
Types of buckwheat: white and pink
Most people know buckwheat as a white flowering plant. A few pink varieties also exist:
From Japan, Takane Ruby buckwheat, also known as Rose Red Soba (Fagopyrum esculentum), shows off with pink-ish blooms. Known for deer resistance and drought tolerance.
From California’s Channel Islands, Red-Flowered buckwheat (Eriogonum grande var. rubescens) blooms per its name.
Curious about other multi-tasking pollinator plants? Check out my earlier post for 7 more:
7 multi-tasking plants for pollinators
From grass alternatives for lawns, to a nectar-producing substitute for spinach, I have several pollinator plants that you can enjoy along with the birds and bees. In case you missed it, one of my first posts on this blog was about summer forage for me and the bees