Bee’s Friend makes an excellent annual cover crop

Honey bees must fly 55,000 miles and visit 2 million flowers for nectar to make a single pound of honey. Bees usually stay within two miles from the hive, and in fact can’t travel too far because they will use more energy traveling than they gain from the distant food.

Since bees are the main pollinating insects for flowering crops in the flower or vegetable garden, we need to attract bees by planting food for them in the form of nectar-rich flowers.

Of all the many plants used to attract bees, the obvious choice might be the aptly named Bee’s Friend (Phacelia tanacetifolia). It blooms with curved spikes of lavender-blue flowers on plants 12 to 24 inches high. The nectar-rich flowers open over a long flowering period, providing food for several weeks. The blue flowers also attract hoverflies (family Syrphidae), a beneficial insect that eats aphids. This is an easy-to-grow native of the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico.

Bee’s Friend makes an excellent annual cover crop. The thick tangle of foliage allows rainwater to seep into the soil, but at a much slower rate than on bare ground or with other crops.

Because of its dense matting growth it will actually shield the soil from wind and especially the velocity of a hard rain which can cause soil erosion. Bee’s Friend helps hold the soil in place and increases the porosity of the soil for better drainage.

Plant the seeds in full sun directly where they will grow, scattering them just one-eighth inch deep. They prefer a soil pH 6.1 to 7.8. The seeds are tiny, with over 18,000 seeds per ounce. Unlike poppies and many other small-seeded flowers, this one needs darkness to germinate (photo dormant) so cover the seeds with fine soil. They will germinate in about a week or two. Once the plants are a few inches high you can thin so they are four inches to 12 inches apart.

Seeds are available from garden centers or by mail from places such as American Meadows (phone 877-309-7333, online at www.americanmeadows.com) or Seed Savers Exchange (www.seedsavers.org). Bee’s Friend seeds are often included in wildflower mixes.

At the end of the season you can mow the plants down and till them under to enrich your soil or you can let them sit and go to seed to feed wild birds. Bee’s Friend will readily self sow by dropping seeds, so to prevent this, just cut off or deadhead the blooms as they fade.

If you want to save your own seed, slip paper bags securely over the seedheads as they mature. Because not all of the seeds mature at the same time, the bag will collect seeds as they fall. Let the bagged seed pods dry completely on the plant. Carefully pour the bag and seed pods onto a clean, light surface and break the pods open to collect seeds.

Plant Bee’s Friend and you will have armloads of flowers for vases and a garden of pollinators for higher yields. As a bonus you will feed a colony of bees.

And boy can bees use a friend; the average honey bee makes only one to two teaspoons of honey in its lifetime.