Planting a garden is only part of the strategy when it comes to seeing it through to fruition. In addition to watering and weeding, gardeners may need to enhance pollination too.
The status of bee populations continues to be of concern. Tyson Gregory says there are some ways to further a bumper crop of tomatoes and peppers. Gregory is a horticulture technician at the Fayette County Extension Office. He said to put out some purple coneflowers, a popular landing spot for bees.
“They have a lot of tiny individual flowers in that big showy flower head and it makes it a lot more efficient for pollinators to visit, cause they can pick up resources from every one of those teeny tiny flowers,” said Gregory.
The county extension technician noted creating more habitat for pollinators is about the only way to spur pollination within the garden. While planting flowers can attract bees and further pollination of backyard gardens, Gregory added not to use double-flowered plants.
“While they look more attractive to us, for bees, butterflies, and other pollinators they’re actually quite useless. They don’t offer the same resources that a single or normal flowered variety of the same plant would,” said Gregory.
Gregory said June has been declared National Pollinators Month. The extension office representative said bees often prefer native plants, but pollination can still occur in non-natives as well.
