Dallas Fruit and Vegetable Grower

Red Admiral Invasion - More Butterflies in 2012

One thing is certain for 2012, I have significantly more butterflies this year than in year's past.  Perhaps it is because the caterpillar and chrysalis population fared better with the milder winter .  Perhaps it is because the weeds, herbs and plants, which their caterpillars depend upon, thrived with  the milder winter and have provided a greater food supply.  Or perhaps, we have a smaller wasp population this early in the year permitting more caterpillars to metamorphose into butterflies.  Whatever the reason, we have a ton of butterflies of all different varieties in our garden this year.  (In the last few years, our local butterfly expert, Dale Clark, has written several articles about how past droughts and wasp infestations have impacted the caterpillar populations:  article 1 and article 2.)

The other day, I went out into the backyard where our Little Henry Sweetspire bushes are in full bloom, and I was surprised to see a multitude of beautiful Red Admiral butterflies.

When I say a multitude, I am talking 15 to 25 of these guys flying around in a pretty limited area.

They have remained in this area of the backyard for about a week now.

I don't recall seeing Red Admirals in the past.  Perhaps I have seen them before and just confused them for Commas or Questionmarks.  They are much smaller than I expected.  With a name like "Red Admiral", I expected a large butterfly about the size of a Black Swallowtail or Giant Swallowtail; however, these are relatively small in the neighborhood of 2 to 3 inches -- about the size of a Comma or Questionmark.

The photograph below shows a portion of the area in our backyard where they are feeding.  In this part of the yard, we have Little Henry Sweetspire, Encore Azaleas, and Japanese Maples.  You can see one of the japanese maples that recently died on us during the torrid heat of last summer.

 

 

 

The Sweetspire have pretty, white racemes of flowers that have a mild, sweet smell.  In the evening, you can just barely get a trace of their scent as you pass by.  Up close, the flowers have a noticeable and pleasant smell.

 

 

Here is a photograph of a Red  Admiral feeding on a sweetspire flower.

 

The following video does not do justice to the number of butterflies that we have flying around.  Indeed, you can only see 5 to 6 of them flying around in the video, but you can see them feeding.

 

 

 You can adjust the resolution of this video up to 1080p

 

*** Added on 4/18/2012

If you look around the internet, it appears that Red Admirals are appearing en masse all around North America this Spring.  Interesting.  Check out these sites:

Red Admiral Site 1

Red Admiral Site 2

Red Admiral Site 3

Red Admiral Site 4

 

 

Fauna in the Garden

I have not seen any black swallowtail butterflies flying in our garden this year, but it is evident that they have been visiting.  I noticed today that our fennel plants are getting chomped on by three enormous swallowtail caterpillars.  It the wasps don't get them first, these caterpillars should go into their cocoons in another week or two.

Our two passion vines are really doing much better this year and are starting to get more mature.  In fact, we are getting some nice blooms.

 

I was thinking to myself this morning that the passion vines are doing so well that we should expect some gulf fritillary caterpillars and butterflies in the near future.  Within forty-five minutes of having that thought, this little gulf fritillary butterfly started flying all around the vegetable garden and visiting our culinary sage that is blooming like crazy.

 

 

Our asparagus plants are full sized already and are filled with tiny, dainty greenish-yellow flowers that are really attracting the bees.  The flowers are so small that I would not think that a bee could get much pollen out of them; however, they are plentiful.

The bees working on these flowers this morning appeared unusual to me.  In particular, they all had these bulbous orange sack-looking things on their back legs.  The orange bulbs were different for each individual bee.  Some were larger than others.  Here are a few photographs of different bees in which you can see these sacks.  As you can see, the sack is much more pronounced in the second photograph.  It almost looks like a tiny little orange balloon attached to the leg.

 

 

In doing some looking on the internet, it appears that these bees are just normal bumble bees, genus Bombus, and the orange bulbous looking bags on their hind legs are "loads of pollen and nectar that they pack into their 'pollen baskets.'"  

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Entomology-Study-Bugs-665/2008/6/Multi-coloured-bees.htm

This pollen basket is also called a corbicula.   It is a "polished concavity" surrounded by hairs, into which the pollen is placed.  The pollen is "combed, pressed, compacted, and transferred to the corbicula . . . ."  A single hair secures the pollen load.  Wikipedia (citing Cedric Gillott, Entomology, Springer, 1995; 798 pages; pg. 79; Dorothy Hodges, The Pollen Loads of the Honeybee, published by Bee Research Association Limited, 1952).

I have been watching bees and insects pretty closely in the garden for at least the last fifteen years or so, and I have never noticed this before.  I am very surprised that I hadn't.  I wonder if it is the particularly light colored pollen that they are collecting from the asparagus that made the pollen basket appear so striking this morning.  Or maybe some of these bees were being overly industrious in filling up their pollen baskets to the point of looking like they were going to explode, that made them more noticeable today as opposed to other days.  I am definitely going to keep my eye out in the future to see if I notice these little pollen baskets on other bees in the garden from here on out.

