[beepro]

Hi, All!
With 2 more months just before the Fall here, I wonder if it is too late to plant for my bees.
Seeds I got: canola, borage, sainfoin, buckwheat, mustard, Nyger, etc.
Will any of them produce flowers just before the winter sets in? What should I plant instead?

 

[Harley Craig]

Cant see your location because I'm on my phone, but if its as cool there as its been here lately, you might be better off planting jars of sugar water,...... The nyger and buckwheat might make something in time.

 

[minz]

Depends on your last frost date. Here the extension states ‘plant buckwheat no later than 12 weeks prior to your first frost date’ which for me is September 15th.
I plant my Borage in the spring, I do not think it is a perennial but an aggressively seeding annual. I don’t know if your winter may kill it. When I think of CA I think of warm winters.

 

[bendriftin]

I just spoke to a sanfoin seed producer in Wyoming and he said it would be ok for me to plant right now in Colorado and I am sure you have more time between now and your first frost than we do. I don't know about the other plants, but your sanfoin should be good to go

 

[beepro]

So the sanfoin is a biannual plant that will bloom in the next Spring?
I don't know much about them but figure to order some seeds to try.
So far I have narrow down a few that will bloom about 2 months or so just before the first frost here.
They are canola, borage, and buckwheat. Now that you mention about the sanfoin then I will plant
that as well. Thanks for the infos.

 

[Andrew Dewey]

Borage here at least is something that is often started indoors and then transplanted.

 

[beepro]

Yes, Andrew. During the early Spring just a few weeks before the last frost is the best time to
grow them in the pots. I think they are a bit frost resistant too. I used to do that few years ago on 100s of 1 gal. pots.
Now I found out that borage can be directly seeded in my garden bed without having to babysit
them or do any transplant. Imagine if you have 100s or 1000s of them to transplant. Then you
will need lots of pots and time to dedicate to them.
So here is my new method to seed 1000s of them in a big irrigated dripper garden bed. And then use the weed
guards to line the edges to collect the drop off seeds since borage's seeds will drop as they are
matured. Once a week I will use a small vacuum cleaner to pick up these seeds to collect them.
They can be really huge plants up to 3' wide and almost 4' tall. Everything I planted in my garden is
organic too. I'm trying the white borage for a change this time.

My fast growing summer white borage direct seed beds:

 

[minz]

I have a 15’ row in a dripper line, heavy weeds. Does anybody save borage seeds? What am I looking for? It almost appears that there are some flowers with black pedals. Do I just wait until fall and throw them all in a wheel barrow?

 

[beepro]

I plan to save some of my white borage seeds this year. That is why I put in the weed guards to
collect some seeds. The weed guard is to suppress some of these wild weed plants and at the same
time to conserve some water. We are in a drought now.
I spent $11 dollars to buy some seeds online so might as well save some for myself. They are available
anyways. The bag of seeds I had saved are worth 6x more than the online order, I think. I have tested them to
be viable.
If the black flowers the bees don't like then might as well get rid of them. If not then next year
you will have more of them along with your borage if they seeded at all. That is too much weed plants for
me to handle. Might as well plan in advance.


The saved blue borage seeds from this Spring without the weeds:

 

[beepro]

Update:

These borage are growing very tall now. Looks like the bushy type I have there.
Need more nitrogen I think. Can't wait to see some white flowers for my bees to
forage on. What da ya say?



White borage growing now: