// Do you have your own garden at home? Do you love growing and tending to gorgeous flowers, plants, and delicious vegetables? 🌼🥬🍅This tip will help your garden, you, and the bees that frequent your flowers:
🌿 Go chemical-free and cultivate compost! The pollinators will thank you! 🌿
Most synthetic pesticides, fertilizers, and herbicides are toxic to bees and other beneficial insects you want in your garden. Instead of using synthetics, use organic products and natural solutions such as compost to improve soil health. Diversifying your garden with specific plants that pests avoid is also a good idea!
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#chemicalfree#organic#naturalproducts#fertilizer#compost#savethebees#gardenhack#flowers#pesticide#insects#gardening#pollinator
Bees Sleeping on Flowers: A Series.🐝
Male solitary bees will often find a cozy flower when they’re ready to tuck in for the night. This allows them to rest and recover from their busy daytime activities of feeding on nectar and competing to mate with females.
📷: Sarah Dickert, Horticulturist
#SmithsonianGardens#Bee#SolitaryBees#Pollinators#Flowers#SummerGardens#Pollinator#GardenDC
Eco dilemmas - what is the etiquette around watering your garden in the heatwave? Water is a valuable resource, and we limit watering the garden to the evenings when the heat has gone from the day. The pollinators certainly enjoy healthy plants, and I’ve seen them drinking water sprayed on the leaves (admittedly I try to aim at the soil to maximise the benefit of watering, but my aim has never been particularly accurate 🫣). It is also a real bummer to lose plants on this weather - swipe right for a picture of the tree we bought for our ‘wood’ anniversary - if anyone has any tips on how to bring this bad boy back to life I am all ears… what are your tips for keeping the garden going without wasting water?
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#ecodilemmas#planetree#rescuemytree#allium#pollinator#heatwave
Its #PollinatorWeek! This streaked fig sphinx (Protambulyx strigilis) landed on the tip of this ghost orchid bloom and used its proboscis to reach nectar down in the nectar spur. When moths with do this they bring their head into the throat of the flower where the pollen is held and sometimes get it stuck on themselves which will hopefully pollinate other ghost orchids they visit. The total time in contact with the bloom was just under one second. Pollination is essential to the survival of the ghost orchid; without these moths pollinating, the ghost orchid would no longer be able to reproduce and exist. These rare and ethereal plants need wild places to survive, both to grow and for their pollinators to have a home. To learn more check out the link in our bio from the #ChasingGhosts project.
Photos by @carltonward
Chasing Ghosts is a storytelling project in collaboration with photographers Carlton Ward Jr., Mac Stone, tropical ecologist Peter Houlihan, biologists from US Fish and Wildlife Service, Audubon Florida, and partner universities. This project is documented in partnership with @grizzlycreekfilms, @wildpath_@biographic_magazine, and @natgeo. #keepflwild#floridaeverglades#ghostorchid#cameratrapping#conservationeducation#nativespecies#wildflorida#pollinator#floridaphotography#wildplants#swamp#orchid#rewilding#fornature#cameratrap#endangeredspecies#staywild