The plant must be located away from heavy traffic location. When planting a bee balm plant for the first time, be careful when choosing a location. When planting Bee Balm in your garden, bear in mind it’s a natural habitat and grows the fragrant flower in a location that will receive plenty of moisture and full sun. Read Next: Best Moisture Meter For Plantsīee Balm is a native wildflower in woodlands close to a water source. The plant tolerates occasional wetness but prefers rich, well-drained soil with a neutral pH. Like mint, the foliage has a pleasant smell. The flower is a relative of spearmint with square stems and needs a fair amount of moisture. Bee balm can also be started from seeds planted in the fall or early in the spring. Good air circulation reduces the chances of disease. Plant them in the back or middle of the beds in half shade. More varieties are available from mail-order nurseries. When fully open the distinctive, colorful flowers look almost like they are exploding upward into small starbursts.īee balm is available from garden centers in six-inch pots or more extensive. The small, trumpet-shaped blooms grow in three-inch wide clumps at the end of stems 36 inches long. Fertilize once a month with a light feeding of liquid fertilizer or manure tea. In addition to trimming out dead foliage in the spring, the plant may need occasional light pruning and benefits from removing old, spent blossoms. You can make new plants in the spring by cutting out some side shoots with roots and planting them to create new clumps. Bee balm clumps should be divided about every three years to keep them blooming vigorously. The clumps tend to spread but become invasive pests only occasionally. Bee Balm plants are rapid growers, reaching 3-4 feet in height during a single growing season, making them perfect for planting as a backdrop in a flower garden.īee balm is a reliable perennial in USDA hardiness zones four through nine though it dies down to the ground in winter, meaning it can survive winters down to 10 degrees Fahrenheit. Bloom colors range from deep scarlet red, purples, pinks, and even white. The plant is edible from flower tip to root tip and gives off an orange fragrance when touched. The name bergamot comes from its fragrance, which is considered comparable to that of the bergamot orange grown in southern Italy and used to flavor Earl Grey Tea.īee Balm is a member of the mint herb family. You can find bee balm plants with flowers in orange, pink, purple, red, and white.īee Balm plant is one of approximately sixteen known varieties of this perennial plant, though it is sometimes grown as an annual. The flowers bloom in many different colors and have a raggedy bushy look. It’s brightly colored flowers are delicate and attract hummingbirds, bees, and butterflies. The primary attraction of Bee Balm is for hummingbirds and butterflies. That’s not the case at all, though bees will come to the fragrant flowers just as they do to any other aromatic flowering plant. The name of the plant, Bee Balm, turns some would-be planters off the name conjures up thoughts of swarms of bees coming to the plant for a balm to soothe their wounds after an attack.
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