Complete Guide to Wild Bergamot, Monarda Fistulosa

hey this is joe with grow it building today i'm going to tell you all about wild bergamot if one of your goals in your garden is to attract wildlife to your yard particularly pollinators then you really need to consider growing some wild bergamot this flower has a very unique appearance that looks almost like some kind of tropical exotic alien but i find that the lavender bloom swaying back and forth on a windy day are it's really relaxing and almost hypnotic and also this plant is absolutely tough as nails you can see it growing in ditches growing in places where there's not many other plants and it's tough enough to compete with some of the most aggressive plants out there but this video will be a complete profile on this flower including what it is and why you should grow it physical description identification growing conditions growing from seed saving seed wildlife it can attract uses and then we will review so i hope you stay with me on this video as it's really one of the easiest native flowers to grow and it really does bring in a ridiculous amount of pollinators to your yard okay so let's have a look okay so what is it a wild bergamot is a perennial wildlife native to most of north america scientifically it's known as monarch fistulosa it's a member of the mint family it will grow two to four feet tall in optimum conditions of full sun and well-drained soil and it's going to bloom for roughly four weeks in the summer and it will attract numerous pollinators now i do want to talk about what it is not and what i mean by that is that common names often get interchanged with different species and wild bergamot is often referred to as b-ball so let's take a look at another plant that's called b-balm and we'll try to look at some differences here if we do a side comparison of monarda fistulosa which is wild burger moth the profile for this video and red bee balm which is monarda didima which i've also done a video on you might have already seen but let's look at some differences the first obvious one is monarda didima has dark rich deep red blooms while bergamot has lavender kind of pinkish purplish blooms the flowers also bloom at different times as monarda didima the red one will bloom a little earlier kind of in late spring whereas while bergamot is more of a mid-summer flower they might overlap a little bit though and also the soil conditions that they like are different although there's overlap but the red one will take more moist soil whereas the lavender one while bergamot subjects of this video will take drier soils more drought tolerant and finally they will spread differently in that wild bergamot is more of a clump forming plant and will spread by seed here and there whereas the red bee balm will send rhizomes all over the place and i wanted to just bring this up because when a lot of times when people say bee balm you know when you start interchanging common names on different species it can get very confusing so this pink flower you see here this is what we're going to be talking about it's scientifically monarda fistulosa and it is known as wild bergamot now if you see a plant that looks like this at a big box store or garden center you really need to check the label a lot of times they'll call it b balm and it might be this it might be the other you know monarda species i talked about you just have to read the label and if you do see an x after the latin name followed by something else then it's definitely not a straight species it's a hybrid or called hybrid or cultivar of some kind which isn't necessarily inherently bad but you should just be aware of that and know that sometimes they don't attract as many pollinators okay so why you should grow it well while bergamot will bring in huge amounts of pollinators tons of bees butterflies hummingbird moss and hummingbirds too but to a lesser degree my patch of bergamot is ridiculously busy from dawn until dusk with scores of bumblebees skippers and a variety of butterflies a cut flower while bergamot will make an excellent cut flower for bouquets or vases if you like to do that sort of thing the long stems and long bloom time make it a good one deer and rabbit resistant if you're looking for a native plant that deer and rabbits will not eat then wild bergamot is a no-brainer as a member of the mint family the leaves and stem have a strong oregano-like aroma once it's established i've never seen any damage to wild bergamot it is a beautiful flower the blooms of wild bergamot are gorgeous to look at they are truly exotic looking and i think they belong in a rainforest not on the prairies and ditches of north america but they also seem to stand up very tall and sturdy throughout any storm in my experience and they're generally one of the most maintenance-free plants around okay we're going to get into physical description and identification but before i do if you guys are enjoying this content please give me a thumbs up it really does help my channel out and i really do appreciate it okay so physical description and identification so in general the plant is going to grow two to four feet tall and have a spacing of two to three feet with a tight cluster of stalks that will be blooming on top now that's in the optimum conditions if you have it in shadier areas it's not going to get four feet tall it'll be a little less so on and so forth the stock of wild bergamot will be square or four sharp angles on it as it's a member of the mint family they're going to be light green to purple