# Animals, bees, flowers and fertilizers — and what mixes with what **2026-10-08. A plan, saved for later — nothing here is built yet.** The companion to [plant-conditions.md](plant-conditions.md). The same idea, extended: every living thing on a farm, and every input, has conditions it does best in, and the farm has conditions fieldmesh can measure or look up. And they interact — some combinations help each other, some harm each other — so the useful answer is not a list of things that suit the site but a set that suits the site *and each other*. | list | what is in it | | --- | --- | | [plant-list.csv](../data/plant-list.csv) | 473 plants in 97 families — including **cut flowers**, **edible flowers** and **bee forage**; tree farms and erosion plantings are in [trees-and-conservation-planting.md](trees-and-conservation-planting.md) | | [animal-list.csv](../data/animal-list.csv) | 99 entries — **bees** (honey bee races, stingless bees, bumble bees, managed solitary bees, wild crop specialists), **meat, egg and dairy** animals by breed, waterfowl, camelids, aquaculture, insects, guardian animals | | [fertilizer-list.csv](../data/fertilizer-list.csv) | 60 — synthetic N, P and K, liming and pH, micronutrients, **manures by animal**, organic fertilizers, and **rhizobia inoculants matched to legume groups** | The animal list's last column is what each breed is *commonly described* as suited to — "heat-tolerant", "cold-hardy", "parasite-resistant" — and is marked to verify. Breed claims are where folklore lives. ## Bees What decides which bee, and whether bees thrive at all: - **Climate.** Winter length and cold decide which honey bee race overwinters well — the frugal Carniolan and dark European bees for long winters, the Italian for warm ones; stingless bees only where it does not freeze. Daily minimum temperatures (NASA POWER) give the site side. - **Forage through the whole season.** A colony needs something in flower from first flight to last. USDA PLANTS carries a **bloom period** for each plant, so the plant list can be laid out as a bloom calendar for a farm and its gaps found — the early spring and late summer "hunger gaps" are the usual ones. - **What the crops need.** Crops range from needing no pollinator (wheat, rice, maize) to depending on one entirely (most cucurbits, kiwifruit, almonds). USDA's 2017 *Attractiveness of Agricultural Crops to Pollinating Bees* rates US crops for honey bees, bumble bees and solitary bees, nectar and pollen. - **Nesting.** Most native bees nest in the ground or in hollow stems. Squash bees nest in the soil under the very plants they pollinate — and prefer tilled soil to dig in — so it is deep tillage over nests already dug that harms them; mason bees need tubes or stems; alkali bees need bare alkaline ground. - **Pesticides.** The largest conflicts are with the farm's own practices: insecticide on bloom above all, which is why the extension advice is to mow flowering weeds *before* spraying and to spray bloom, if at all, in the evening (PNW 591). ## Flowers Three roles, all already in the plant list: - **A crop.** Cut flowers have the same soil, water, climate and light needs as any crop, and several are ruled by **day length** — chrysanthemums flower as days shorten — which is why sunlight is its own dimension in the plant plan. - **Bee and beneficial-insect forage.** Flowering strips feed pollinators and the insects that eat crop pests. - **Food.** Edible flowers, and crops whose flowers are eaten (squash blossoms, roselle). ## Meat, egg and dairy animals What decides which animals, and which breeds: | dimension | the animal side | the site side | | --- | --- | --- | | **Heat** | heat-stress threshold, commonly expressed as a temperature–humidity index (THI); for dairy cows the commonly cited onset is around 68–72 | daily temperature and humidity from NASA POWER → THI, and hours above it | | **Cold** | cold hardiness; housing needed | daily minima, wind | | **Feed** | dry-matter intake per head; grazer, browser or omnivore | pasture productivity from the forage plants on the list, rainfall and soil; feed bought in | | **Water** | litres per head per day, rising with heat and lactation | wells, ponds, rainfall | | **Parasites and disease** | resistance: hair sheep and Kiko goats to worms; N'Dama cattle and West African Dwarf goats to trypanosomiasis | warm, wet climates favour gut worms; tsetse zones; ticks | | **Predators** | vulnerability | local predators; guardian animals | | **Purpose** | meat, eggs, milk, fibre, draft, pest control | market, household | ## Fertilizers What decides which fertilizer: - **What the soil has.** pH, phosphorus, potassium, organic matter and cation exchange capacity — from a soil test first, the soil survey (`tools/soil_survey.py`, SoilGrids) second. pH decides whether lime or sulfur comes before anything else. - **What the crop takes.** USDA PLANTS' fertility requirement, and nutrient removal per unit of yield. - **The soil's texture.** Nitrate leaches through sand; split applications there. - **Legumes and the right inoculant.** A legume fixes nitrogen only with its own group of rhizobia — soybean with *Bradyrhizobium japonicum*, alfalfa with *Sinorhizobium meliloti*, and so on; the list maps each inoculant to the legumes on the plant list. - **The animals.** Manure is where the animal list feeds the plant list. Its nutrient content varies so widely that it should be tested, or taken from the NRCS tables. - **Rules.