Category: Pollinators

Plant Corridors

Clethra alnifolia Liatris and a Monarch butterfly Solomon’s seal (Polygonatum biflorum) By Heather McCargo Photos by Jean English Native plant corridors attract pollinators and wildlife to your farm by stretching across your property to connect your piece of native habitat to nearby meadows, wetlands or woodlands. This creates a much larger area for native pollinators

Read More »

Blue Orchard Bee

Blue orchard bee. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_orchard_bee By Adam Tomash Photos by the author The honeybee is the pollinator we most depend on, but other pollinators exist, and 4,000 species of feral (native) bees live in North America. Roughly one-third of these bees nest in small cavities or tunnels, such as hollow plant stems, borer tunnels and

Read More »

Going Native With Pollinators

By Sue Smith-Heavenrich I spent 10 minutes one morning last summer watching the bees in my blooming asparagus – the bumblebees, honeybees and a number of smaller bees I couldn’t immediately identify. They were incredibly busy, moving from one flower to the next. In the squash and pumpkin blossoms, small bumblebees were vibrating, making quite

Read More »

Bee Friendly Farming

Pollinator Profiles More than 270 species of bees are native to Maine. Here are a few that you might see in your meadows and crops this summer: Bumblebees (family Apidae) – Sixteen species of bumblebees live in Maine, ranging in size from under 1/2 inch to about an inch long. They are hairy, and usually

Read More »

Growing Medicinal Herbs and Flowers for the Plant Pollinators

By Deb Soule I have often wondered where plant pollinators, such as bumblebees and hummingbirds, sleep during the night. Recently, while gathering fresh calendula flowers the evening before a tropical storm was to hit, I began seeing individual bumblebees nestled inside dozens of calendula blossoms, as if someone had told them it was time to

Read More »

Gardening for Monarchs

Monarch butterfly adults feed on Echinacea (and many other species), while larvae require milkweed leaves. Planting for Monarchs can help these animals as they face habitat destruction and limited food sources in industrial-agricultural monocultures. Photo by Larry Lack. Monarch caterpillar feeding on milkweed leaves. Photo by Larry Lack. By Larry Lack and Lee Ann Ward

Read More »

Milkweed Seeds

By Jean English Collecting milkweed seed is a late fall tradition in our family. When the seeds are bursting out of their pods in late fall, they’re carried away on dry and windy days – or stuffed into a paper bag to sit on a shelf by our door all winter. Come spring, when the

Read More »
Categories
Scroll to Top