in color and smooth and hairless you might have some branching in the upper third of the plant and that's because they're just going to be putting blooms out from those the leaves are going to be opposite or paired along the stem each pair will be rotated 90 degrees from the previous their general shape is lancelot or ovate and they're gonna be about three inches maybe four inches wide by half as wide so you know usually one and a half by three or two by four the flower heads are going to be one to three inches in diameter and pink to light purple or lavender in color blooming is going to last for about one month in mid-summer blooms will start in the center and work their way to the outside as blooming progresses so here's a younger bloom that's more tightly clustered and here's one that's just about done and you can see how it's just an outer ring of individual flowers and the individual flowers on a bloom are tubular and about one inches long with two petals the lower petal hangs down like a mouth or a tongue okay so the root system is going to be deep branching roots that will help with the drought tolerance and it's going to have clump forming rhizomes so the clump should expand um each year you can probably divide it every third fourth or fifth year i have never even bothered doing that though and everything still looks pretty good but it should not be sending rhizomes all over your yard as seeds are the main way that the plant propagates itself okay so we're going to get into growing conditions now and before i forget this entire video does exist as an article at our website i will link to it below at growitbuild.com so if you need a quick reference later just go to that bookmark the site the article and yeah okay so for growing conditions when it comes to sunlight wild bergamot is a prairie plant it's gonna grow best in full sun which is at least six hours of direct sunlight per day it can take partial sun which is four to six but it will not be as tall or showy for moisture it's going to do best in medium moisture to dry soils that drain well so if you're unsure how well your soil drains i'll put a card in the top right you can see how to test it but the deep roots will allow it to be very drought tolerant so it's okay in dry sites it's okay right out in the open on a slope in the full sun it's pretty easy that way and for soil this plant can grow in just about any kind of soil sandy clay loam doesn't really matter it seems to find a way to grow um i've read that if the soil is too nice like if it's really rich black organic soil you may get a floppy plant and that's being new to me i've never had a plant flop over in all the years i've grown it or seen it growing but it's generally growing in poor soil so there you go there are a couple other things i want to talk about with the plant that are kind of problems or could be considered as problems but like other members of the minority genus pottery mildew can occur on wild bergamot and it you can plainly see it on my plants i have decent airflow i have full sun but i always seem to get it now it doesn't really hurt the plant so to speak it's not going to kill it it's just cosmetic but if that's a big issue to you there are fungicides and other things you can try to do to mitigate it but in my experience it's just going to get it the next thing is that this can be an aggressive spreader in terms of seeds not overly aggressive it's not like goldenrod or something like that or obedient plant but wild bergamot is going to spread by seed and it's a large plant so it's not hard to control by just pulling unwanted seedlings though and finally yellowing leaves so this is common to a lot of native plants but lower leaves will often turn yellow and kind of fall off as the growing season goes on some people say it's due to drought i kind of think it this is my speculation but you know i'm thinking that the lower leaves just aren't getting as much sunlight and so rather than maintain the leaf the plant just sheds it on its own you know why maintain a leaf that's not producing any food from photosynthesis okay so let's get into how to grow it from seed while bergamot is one of the easiest flowers to grow from seed the seeds require absolutely no pre-treatment whatsoever they also need light to germinate so there is no planting depth so to speak just fill a container with moist potting soil leaving a small gap at the top tamp it kind of firm sprinkle seed on top and press it in with your thumb don't bury it just press it in in my experience the germination rate is always very high with this place the container where it's going to get morning sun and afternoon shade and only water it with a spray bottle or a mist you know some kind of misting so you don't accidentally wash away seed and bury it on accident germination should occur within a couple of weeks or so and this is what the seedlings look like when it comes to saving seed i've done an entire video on this which i'll link up to the top right but it's really easy with wild bergamot the seed heads do a good job holding the seed so you really just need to go out there about a month after blooming and cut dried seed heads put them in a bag let them dry out for another week and then shake the bag up and you know dump it all through a kitchen strainer to separate some chaff and you can store the seed for a year or two in an envelope or a ziploc bag if the seed is truly dry and as far as how fast to establish this from seed by year two you should get some blooms this is a second year plant you're