Helping Honeybees in Your Backyard

The kind people at Care2 recently asked me to write for their new sustainable food channel, Real Food. My inaugural post, published earlier this week explores how the mysterious honeybee Colony Collapse Disorder and other environmental stresses currently affecting insect pollinators threaten not only honeybees, but also the sustainability of America's food supply.

Though honeybees were not originally native to the Americas — they were brought over the Atlantic from Europe by some early European colonists with a craving for honey — in the centuries since honeybees' introduction, they have become an integral part of the American landscape, and many common food crops depend on honeybees for successful pollination. In fact, about a third of the plant foods we eat every day in the United States are produced with the help of honeybees. Strawberries, watermelon, cherries, blueberries, and peaches are among the many foods that may one day become scarce if both honeybee populations are not protected.

Read my post over at Care2 if you'd like to learn more about our dependence on bees, and the current threats to them.

Over the past few years, I have taken several steps to make my own home garden more friendly to bees and other pollinators. I stringently avoid synthetic pesticides and herbicides, not only in my organic vegetable and herb gardens, but also in my yard as a whole. I have allowed bee-friendly "weeds," like clover, violets, and wild strawberries, to creep in among the grass in my backyard to provide both honeybees and wild native bees with a good source of pesticide-free food.

And I have deliberately planted several herbs and flowers that attract and sustain both bees and butterflies with their flowers, including rue, hyssop, germander, thyme, mint, and lemon balm. Planting a wide variety of flowering plants that attract bees helps ensure that one or another sort of flower is in bloom in my yard from the earliest weeks of spring through the end of autumn, providing a steady source of healthy food for pollinators.

Working to make my yard an attractive and safe place for honeybees to rest doesn't just help the environment — the effort also pays off in my vegetable garden. After all, bees that come for the clover and thyme often stick around to sample the nectar of my watermelon and tomato plants. More safe, healthy food for the bees means more safe healthy food for me. 

The Beginnings of a Suburban Tomato Jungle

The Brandywine, Beefsteak and Juliet tomatoes I've been incubating in my basement on a homemade plant light shelf have grown so large their leaves are nearly brushing the fluorescent light; I'm going to have to adjust one of the shelves down to make room.



Three of these plants will go into my own home garden. Considering that in the past two summers I've grown tomatoes at this house, my plants have consistently passed the six foot mark before being weighed down with fruit, I won't really have room for more than three.

My first impenetrable tomato jungle grew so big I felt compelled to name it:
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

The surplus plants will be going to my neighbors, for free, with growing instructions. Three households near mine have already claimed a plant.

I figure, give a neighbor a tomato, and she'll eat salad for a day. Teach a neighbor to grow tomatoes, and within a year or two, she'll be trying to pawn her extra zucchini off on you, and you'll just have to start taking your own surplus fresh veggies to the food pantry. Which would not be a bad thing.

Do you have extra plants this year, from seedlings you started, or a flat you bought on sale? Before you try to find a place to cram them into your garden, compost them, or, ahem, leave them to languish next to the garage while you rather guiltily avoid looking at them because you can't bear to throw them out and yet cannot think of what to do with them, check and see whether any of your neighbors who don't currently garden might be willing to try growing a bit of fresh produce if they were given a plant and some basic gardening advice for free.

After all, it's hard to turn down free food.

Beginnings

These tiny things are basil seeds.

Last year, in my garden, a seed just like this grew into a plant that was four feet tall. Its lush leaves turned into salads and pesto, seasoned sauces and garnished plates. When I finally stopped pinching its blooms to force it to fill out, and let it flower, its delicate blossoms so entranced the bees they attracted that they bumbled in a pleasant drunken dance, seeming oblivious to distractions, like falling water from a hose, or people sitting on a patio just inches away.

On a hot day, sweet basil scented my entire yard.

These are open-pollinated seeds from that plant. I don't know whether they'll breed true. I had other varieties of basil in my garden.

But I've planted eighteen of them anyway, in a recycled egg carton.

We'll see what they become.