We’ve started migrating our gardening approach to no till, which we find a little challenging to figure out with raised beds. But that plus a bit of neglect led to this bed of overwintering kale flowering in late April which–it turns out–is a huge blessing because it is currently all that is flowering in our garden for the bees.
Last year we went to a gardening conference and learned several tips to help all pollinators, not just bees. Among the tips we learned were:
- Have three different “somethings” flowering from last frost to first frost.
- Don’t clean up the garden at the end of the growing season because many pollinators overwinter in brush piles and hollow stems.
The second piece of advice is easy to follow because I don’t like doing cleanup in the wet, cold weather of late fall. The first piece of advice will take a learning curve to figure out what we can have in the garden from last frost to first frost–as well as what can withstand a frost since our frost date has been later and later each year (May 1st this year!).
Accidentally discovering that overwintered kale will be there for the bees was good news for us! And a lesson as usually I harvest the buds before they flower and cook them up with garlic, but February and March were too crazy busy and I didn’t get to it. Now I guess kale buds won’t make it on the menu in the future either, which is okay with me: I’d rather help the bees!
Plus I am slowly figuring out how to save seed and this year it looks like I will be experimenting with kale seed.
And the added bonus? These are pretty plants!! Pretty plants full of buzz and activity.
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