What Edible Plants do Pollinators Love?

This year I feel everyone is focusing on planting plants that that are good to eat.  The pollinators like to eat too!  So what can we plant that we like that they like?

One thing I plant every year is squash.  The pollinators love the squash blossoms and so do I.

Let's share what we plant that pollinators really love and that you love, too. How you like to fix them?


These are Ricotta Stuffed Squash Blossoms and the recipes is at the "Source"



Source





This is borage. Borage has star-like edible flowers. These can be preserved in sugar for cakes, or tossed into salads.  The leaves can be used for tea.  I have this growing where I live but have not tried it.



Another suggestion is plant one plant just for the pollinators.  Like lettuce, then let it go to seed, just for the pollinators.









   

Our native bees love these:
- Scarlet runner beans (heritage pole beans).
- Black oil sunflowers (sold for bird seed; field sunflowers with multiple heads).
- Cat mint (can be used for tea, though I don't find it very palatable frankly).
- Indeterminate tomato plants.

I can confirm both borage and squash, furthermore all the other cucurbitae are a hit: cucumbers, caigua (lady's slippers), kiwano...

Beans, peas

Different herbs when they flower: thyme, rosemary, rucola, basil, mints, salvia, hyssop, chives

All berries, especially raspberries and blackberries, but earlier in the year siberian honeyberries, gooseberries, currants.

And of course the fruit trees!

These are all great choices. I find that chestnuts and linden (but not silver linden, which is toxic to bumblebees) are both great for bees. Linden leaves and flowers are used as a vegetable. We also use bigleaf maple blossoms in stir fries and potsticker filling. Buckwheat and sunflowers are good choices, though most won't go to the trouble of harvesting the seeds for human food. I like medlar, quince, and persimmon for pollinators, because they all bloom late here (May-June) and the weather is nice for a lot of pollinators to be flying.

Perennial basil is my number one plant for pollinators, it never stops pumping out flowers and the bees go crazy for it. I've also seen praying mantises setting up camp in them, so that's a bonus :)

For me, luffa is always surrounded by bees and other flying things.  They have open flowers that seem easy to get to, and the fruits are edible when young. This year, I plan to grow ridged luffa, since it's supposed to be better for eating.

I let broccoli go to seed for the pollinators. They seemed to love having those early spring flowers, and I could still eat the flowers and leaves.

Basil, lemon balm, oregano, bee balm...most of the mint family are pollinator buffets.

Not really pollinators, but very beneficial -- I keep reading that the carrot family flowers are attractive to parasitic wasps. I'm trying to incorporate more of those this year and will let some flower. Anise, fennel, caraway, dill, parsley, celery, etc.

red clover is a cold hardy perennial, good fodder, nitrogen fixing and pollinators love it.

and its high in protein and makes nice fritters    

I have found the herbs and mints to get the most traffic from pollinators on our farm. Also the flowering trees like fruit trees, linden, sumacs, dogwoods, maples. Lemon balm is a hit and it has a bunch of side benefits Lemon Balm for Weight Loss and Skin Aging

If you want to see the bees go crazy, plant a linden tree. What else is awesome about this tree? Well, the leaf buds, leaves, and flowers are 100% edible - not choice edible, mind you, but definitely useful in times like these! The flowers also make a great herbal tea. ;)



Bees also love sea kale flowers - but you have to have the willpower not to eat all the delicious florets first!



If you're into unusual plants for your edible landscape, look me up on Instagram and YouTube:
https://www.instagram.com/foodforestcardgame/
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCideww6q_BBOABx84AfSyGQ

I always see the most pollinators/ beneficials around parsnip flowers, they are always buzzing with activity. I have a corner in my backyard that I planted parsnip in and never harvested and now they reseed themselves, I usually leave most of that area to the wild things.

