Extending the Forage Season: Planting for Bees on Thin Hillside Soil

Our best pasture is the worst farmland. The steepest, rockiest, most erosion-prone sections of our hill are useless for crops and miserable to mow, but they've turned into the most reliable bee forage on the whole property. That's not an accident. Once I stopped fighting the slope and started planting for it, the bees gained weeks of forage on both ends of the season.

The key idea is bloom succession. A colony needs something flowering from the first warm days of late winter through the last asters of autumn. Most people plant one or two showy nectar plants and call it done, but the gap periods, those two or three week stretches with nothing blooming, are what really hold a colony back. Filling those gaps on hillside ground takes some planning.

What Grows Well on Slopes and Poor Soil

Thin hillside soil drains fast and dries out in summer, which actually suits a lot of excellent bee plants. Deep-rooted perennials that hate wet feet do well here. Russian sage, catmint, and lavender all tolerate lean, rocky ground and bloom through the hot months when other forage has dried up. They're also drought-tolerant once established, which matters when you're hauling water up a hill.

Clovers deserve a special mention. Crimson clover and white Dutch clover both fix nitrogen and feed bees heavily in late spring and early summer. On a slope, clover's fibrous roots also help hold soil, which is a bonus you don't get from most ornamental plantings. I overseed bare patches with clover in early spring and let it creep.

For the late season, goldenrod and asters are the workhorses. They're native, they thrive on disturbed ground, and they bloom right when colonies are packing on winter stores. Let them go. A lot of hillside farms mow these down as weeds in August, which is exactly the wrong time if you keep bees. I leave the back field alone until after the first hard frost.

Early season is trickier. Willows, maples, and redbud along the lower edges of the property give the bees something to work in March and April before most flowers open. If you have a wet seep or a drainage line on your slope, plant willows there. They love the moisture and bloom early.

Planting Strategy for Steep Ground

You can't plow a 30 percent slope, and you shouldn't try. Instead, work in pockets. I plant in small clusters and along contour lines, using the natural terraces and benches the hill already has. A cluster of perennials here, a strip of clover there, a few shrubs along the fence. Over a few seasons these patches knit together into a continuous forage corridor.

Mulch is your friend on slopes. Bare soil washes away in the first heavy rain. I use straw or wood chips around new plantings until they establish, and I let leaf litter build up in the wilder sections. It holds moisture and slows runoff.

Don't overlook the edges. Fence lines, driveway banks, and the strips between the orchard and the woods are all prime bee forage space that tends to get ignored. These transition zones often have the best mix of sun and shelter, and they're easy to plant because you're not trying to work around crops.

One more thing: go easy on the mower. A lawn is a desert for bees. Let the rough ground stay rough, mow paths rather than whole fields, and give the wild stuff room to bloom. On a hillside farm, the untidy corners are often the most productive bee habitat you've got.