There are books written on the facets of butterfly gardens and bee keeping, so I won’t try to make this the definitive guide.  In fact, this is really just a quick list of what to add to your garden to attract the pollinators which will multiply the yield of your plants.  Ever see a picture of a tomato plant weighed down by so much fruit that you thought it must have been done in Photoshop?  Well, plants that produce well have to be pollinated well and that starts with the butterflies and the bees (maybe your version included birds.)

Even the most novice gardener tends to know that bees on the plants and flowers is a good thing.  The plant pops out a flower, the bees come wandering through and grab up some pollen, and then they move off to the next flower and do it all over again.  When they do, they move pollen between the  flower’s stamen and pistil and that helps the plant set fruit.  The more flowers are touched by these pollinators, the more fruit the plant will set and that means a bigger harvest.  I’m sure there is a more technical explanation, but really, does it matter?

So what do you plant to attract butterflies?

That depends a lot on your climate zone, but there are a few ways to look at growing for beneficial insects or pollinators like the butterflies and bees.  You could choose to simply plant flowers based on color.  This would be

NECTAR AND HOST PLANTS

Butterflies tend to hang out near one of two plants: ones that produce a tasty snack of nectar, and plants where they will lay eggs.  These are known best as  nectar and host plants.  And, since butterflies can tend to be picky eaters, they often use just a single plant family as a food source for the caterpillars. Prevailing wisdom is to plant both nectar and host plants to draw butterflies into their gardens.

FOOD FOR THE BUTTERFLIES & BEES

Maybe the hardest part of a butterfly garden is to allow the caterpillars to munch on your plants while they grow up.  With the exception of a handful of species, caterpillars don’t tend catastrophically damage to the plants. Take a deep breath and realize that’s why you planted the host plant to begin with.  Why else you have planted milk weed?

What about the Bees?

If you’ve ever been to a store that sells a good selection of honey, you realize that bees are much less selective than butterflies.  While clover and orange blossom honey seems to dominate the shelves of the supermarket, you can find honey made from just about any flowering plant or tree around.  In fact, one of mine and my wife’s favorites is the honey from the mesquite tree. Unlike clover honey that is light and thin, mesquite honey is dark and thick; perfect for simmering pecans in to drizzle over French toast  for a lazy weekend breakfast. I digress.  My point is that bees will make honey from just about any pollen producing flower, and that’s good for your garden.

Choosing Flower Colors for Bees?

Often times this is quite a riddle since bees see in Ultraviolet (UV) light.  Surprisingly, the color red is thought to be unseen by bees which means red flowers are pollinated by other means.  So if you hauled off and planted the most colorful garden you could imagine, the bees might fly right on by and miss it. What a shame.  Believe it or not, bees tend to be drawn to flowers that are good at reflecting UV light.  Flowers that are white or light in color are great bee attractors.  And, if you take the “violet” out of ultraviolet, you very well might have a bee’s favorite color. If the lavender in our front yard is any indication, I’d be planting rows of violet colored flowers if I needed the bees.

Okay, okay!  Shut up and tell me what Bees and Butterflies will like!

Plants for butterflies:

• Butterfly Bush (Buddleia davidii) – The name kinda make you say duh, huh!
• Bee Balm (Monarda didyma)
• Lantana (many varieties available, natives, hybrids, shrubs and creepers)
• Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia), annual
• Milk Weed (Asclepias tuberosa)
• Pineapple Sage (Salvia elegans), perennial
• Purple Coneflower (Echinacea purpurea), perennial
• Red Pentas (Pentas lanceolata) Pentas come in a variety of colors, but the red ones seemed most popular with the butterflies I saw.
• Zinnias

Host Plants:

• • Citrus (lemon, orange, satsuma, etc.)
  • Dutchman’s Pipe (Aristolochia spp.)
  • Fennel, Dill, Parsley, or Queen Anne’s Lace
  • Passion Vine (Passiflora incarnata and other species)

Plants for Bees:

• Anise hyssop
• Aster
• Basil
• Chives & Garlic Chives
• Clover
• Cucumber
• Coreopsis
• Lavender
• Marigold
• Melons
• Milkweed
• Oregano
• Sunflower
• thistle
• Thyme

Like I said, bees aren’t all that picky, so as long as you plant a few that they like, you should have a great harvest.

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Prepping the soil

The following weekend, we rented a rototiller and hauled in a load of planting mix for the local mulcher – Western Organics.  They take the green waste from the landfill to create compost, then amend with gypsum, sand, and some trace fertilizers to make one heck of a planting soil.  The benefits of composting are well known, so I figure using waste that would otherwise be in the landfill is not only good for the garden, but also our community.

We ran the tiller to a depth of about 12 inches and turned in all the planting mix.  The heavy clay soil could have used another couple truck loads of planting mix, but we could only get in on load before the yard closed for the day.   After running the rototiller, we raked the dirt into row and marveled at what we had done.

Irrigation Design

After the initial December push, we haven’t really done all that much to the garden.  Both Joel and I have started several trays of seeds, and Joel has done most of the planting.  That’s the disadvantage of having the garden at someone else’s house – I kind of like itJ  We did take some time to run water lines into the garden.  While that project is not complete yet, we have done the hard part of digging up the old water line, and connecting a run of copper to three spigots that are placed along the middle pathway of the garden. This provides ample water to anywhere in the garden with a short hose. We will also be installing some drip irrigation lines that will supply most of the water. These ½ inch poly lines will feed off the main copper line and loop up and down the rows.  ¼ inch lines will run from main poly line up to each plant where a loop of soaker hose will wrap around the base of the plant.  I find that this works extremely well at keeping water at the base of the plant and eliminating the issue of plugged dripper emitters.

Garden Layout and Design

Here’s the overall plan for the yard:

Planting areas consist of the main “grass area” which extends roughly 30 feet back and is 15 – 20 feet wide. This area will be home to most of the row crops such as corn, onions, lettuce, dill, cilantro, tomatoes, beans, peppers, cucumbers, etc.

There are also three reasonably large raised beds that are on three corners of the back yard.  These beds will be home to some of the more indiscriminant plants such as watermelon, pumpkins, cantaloupe, squash, etc.

Once all these beds are full, we will start to poke holes in the gravel areas around the perimeter to install more plants.  This will allow us to take advantage of the space, without raking up and hauling off the gravel.  Who knows, the gravel might just give some much needed air circulation around any foliage that lies on the ground.

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We reclaimed an old water line to get water from the house to the yard

We reclaimed an old water line to get water from the house to the yard

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