Attracting Pollinators to Your Vegetable Garden
Creating a pollinator-friendly environment in your vegetable garden is essential for successful vegetable growing. There are a few simple steps you can take to ensure your garden has the best chance of attracting beneficial pollinators such as bees, butterflies and even hummingbirds.
Choose Pollinator-Friendly Vegetables
The most important step you can take to attract pollinators to your garden is to select vegetable varieties that are known to be particularly pollinator-friendly. These include:
- Tomatoes
- Beans
- Carrots
- Squash
- Green Onions
- Melons
These vegetables are all known to attract pollinators, so selecting varieties of these vegetables should give you the best chance of attracting beneficial bugs and birds to your garden.
Provide Plenty of Nectar Sources
Pollinators such as bees and butterflies are also attracted to gardens that provide plenty of nectar sources. You can easily add nectar-rich flowers around your vegetable garden to attract hungry pollinators. Consider growing annual and perennial blooms such as:
- Zinnias
- Cosmos
- Aster
- Coreopsis
- Impatiens
- Marigolds
It’s also important to make sure your garden provides blooms throughout the entire growing season. By providing a continuous source of nectar, you’ll ensure that pollinators return to your garden time and time again.
Give Pollinators Shelter
Providing shelter for pollinators is also essential for attracting them to your vegetable garden. Provide plenty of bare, undisturbed ground in sunny spots around your garden, and avoid the use of chemical pesticides, as these can be harmful to pollinators. You can also create a habitat for beneficial pollinators by installing a bee house or building a brush pile.
Attracting pollinators to your vegetable garden is key to a successful harvest, and these simple steps should help ensure your garden is a hive of activity throughout the growing season.
