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Old April 29, 2019   #25
PlainJane
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Update on fruit tree guilds.

Cerinthe aka Honeywort: decent bee plant, ignored by hummingbirds and butterflies. Reseeds easily and looks great in spring but fades away once heat sets in. I pull the plants out once they get to the straggling stage.

Borage: good bee plant, and the apples and blueberries seem to like it as a companion. It flops all over the place and looks awful by summer but comes back via self-seeding. Once it melts away the remains are composted.

Nasturtiums: beautiful and edible until the heat does it in. Truthfully, I’ve never seen a bee or any other insect going for it. Re-seeds each year.

Herbs: dill, cilantro, basil, arugula are allowed pretty free reign wherever they pop up. I was surprised to see that arugula attracts the most bee traffic, and by a large margin. What I don’t use or give away, gets pulled once it looks too ratty. Everything re-seeds exuberantly.

Each fruit tree has several clumps of chives and some daffodils under it. The daffs do their thing and in late summer once the foliage has mostly melted away I remove the rest of it. The chives are a type that don’t bloom but the clumps spread slowly. Earthworms love to hang out around them.
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