Summer forage for me and the bees

What can you plant that can feed the bees and your family?

People often ask me why I got into gardening. Gardening happened because of the bees, my desire to have time away from screens, and a search for nutrient-dense food. My first interest in planting forage for my bees made me realize that I could have plants that serve dual purposes—bee food and human food. When I began to learn about permaculture, I liked the dynamic efficiency of designing spaces and selecting plants that support each other in a resilient way. The first multi-purpose plants I considered were herbs, then cover crops, then produce. Here are some of my favorite summer plants for bees that feed my family too.

1. Bee balms: Wild bergamot (Monarda fistulosa) and Scarlet beebalm (Monarda didyma). Here in the piedmont area of North Carolina, bee balms bloom around my favorite day of the year, the summer solstice. I love using their leaves and flowers in teas, vinegars, and salads. At my recent garden dinner I made a bee balm vinegar by letting bee balm leaves infuse in apple cider vinegar for a week, then strained and blended the vinegar with herbs, honey, and olive oil to make a vinaigrette. You can find several medicinal uses for bee balm that date back to Native American use. Bee balm is also used in potpourri. Not only do I find honey bees, bumble bees, and butterflies on it, but hummingbirds frequently stop by for snacks—particularly on the Scarlet beebalm.
   

   

   Monarda didyma

   These plants are in the mint family, so they love to spread. They also completely die back each winter. If you’re looking to fill spaces during the summer months and feel good about having some open space outside of the growing season, it’s a great fit. To help tamper the spreading, each spring I use a shovel to raise the first sprouts along the edges of the bee balm patch, then add them to pots to give to or trade with friends.

2. Holy basil, also known as tulsi (Ocimum tenuiflorum). My herbal medicine radar picked up holy basil during my first year of gardening. I promptly ordered seeds after I learned about its adaptogenic properties and bubble gum aroma. If you’re not familiar with adaptogens yet, they help balance you. If you’re feeling anxious, an adaptogen will calm you. If you don’t feel you have much energy, it will help give you a boost. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “Adaptogens are plants and mushrooms that help your body respond to stress, anxiety, fatigue and overall wellbeing.” While I started holy basil from seed during my first two years of gardening, I haven’t done that again because it re-seeds everywhere. I love that and it saves space in my seed starting trays for other plants! I have volunteer holy basil plants in every container on the deck, throughout the garden, and several always pop up around our front “lawn.” In my first year of gardening, I planted two by the garden entrance, so when anyone walked by, the bubble gum-like scent spread through the air. Honey bees forage on holy basil frequently, but I generally find bumble bees and carpenter bees on it more often. Holy basil dehydrates well for off-season herbal teas, which is a common use, but my two favorite uses are in bath teas and facial steams. After you soak in holy basil bath tea or spend 10 minutes with an herbal steam, you won’t want to spend money on a spa any time soon.

3. Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum). A powerhouse partner in the garden, buckwheat as a cover crop can help to provide a green mulch, its roots aerate the soil and pull nutrients up so that they’re more accessible to other plants, and if you let the blooms go to seed you can either leave them for wildlife or harvest the grains for cooking. Beyond these uses of the plant, honey bees use it to produce a unique honey. Buckwheat honey has a certain reputation among beekeepers. If you haven’t had it, buckwheat honey is a velvety dark honey with a distinctly strong almost bitter flavor. It’s known for very high antioxidant content. That’s not only great for humans, but also for the bees. Growing buckwheat is very easy and during the summer you can go from seed-to-bloom in about 40 days.

4. Borage (Borago officinalis). I had never heard of borage until I had bees. At an agricultural conference several years ago, I learned that borage flowers replenish their nectar every 15 seconds. They’re also ideal companion plants for tomatoes and help to attract bees. Borage flowers have been used in candy making and they’re a delight on salads, in lemonade, and on ice cream or cakes. The common variety blooms with almost iridescent blue-purple flowers. I also grow a white borage that’s equally popular among pollinators.

   

   Blue borage

   

   White borage

5. Sunflowers (Helianthus). Mammoth, dwarf, pollen-free, multi-head, red, brown, yellow…you can find just about any type of sunflower. I only source sunflower seeds for varieties that produce pollen and grow multi-headed. My goal in using sunflowers is to provide as much forage as possible from the space where they grow, so a single plant with 10 sunflowers provides more forage than a single-headed plant. Folks that specialize in cut flowers generally grow the pollen-free varieties. Sunflowers also have multiple food uses for your kitchen. After a sunflower is pollinated and goes to seed, you can add a pillowcase or brown paper bag over the top to prevent birds from removing the seeds. Once the head dries out, you can break apart the head and snack on seeds. Baker Creek Seeds helped to make grilled sunflower heads popular. It’s a great option if you’re impatient like me and don’t want to wait for the heads to fully dry out. Check out the previous link for the process. I’d like to try it some time! Aside from forage and food, sunflowers help remediate soil by removing toxins. They have an incredibly deep root structure, so they also help aerate soils and pull up nutrients. According to UVA Today, sunflowers also remove heavy metals and radiation from soils.

6. Tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum). When bees visit tomato blossoms they get the benefit of pollen, but it’s not a nectar source for them. (Which is a prime reason to plant borage with them!) A convenient thing about tomatoes is that you don’t need pollinators to set fruit. The blossoms are self-pollinating. When they open, wind can help pollinate them. I often tap and shake the plants when I see several flowers open just to make sure they set fruit. However, studies show that bee-pollinated tomato flowers produce larger fruits.

What are you planting this summer that the bees are eating along with you?