{"id":306,"date":"2012-05-07T05:30:56","date_gmt":"2012-05-07T13:30:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=306"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:33","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:33","slug":"pollination-facilitation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/pollination-facilitation\/","title":{"rendered":"Pollination Facilitation"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>The ajuga that infests large parts of my back garden is blooming and its blue spires light up the entire planting scheme.\u00a0 The plants also attract a lot of attention.\u00a0 Bees of all kinds are rampant, as are butterflies.\u00a0 Earlier in the week I saw five red admiral butterflies, distinguished by the broad orange stripes on their wings, working their way through the ajuga.\u00a0 Pollination was in full swing.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We all need pollinators – as many as possible.\u00a0 Those of us who grow fruits and vegetables would have nothing to harvest without them.\u00a0 Even die-hard ornamental gardeners need them.\u00a0 Without pollination plants do not set seed and there is no next generation.\u00a0 This may not bother you – especially if you are tired of voracious self seeders – but it is bad for the ecosystem as a whole.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Some of the best pollinators around belong to the Labiatae or mint family.\u00a0 The ajuga that turns my yard into Pollination Central is a one of them.\u00a0 You can tell by the shape of its tiny blossoms, which are characteristically minty-looking.\u00a0 If you examine them closely, you will see that there are five petals on each flower, joined at the base to form a tube.\u00a0 The flowers, which appear in groups of two to twelve individual blossoms, occur in the leaf axils, where the leaf stalks meet the stems.\u00a0 They are clustered at the tops of the stalks, another typical mint trait.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Most people know the value of culinary mints, like spearmint, peppermint, basil, thyme and sage.\u00a0 Their flowers attract scores of pollinators, but with culinary specimens the interests of the cook or herbalist are best served by thwarting the intentions of the plant.\u00a0 Young leaves have the best flavor and should be harvested regularly to prevent flowering.\u00a0 If you let nature take its course and the plants flower, the leaves often have a bitter taste.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Those considerations should not stop anyone from planting culinary mints, which can be left to flower at the end of each growing season.\u00a0 Pollinators will also flock to the wide variety of ornamental mint plants.\u00a0 If you have a vegetable garden, edge it with decorative mint relations and you will assure yourself of plenty of tomatoes, zucchini and peppers.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I love my ajuga because it is a triple threat – weed stomping groundcover, decorative ornamental and effective pollinator attractant.\u00a0 One of my other favorite mints is agastache, which has grown increasingly fashionable in the last ten years.\u00a0 Sometimes called anise hyssop or hummingbird mint, agastache has an array of virtues.\u00a0 It grows in just about any spot, is drought tolerant, reblooms regularly throughout the season and overwinters without a problem.\u00a0 It dies back to the ground when frost hits, but rises like the Phoenix every spring.\u00a0 Agastache flower colors range from darkest blue purple to shades of orange, pink and white.\u00a0 I grow the dark purple ‘Black Adder’ in the back garden and ‘Acapulco Salmon and Pink’ in the front.\u00a0 The latter smells like lemon and blooms almost perpetually.\u00a0 I will probably invest in more agastache this year, because they multi-task so effectively and attractively.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Another popular mint is nepeta or catmint.\u00a0 As the name suggests, it attracts cats as well as pollinators, but the cat-luring properties are not as strong as those of its relative, catnip or Nepeta cataria.\u00a0 The most common catmints sport blue flowers, though there are varieties like ‘Sweet Dreams’ and ‘Snowflake’ that produce pink or white flowers.\u00a0 Catmint grows between eight and twelve inches tall and flowers repeatedly, especially if it is sheared back after each flowering.\u00a0 The shearing process is not rocket science; you can even do it with your string trimmer if you are careful and leave at least six inches of the plant behind.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 There are those who also have great affection for monarda, though I am not one of them.\u00a0 It is a favorite of butterflies, hummingbirds, bees and other pollinators and is also known as Oswego tea or wild bergamot.\u00a0 It smells a bit like Earl Grey tea, though the tea is flavored with a citrus oil obtained from Citrus bergamia or bergamot orange.\u00a0\u00a0 Monarda’s fluffy-looking flowerheads are composed of whorls of long, spiky tubes and come in shades of white, yellow, rose, red and purple.\u00a0 Like other mints, monarda thrives in just about any sunny situation.\u00a0 However, many older varieties have gangly growth habits and are extremely susceptible to mildew, which disfigures the leaves.\u00a0 If you like monarda, try buying newer, mildew-resistant cultivars.\u00a0 Compact varieties are more graceful, but you can also mitigate gangliness by installing shorter plants in front of your monarda clumps.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Mint’s big drawback is invasiveness.\u00a0 Left to its own devices spearmint would take over the world, with ajuga hot on its heels.\u00a0 Control these wayward but very useful plants by growing them in pots that can either stand alone on a terrace or deck, or be sunk directly into the garden so the plants are indistinguishable from their neighbors.\u00a0 Barring pot culture, keep an eye on your mints and grub out any unwanted travelers.\u00a0 This will not hurt the mints in the least and will keep the garden – and everything else within a fifty mile radius -safe for better bred specimens.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The ajuga that infests large parts of my back garden is blooming and its blue spires light up the entire planting scheme.\u00a0 The plants also attract a lot of attention.\u00a0 Bees of all kinds are rampant, as are butterflies.\u00a0 Earlier in the week I saw five red admiral butterflies, distinguished by the broad orange … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general-interest","category-spring","category-summer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":333,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306\/revisions\/333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}