An unsurpassed honey plant, an excellent enrichment of the soil with organic substances - all these are the properties of phacelia. Cultivation of this culture can be carried out more than once per season. Consider this and more.
Phacelia: Cultivation is Worth It
Bees love the nectar of phacelia flowers. To get the maximum amount of honey, you need to sow the crop several times in the interval from April to June, or you can even before the onset of winter. The usual seeding rate for phacelia is about 0.8 g of seeds, provided that between the beds there is a distance of 45 cm, and about 1.1 g at 20-25 cm: that is, in a monoculture it is 10 -12 kg per 1 ha or half the norm coupled with other herbs. Honey obtained from phacelia is very tasty. Many beekeepers are required to grow plants: it is also worth noting that this is good money. Phacelia is a honey plant capable of producing honey from 150 to 250 kg per hectare of land.
Not only beekeepers are happy with this culture. Farmers and gardeners widely use already faded phacelia as a green fertilizer. They are able to enrich the soil so that its fertilizer can be forgotten for 2-3 years. Phacelia can grow on almost any soil, which means that unsuitable soil for sowing other crops in just a year can become fertile: after the plant has blossomed, you need to mow it and bury it shallow in the ground. For livestock, by the way, phacelia is also very useful.
There is another positive point: phacelia, the cultivation of which can be done on any soil, protects it from the formation of nematodes, wind and rain erosion.
Phacelia: seed cultivation
This culture can be planted anywhere - in apiaries, in gardens, in flower gardens, in fields - everywhere it will be beneficial. Phacelia seeds are obtained in an easy way. This requires plants from the earliest crops. It is worth paying attention that the seeds quickly crumble, as their ripening occurs unevenly. Therefore, it is necessary to cut off only those inflorescences of plants that have seed shells of brown color. The lower part of the curls is cut off, where the most complete seeds are located, then they are placed until they fully ripen, then they are threshed and various impurities are removed. Seeds can sprout even after three years.
As advice, you can say that if you need high-quality and fruitful seeds of this crop, you can contact the beekeeper community for help - they probably have more than one kilogram in stock. Caring for this crop consists only in removing weeds. And this should be given special attention. If weeding is not possible, all that remains is to mow the weeds directly on top of the phacelia. Growing the rest should not be difficult. Plant the plant in moist soil. The most correct option is planting in beds with a distance of 40-65 cm, then the rate of planting will be in the range of 5-6 kg per hectare. In order for phacelia to give a good crop and melliferous soil on soils with a low fertility rate, it is necessary to pay great attention to fertilizers. For this, the norms of phosphorus and potassium, magnesium and boron are increased. This plant is so useful - phacelia!