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June has arrived! We at Applewood Seed are excited to see the buds bloom, but we especially love to see the bees buzzing around our trial gardens. Bees and other pollinators are an incredible asset to the pollination of flowers, fruits, and vegetables throughout the United States. In fact, animal and insect pollinators are essential to pollination in over 75% of the world’s flowering plants, which includes roughly 35 percent of the world’s crops. Animal and insect pollinators include bees, moths, flies, bats, birds, ants, butterflies, wasps and beetles. However, bee populations continue to be on the decline, have become endangered or even gone extinct due to the loss of natural food supplies and habitat.
Applewood’s Pollinator Commitment
A number of organizations have been working diligently to promote the health of pollinators, critical to our food supply and a healthy ecosystem including Applewood’s own pollinator conservation efforts. Many of these initiatives have pointed out the importance of natural areas that provide nesting sites, food and protection for bees. Farmers and urban gardeners are encouraged to grow plants that provide pollen and nectar sources and provide a continuous bloom throughout the growing season. Applewood has a number of pollinator mixes that meet these criteria. In addition, staff can develop custom mixes for specific areas or growing conditions.
Your Pollinator Commitment
In 2015, The National Pollinator Garden Network set out to achieve one million pollinator gardens throughout the U.S. As of June 1, 2018, over 700,000 pollinator gardens have been designed, planted, and registered with the Million Pollinator Garden Challenge on Pollinator.org with the goal of reaching the million mark by pollinator week from June 18-24, 2018.
You can help the pollinator populations by designing and planting your own garden with pollinator friendly flower mixes for food and habitat development. The National Pollinator Garden Network states that gardens should:
- use plants that provide nectar and pollen sources
- provide a water source,
- be situated in sunny areas with wind breaks
- create large “pollinator targets” of native or non-invasive plants
- establish continuous bloom throughout the growing season
- eliminate or minimize the impact of pesticides.
Register your pollinator garden at Pollinator.org
To find out more about pollinator seed mixes and to receive a free seed consultation, contact us at the information below:
Call: 303 431-7333
Email: sales@applewoodseed.com
Online: On our Website
Applewood Seed Company
5380 Vivian Street
Arvada, CO 80002 USA
Fax: (303) 467-7886
More About Pollinators
- http://millionpollinatorgardens.org
- http://pollinator.org
- U.S. Forest Service Pollinator Information
- The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
- The North American Pollinator Protection Campaign
- The Economic Impacts of Pollinator Declines: An Approach to Assessing the Consequences
- Pollinator Partnership for Information and Resources
Pick a Zinnia from the Applewood Seed Collection
From African Daisy’s to Zinna’s, we have a wide variety of flower seeds for you to choose from on the Applewood Seed website. Did you know that we have 23 varieties of Zinnia seeds to choose from? See our selection and place your order directly from our online store.
Variety Improvement Process of Open Pollinated Flowers
As Applewood specializes in open-pollinated flower varieties, it is important for us to help maintain distinctive traits that can get lost through the repetition of crop seed production over many years. We routinely hand-select and hand-pollinate flower varieties in our isolation tents every season to help maintain variety purity. This is an additional quality assurance […]