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Common Eastern bumblebee
Photo by Dr. Merle Shepard, Clemson University
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A dandy dozen: Popular pollinator plants for S.C. gardens
Eastern redbud
- Small tree
- Blooms early spring
Photo by S. Cory Tanner
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A dandy dozen: Popular pollinator plants for S.C. gardens
Rabbiteye Blueberry
- Shrub
- Blooms spring
Photo by S. Cory Tanner
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A dandy dozen: Popular pollinator plants for S.C. gardens
Clovers (white and crimson)
- Groundcover/cover crop
- Blooms spring
Photo by S. Cory Tanner
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A dandy dozen: Popular pollinator plants for S.C. gardens
Tulip tree
- Large tree
- Blooms late spring
Photo by Jane Shelby Richardson
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A dandy dozen: Popular pollinator plants for S.C. gardens
Dill/Parsley/Cilantro (pictured)
- Herbs
- Bloom spring/summer
Photo by S. Cory Tanner
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A dandy dozen: Popular pollinator plants for S.C. gardens
Black-eyed Susan
- Perennial
- Blooms summer
Photo by S. Cory Tanner
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A dandy dozen: Popular pollinator plants for S.C. gardens
Purple coneflower
- Perennial
- Blooms summer
Photo by S. Cory Tanner
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A dandy dozen: Popular pollinator plants for S.C. gardens
Sunflower
- Annual or Perennial
- Blooms summer/fall
Photo by S. Cory Tanner
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A dandy dozen: Popular pollinator plants for S.C. gardens
Ironweed
- Perennial
- Blooms summer/fall
Photo by Gardens in the Wood of Grassy Creek
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A dandy dozen: Popular pollinator plants for S.C. gardens
Goldenrod
- Perennial
- Blooms fall
Photo by DollarPhotoClub
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A dandy dozen: Popular pollinator plants for S.C. gardens
Joe Pye Weed
- Perennial
- Blooms fall
Photo by S. Cory Tanner
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A dandy dozen: Popular pollinator plants for S.C. gardens
Aster
- Perennial
- Blooms fall
Photo by Dr. Jennifer Tsuruda
Our pollinators—the creatures that move pollen from flower to flower—are in trouble.
If you like to eat, pollinator protection should be important to you. About a third of the food on your plate exists because of a pollinator. Apples, watermelons, squash and strawberries are among the S.C. food crops that depend on bee pollination, but about 85 percent of all flowering plants need pollinators to produce seeds and fruit.
Many insects, and some birds and bats, serve as pollinators. Bees carry the biggest burden by far. Honeybees get the majority of the press, and their plight has been well publicized. But many of the more than 4,000 species of bees native to North America—including the blueberry bee and the squash bee, both specifically adapted to pollinate their namesake crops—are also in peril due to loss of habitat and improper pesticide use.
All is not lost, and the solutions lie in your garden. Three simple ways you can help pollinators are: 1) grow lots of flowering plants; 2) provide and protect pollinator nesting sites; and 3) minimize or eliminate pesticide use.
Grow flowers. Bees and other pollinators need the sugars and proteins from nectar and pollen in flowers. They rely on these nutrients to grow and reproduce.
Keep blooms in your landscape during all but the coldest months with a variety of flowering plants—annuals, perennials, trees and shrubs. Native plants are particularly well suited to native pollinators. Some star performers in our state are ironweed, goldenrod and coneflowers. Most herbs, including rosemary, oregano and catnip, work well. Tulip trees, redbuds and magnolias are great trees for pollinators.
Group pollinator plants together for greatest effect. Intersperse flowers and herbs throughout the vegetable garden, and allow your vegetables to flower after harvest. Leafy greens, such as mustard, lettuce and arugula, and cool-season crops like broccoli and radishes produce flowers in early spring, when other flowers may not be available. Strips of flowering annuals—buckwheat, crimson clover, cilantro—make a super buffet for pollinators.
And rethink having a weed-free lawn. Turfgrasses provide limited benefit to pollinators, but many common lawn weeds, such as clover and dandelions, are great for bees.
Provide shelter. Different bees need different habitats for their nests. Digger bees need exposed soil to dig their nests into; bumblebees tend to nest in abandoned rodent dens; mason bees like hollow plant stems and other small tubes. An out-of-the-way location that is somewhat untidy, with old tree stumps and brush piles to provide protection, makes a good nesting site for native bees.
Avoid pesticides. There’s a common gardening saying: “If you kill a beneficial insect, you inherit its job.” That’s certainly true for pollinators. Most are very sensitive to insecticides.
Without insect pollinators, we could pollinate by hand, but I prefer my garden to be a safe haven for insects that do this tedious work. At home, I maintain no-spray zones, where pesticides are never used, such as the flower plantings and nesting sites described above. I only use insecticides on garden plants when no other option is available—which is almost never.
If insecticides are needed to control pests in your landscape, use them thoughtfully. Around plants that attract pollinators, avoid using systemic insecticides that can find their way into nectar and pollen and persist inside plants for many months.
Never spray plants (including weeds) with contact insecticides when blooms or pollinators are present. Instead, select friendlier practices and products, like handpicking and using horticultural oils and insecticidal soaps. Spray when plants aren’t in bloom and when pollinators aren’t active.
Some organic insecticides are as lethal to bees as conventional products. Carefully follow instructions on all pesticide labels, including fungicides and herbicides, to protect pollinators.
S. Cory Tanner is an area horticulture agent and Master Gardener coordinator for Clemson Extension based in Greenville County. Contact him here.
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Common pollinator problems
Without insect pollination, many backyard fruits and vegetables—apples, strawberries, squash, cucumbers, melons and others—will not produce quality fruit.
Be concerned if you don’t see bees working your plants’ flowers on calm, sunny days. No pollination happens without pollinators. Your quickest fixes will be to hand pollinate or find a beekeeper to move a hive or two to your garden.
With just a few bees, you may get inadequate pollination, since most flowers need more than one bee visit. Unless a cucumber flower gets at least nine visits, its fruit will either fall off or become misshapen.
Cucumber size increases with the number of bee visits—up to about 50 visits per flower. Want bigger cucumbers? You need a lot of bees working.
Weather impacts pollination, too. Extremely hot weather can kill plant pollen, creating vegetable pollination problems during the dog days of summer. When temperatures drop below 55 F or when it’s raining, honeybees don’t forage, so unusually cool or wet weather during a plant’s flowering period can result in poor pollination. Fortunately, some native pollinators keep working even in poor weather.