** US organic certification (7 CFR 205) allows some inputs, restricts others — raw manure must be composted or applied 90 or 120 days before harvest — and prohibits synthetic nitrogen. ## What mixes with what Represent each interaction as a record: **this** affects **that**, *for better or worse*, *by what mechanism*, *under what condition*, *according to which source*. Species-level interactions already exist in the open: GloBI (Global Biotic Interactions, CC BY 4.0) has plant–pollinator and many other records. Farm-practice ones mostly do not, and would be this project's contribution. Well-known examples. Each is now sourced, row by row, in [interactions.csv](../data/interactions.csv) (the citations live in `CURATED` in modules/advise/interactions.py), and the tables below are worded to what the sources support. | mixes well | mechanism | | --- | --- | | maize, beans and squash (the "three sisters") | more food energy and protein per hectare than the same crops grown apart | | a legume cover crop before a cereal | nitrogen left in the soil | | cattle with sheep | most gut worms are specific to one host, so grazing together dilutes the larvae: about half the worm eggs, about 40 g a day more gain in the lambs | | fish in rice | fish eat rice pests; leftover fertilizer and feed cycle between them | | pigs in oak woodland | finishing on acorns and grass, at a stocking rate the trees can bear | | goats on multiflora rose and other invasive brush | they kill it where cattle barely dent it | | guardian dogs, llamas or donkeys with sheep and goats | protection from predators | | bees with orchards, cucurbits and almonds; clover, buckwheat and phacelia for the bees | pollination; forage | | black soldier fly on manure, feeding poultry and fish | waste becomes feed, where the law allows what the larvae are grown on | | silkworms and mulberry | the silkworm's food | | windbreaks and livestock; riparian buffers and streams | shelter from cold wind; nitrate and sediment held back | | mixes badly | mechanism | | --- | --- | | insecticide on bloom, and bees | kills foragers | | deep tillage over squash bee nests | fewer bees emerge, and later | | chickens with turkeys | chickens carry blackhead (*Histomonas*), which kills turkeys | | sheep and copper | sheep are poisoned by copper levels other livestock tolerate — feeds, minerals, orchard copper sprays | | goats and young trees | they strip bark | | black walnut, and tomatoes and their relatives; black walnut shavings and horses | juglone | | wilted cherry and other *Prunus* leaves, and ruminants | cyanide | | lush legume pasture (alfalfa, clover) and cattle | bloat — a USDA PLANTS field | | acorns in quantity, and cattle, sheep or horses | tannin poisoning (goats are relatively resistant) | | waterfowl alongside chickens | a reservoir for avian influenza | | *Bombus terrestris* outside its native range | invasive where introduced | | poultry litter applied repeatedly | phosphorus builds up and runs off | | raw manure on food crops | pathogens — the organic rule's 90/120-day interval exists for this | | claimed, not shown, or mixed | what the evidence says | | --- | --- | | poultry following cattle, to break up dung pats and eat fly larvae | in a controlled trial broilers never foraged in the pats and face-fly larvae survived as well (laying hens untested) | | ducks in rice | weeds controlled and income up, but planthoppers rose, because the ducks also cut the spiders that eat them | **USDA PLANTS already links the lists.** Its characteristics include *Bloat*, *Toxicity*, *Palatable Graze/Browse Animal*, *Nitrogen Fixation*, *Known Allelopath* and *Bloom Period* — plant-to-animal, plant-to-plant and plant-to-bee facts, in the public domain, for every plant it covers. ## Sources | source | gives | licence | | --- | --- | --- | | USDA PLANTS characteristics | the plant side, plus the links above | CC0 | | USDA, *Attractiveness of Agricultural Crops to Pollinating Bees* (2017) | crop × bee type, nectar and pollen, pollination need | US government work — to confirm | | GloBI | species interactions, including plant–pollinator | CC BY 4.0 (credit the original datasets) | | NRCS Agricultural Waste Management Field Handbook, chapter 4 | manure quantity and nutrients by animal | US government work | | 7 CFR 205.601–606 | inputs allowed, restricted and prohibited in US organic production | US regulation, public domain | | NASA POWER | temperature, humidity → THI; cold; rainfall | CC BY 4.0 | | FAO DAD-IS | livestock breeds by country | **terms not found**; FAO's default is non-commercial — to check before any reuse | | Klein et al. 2007 (*Proc. R. Soc. B*) | pollinator dependence of the world's crops | a paper — cite the figures | ## Build order, after the plant plan's 1. The **interaction records**, starting from the USDA PLANTS fields that already encode them, then GloBI for pollinators. 2. **Bloom calendars** for a farm's plants, with the hunger gaps marked. 3. **Heat stress** for a farm's animals from NASA POWER — hours above THI thresholds by month. 4. **Fertilizer** from soil test + crop demand + manure available, with the organic rules as a filter. *Built 2026-10-09 as a balance:* [nutrients.py](../nutrients.py) sets the manure the farm's animals supply — as it leaves each handling system, per the NRCS Agricultural Waste Management Field Handbook's Table 4-16(b) — against what the harvests remove (its Table 6-6), and says how many acres the manure needs at the crops' nitrogen removal, or their phosphate removal where a soil test reads phosphorus high. With `--organic` it adds the federal rule for raw manure: 120 days before a harvest whose eaten part touches the soil, 90 otherwise. It reproduces the handbook's worked example (130 bu of corn removes 117 lb of nitrogen). It is not a recommendation: first-year nitrogen availability and a soil test's interpretation are state-specific, and the state's nutrient management plan governs. Both tables are public domain and were transcribed by hand, every row checked against the handbook's other units.