Cool Season Pollinator Mix: Plant Diversity That Works

0:14 All right now we've been talking about a lot of different species and cover crops in this and this to talk about mixes because we only plant all those other things monoculture power of diversity and all the mixes that we sell we put together and that we do for my favorites because it's just so pretty this is what.

0:51 We call our cool season pollinator mix. It's got primarily cool season plants so we could plant it in March or April but look at all the different flowering plants we've got different flowering times we've got different colors there's at least 8 10 12 different things in here right now that I can see blooming from right here and some of the

1:14 Stuff has been blooming for probably five to six weeks and some of this stuff will still be blooming a month from now. And so that's really the goal of a good pollinator mix is to stretch a little window out across as long a period as possible and have just absolute diversity because insects don't like to eat just one thing.

1:34 Just like, you know, we don't want just one thing, we want the big thing. And some pollinator species are very species-specific, and there's our general nature where honeybees will use a variety of plants, bumble bees will use a wide variety of plants, some of the lesser-known.

1:58 To be more in danger are more specific in their needs. So when you have a wide diversity like this, the odds of one of those plants meeting their needs is greatly enhanced. And of course, having a diversity like this is good for all the reasons we like diversity. If you really minimize your risk of any one thing failing on this, you've got something.

2:24 Else to take the place layering of leaves systems families different connects all these blends are just much more impressive than any of the monoculture right into where we would use something like this. You know, I wouldn't necessarily plant this across the whole 160 acres. You know, where I put it cover crops the value in the power of.

2:51 This as the plant strips a little some of your production fields playing strips if you've got beehives but this will be an insect iary if you will habitat for those beneficial insects but the nice thing about this is we can put this out for you know thirty, thirty-five dollars an acre or something like this as opposed to if you're trying to.

3:32 There next year I'm going to move it to another spot and that's where this really has a good fit. This is this type of application, you know, and a lot of times with Barbara's hear the word pollinators. Oh, that's for the bee and butterfly people, but it's also I noticed that it's hard to tell when around there's a.

3:52 Surface and surface flies are voracious. The larvae of surfing flies or voracious aphids. For images they eat a lot of aphids and there'll be ladybugs and lace wings in here. Pollen and a cure is not just for bees and butterflies, it's also for ladybugs and lace wings and other predatory insects that can build up populations here and then.

4:19 Move into our crop with aphids showing up and so having a strip of this around an aphid susceptible crop whether that's sorghum or whatever crop is affected by ASUS cow peas. This can build up the predator populations. Some really cheap biological control is another thing Dale is that we oftentimes think, you know, when we're growing corn and soybeans.

4:47 That we don't really need pollen. They're self-pollinating, you know, we don't need that. But I've seen studies, those Iowa State maybe came out with a study with soybeans where there was ample populations of pollinator insects. They saw 15 to 20 percent yield increase in soybeans, the crop that we never think about needing native pollinators to help with our yield.

5:10 Yeah, not a lot of crops don't need pollination. They're self-pollinating but they can benefit from the amount of pollination, cross-pollination. Sunflowers are great examples, and have no bees you will still get sunflowers, but if you have these you can get about a 25 percent yield increase. So it's very beneficial to have pollinating insects even for some of the crops.