    Over the years, I have both saved some squash and melon seeds, and this year saved a couple of squash and cukes that remained just fine all winter. One patty pan squash just dried up and turned into a rattle, and one zucchini stayed green and is just now, May1, starting to yellow.
    I am in zone 5, and I have a south-facing fairly steep bank that is cleared (kinda barren, really,) and which I plan to use to function like zone 6.
Along with the various trees and shrubs that I am putting in now,  I plan to open the rattling squash and disperse those seeds, plus the zucchini , plus various melon seeds, plus various echinacea and chicory seeds, and see what happens. My plan is to be both landracing - letting what is happy thrive, -  and having a good pollinators' feast ground-cover, which can then nourish the soil when it dies back in the fall. Wish me and the pollinators luck!

This year I planted lots of extra tulsi and anise hyssop starts. Of everything in the garden last year, the tulsi (holy basil) was the one consistently loaded with pollinators. This year, I'm being much more mindful about having plants tucked in every available spot just for the beneficial insects. Keep in mind that they need both nectar plants and pollen plants. Some plants provide both. So, instead of putting the the old standby, marigold, everywhere, though I still have some, I'm thinking a little differently and adding more of these plants directly in the vegetable garden or near the fruit trees, not separately in the herb garden.  

Borage
Echinacea
Butterfly milkweed and swamp milkweed
Several different basils
Anise hyssop
Marshmallow
Beebalm and lemon beebalm
Yarrow
Sunflowers
Alyssum for the tiny wasps
More flowers in general along the perimeter of the whole garden

Note that some of these are perennials and some need to be stratified.

I second your mention of milkweed!  Our common milkweed is abuzz with many pollinators beyond the beloved Monarchs.  

I've been startled to see a lot of interest in zinnias, as I assumed (wrongly?) that they were hybridized beyond recognition.  One of my favorites, liatris (gayfeather, blazing star), is also a favorite.  Verbena bonariensis (tall, skinny stems with beautiful clusters of purple waving above the garden) is great, old-fashioned hydrangea, lupine, asters, monarda (bee balm), and spirea all seem to promote enthusiasm as well.

I've noticed the herbs are very popular, particularly basil, borage, yarrow, and mullein.  Peas, beans, and squash among the vegetables.

This year, the butterflies are loving the thistle that has sprouted all around our house and garden area. The blossoms are very pretty in my opinion.  I like to dry them and use the in flower arrangements.




Did you know that thistles are edible? Yes, the thistles in the genus Cirsium, and the genus Carduus, are edible.

This article explains how to eat them:

http://www.eattheweeds.com/thistle-touch-me-not-but-add-butter


This is edible Bull Thistle:

Bull thistle root can be eaten and is best used when mixed with other vegetables. Young flower stems can be cooked and young leaves can be eaten in a salad or tossed into a sauté.

https://www.ediblewildfood.com/bull-thistle.aspx

Many herbs, certainty squash flower (look into cumber family), borage I hope to plant this year.

I planted oil sunflower and birds attacked and ate ~all the seed.  yellow finches favorite food.

I had a number of butterflies with some native plant I planted at the output of the small pool in backyard.  I have to look up the variety.  Light pink huge flowers.

General rule of thumb is the bigger, brighter or more fragrant the flowers the more they attract insects.  In ornamental plants human interference has made this less dependable but in food plants fewer people have interfered with the bloom characteristics.   The only one I know of is Joseph Lofthouse and he is selecting with the insects in mind.

I know this is a little off topic from the original question, but plant lots of the same thing in the same place. It's ok to mix and match, but large patches (or large bushes) with hundreds of flowers, will attract pollinators better than little bits spread everywhere.

I always let some carrots flower, and they are absolutely covered in insects.

The sunflowers get a lot of native bees and honeybees.

Borage gets mostly honeybees.

Fennel and Dill flowers attract lots of small pollinators (wasps maybe?) plus tons of anise swallowtail butterfly caterpillars.

Calendula often has a bee inside the flower overnight.