The vegetable garden as bee habitat

Which crops actually need bees

Let things bolt on purpose

A vegetable plot is normally harvested before anything flowers, which means it can occupy a large area and contribute nothing. Allowing a small number of plants to run to flower changes that at almost no cost, because the plants concerned are ones you were growing anyway and are usually at the end of their useful life.

• Leeks and onions left in produce large globe flowers worked constantly for weeks.
• Brassicas bolting in spring flower exactly in the April gap, and any that survived winter will do it unprompted.
• Carrots, parsnips and celery in their second year throw umbels that suit short-tongued solitary bees.
• Chives, coriander, fennel and marjoram flower usefully and are still edible while doing so.
• Let one or two plants of anything go to seed and you get the forage plus the seed.

Green manures do two jobs

A cover crop sown to protect and improve soil costs nothing extra to let flower for a fortnight before it is cut and incorporated. Phacelia is the standout — fast, dense, and one of the most heavily worked nectar plants there is. Crimson clover, field beans and buckwheat all do the same job, fixing nitrogen or building structure while flowering.

Practical rules for the plot

• Grow herbs among the vegetables rather than in a separate bed. Thyme, marjoram, chives and coriander are the highest-value bee plants per square metre in the whole garden.
• Keep some bare, undisturbed, sunny soil at the edges. A no-dig bed with permanent paths already provides it; a fully mulched plot does not.
• If you use any insecticide, apply it in the evening after flowers have closed, and never to anything in flower. Systemic products are present in the pollen and nectar regardless of timing.
• Borage next to the squash is the traditional advice and it holds up — it is a heavy nectar plant flowering across the same period.