The Bees Needs
So I guess its obvious why we’d be growing vegetables (we eat them, right?) But with such a small economy of space, such little dirt to ration and so few planters… why give space to anything thats not edible?
Even though we can’t eat most of them, we need flowers in our vegetable garden and around the BFP block because we need bugs! Actually, to be more specific we need to attract pollinators. We could have a thousand plants producing a million flowers but without bees and other insects to pollinate them most will have a pretty hard time turning into vegetables. Flowers would be helpfull in any garden but our situation is especially dire because we have to attract life to a formerly barren landscape. So, the plan is to grow some flowers that pollinators cannot resist, even some that might traditionally be considerd weeds (milkweed, applemint).
Even if your agenda is not to grow food creating a habitat for beneficial insects is a great thing in itself. With pollinator populations around the world declining both for well understood and still mysterious reasons (colony collapse) every flower helps! Besides interplanting flowers in our roof garden containers we will spread them around the BFP complex (the alley, the tree pit) both for beauty and bees.
Additionally, to keep tabs on the local pollinator population, we’ll be training as “mobile bee watchers” with the citizen scientist Great Pollinator Project - if you are interested in joining us for the training, theres one Tuesday May 25th 6-8pm at the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens (sign up for the list here).