seeing right here with this little hummingbird bath by year three it should pretty much be full grown or mostly to its full size so it's pretty quick to establish so if you thought you wanted you know five ten of these plants just buy a pack of seeds for 250 stardom and by the second year you're gonna start getting blooms by year three you're gonna have full-grown plants i will link below to where you can buy the seeds so check down there this is what while bergamot looks like when it emerges in the spring you can see the purplish leaves okay let's get into wildlife when i said that this is really one of the busiest flowers i had in my backyard meadow prairie it really is it's absolutely crazy with bees and skippers and it will bring in larger butterflies and some hummingbirds as well and if you grow enough of it you will start attracting hummingbird moths these are really cool little insects they are in the swingspot family but most moths feed at night but this one will feed during the day like a hummingbird and it often gets mistaken as a baby hummingbird which it's not but i can go back there anytime when the plants are blooming and pretty much find one feeding it's really cool also wild bergamot is hosting caterpillars of the gray marble moth and hermit sphinx moth for deer and rabbits like i mentioned earlier deer and rabbits never bother my plants once they're established but if you're putting small seedlings in or you know if you're growing them from seed you may want to protect them from liquid with liquid fence that year um liquid fence really does work and i find that if it's a new plant that the deer has never seen before even if it's one they inherently hate they may taste it the first year all right so for uses of wild bergamot for garden uses it's pretty versatile in that you can put it in like a manicured flower bed or a border or a wildflower garden and you can even grow it in a container and it will survive year after year what you see right here this plant has been in this container for two years and it's sat outside in the winter in very cold temperatures in zone 6 and it survived so this is a plant that could be grown in a container although it's probably going to get fairly tall now the biggest issue you would face in using this in a formal landscape is you're going to want to layer it with similar height plants or place other perennials or flowers that will get maybe half its height that way when it does start to shed its lower leaves you won't notice it or if it does get powdery mildew it won't be as noticeable and you could probably just have it without having to treat it or anything i mean personally i wouldn't worry about it at all but that's me there is a ton of companion plants that would work with wild bergamot in any garden as well for some that would bloom at the same time and look really nice would be like anise hissop liatris false sunflower purple coneflower gray headed coneflower and the cup plant for other perennials that would work with this that would bloom before or after you could try landscape coreopsis butterfly weed any number of asters this thing is so versatile and tough that it can basically grow with almost anything and finally this plant is edible the leaves can be used as a garnish in salads raw or cooked and they can also be used to make tea stem flowers and leaves can also be used as seasoning and like soups or stews i have not tried this but i can definitely tell you that the foliage has a very it really smells like oregano and you can really tell when you're like saving the seeds from this plant you'll you'll smell oregano very strongly so okay so it was also used medicinally by the native americans quite heavily there was over 70 uses of wild bergamot by 21 different tribes all sorts of symptoms were treated with this plant from they were using it as a tea or an infusion or just rubbing the flowers on their skin to treat like boils and such but some of the usage was as a cold remedy a cough medicine a diuretic medic eye medicine it was very widely used i have most of these medicinal uses summarized on the bottom of my article that i'll link to below and have their link to their sources as well alright so let's review while bergamot will grow roughly four feet tall in full sun and well-drained soil it's very drought tolerant it is tough as nails and very versatile it's absolutely great for pollinators it's very easy to grow from seed one of the easiest in my opinion and it's very versatile in the garden and will bring in so much wildlife you will thank me for growing it so that's all i have for this video if you guys have enjoyed this please give me a thumbs up is that really does help me out a lot and if you have any questions please ask them in the comments i do like trying to answer them and check out the article if you need a quick reference later and yeah you guys all have a good one i'll talk to you later [Music] you

Channel: Growit Buildit

Views: 62,978

Keywords: bergamot, wild bergamot, bee balm, monarda, monarda fistulosa, how to grow bergamot, how to grow wild bergamot, how to grow monarda, how to grow monarda from seed, how to grow bergamot from seed, wild bergamot uses, monarda uses, wild bergamot medicinal, wild bergamot seed, wild bergamot germination, wild bergamot invasive, wild bergamot perennial, monarda perennial, monarda invasive, monarda hummingbird, hummingbird moth, wild bergamot identification, identify monarda

Id: ECVmuhSQzDs

Length: 17min 29sec (1049 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 24 2021