Cool video on pollinators

I just watched this pretty cool video on pollinators that "konrad_far_north" posted on the GardenWeb Fruit and Orchards Forum.  It is worth watching.

 

  

Monarch Butterflies - Fall 2011

Monarch butterflies are migrating through Dallas now.   It seems that we usually see them fly through Dallas anytime between September 15th and October 15th.  

I started seeing single Monarchs flying in my garden around September 23rd this year.  On the weekend of October 1st, I started to see pairs of Monarchs flying around, and I caught the photograph above.

The Monarchs don't seem to be as numerous as in previous years.  I am hoping that is not true and is more the result of very limited opportunities for observation on my part.  

We have a lot of flowers in our yard providing plenty of nectar for Monarchs migrating from the North down to their breeding grounds in Mexico.  This year, I also planted several milkweed plants in hopes that the butterflies would deposit  a few eggs on them, maturing into Monarch caterpillars and butterflies.

 

 

As you can see from the photograph below, the Monarchs have actually found the milkweed and have been feeding on their flowers.  However, I have not found any caterpillar eggs just yet.

 

 

If you have also planted milkweed in your garden, you are probably also finding a lot of milkweed bugs on your plants.  These bugs are perfectly harmless and like to suck the fluid out of the milkweed seed pods.  They do look foreboding though.

 

 

Here are a few more of my favorite Monarch photos:

 

 

It’s not just flowers that attract butterflies

There's a good article in the Dallas Morning News by Dale Clark about attracting butterflies in your garden using old fruit.  You should be able to read it here.

To attract fruit loving butterflies, he recommends:

"Place an overripe banana on a dish and split it open to expose the mushy flesh. Place the container outside in dappled light, preferably off the ground to avoid ants. Before long, you might see butterflies checking out the sweet, gooey, fermenting treat. Question marks, red admirals, red spotted-purples, hackberry and tawny emperors are a few of our native species that are readily drawn by the goopy offering.

I use bananas regularly because they’re cheap, but many other fruits are just as enticing to your winged guests. Plums, pears, mangoes, cantaloupe and watermelon are just a few of the options. The type of fruit isn’t as important as that it be a bit overripe. It is the sweet, fermented juices that the butterflies seek. Sometimes the insects become inebriated, which can allow a very close look at them as they feed."

 

Harlequin bugs

This is a photograph of a Harlequin bug.  They are a pest and will usually show up when you leave your spring vegetables too long in the summer garden.

I left my broccoli and kale deep into the spring going into the summer vegetable in order to let them go to seed for next year.  As a result, I had a huge infestation of these harlequin bugs.  Once the broccoli and kale were cut down, however, they left in fairly short order.  They stayed around for a little bit of time preferring to roost in the flowering stalks of my corn, but it did not appear that they were doing any damage to my summer vegetables.  They have since left.

In the Texas Bug Book, Howard Garrett states that these bugs feed on spring vegetables and can cause light splotches, shriveling, and deformity on their leaves.  He advises that the best way to avoid these bugs is to plant your spring vegetables early in the Spring or in the Fall, and take the spring vegetables out once it gets hot.

Here is a photograph of their eggs.  They like to lay these on the underside of the leaves of spring vegetables.

 

Attracting butterflies in Texas

Black swallowtail

 

We have been gardening for butterflies for more than 10 years.  Whenever you pick up an article about attracting butterflies, it seems that the articles are always promoting flowering plants to attract butterflies.   You do need flowers to attract butterflies and keep them in your yard, I think it is much more important to have the host plants for their caterpillars.  If you plant the caterpillar host plants, I guaranty that you will have a constant presence of butterflies.

If you live in Texas, here are what I think are the best host plants to attract butterflies:

1.    Passionvine - Grow this vine on a fence or trellis.  If you are in Dallas/Fort Worth, plant a hardy version for zone 8 such as Maypop.  Some nurseries sell more tender varieties suited only for zones 9 or 10, and they won't make it through the winter.  These plants attract Gulf Fritillaries and Zebra.  I always have a ton of Gulf Fritillaries with these plants, but I have not yet seen a Zebra.  An added bonus of this plant are the beautiful flowers that smell like grape Kool-Aid.

 

 Gulf Fritillary

 

 Gulf Fritillary

 

2.    Fennel and Dill - These herbs attract Black Swallowtails like crazy.  It is easy to find the little green eggs all over the plants.  As an added bonus, you can use these herbs in your cooking.

Black swallowtail

 

 Young black swallowtail caterpillar

 

Mature black swallowtail caterpillar

 

Black swallowtail egg

3.    Rue - This is another bitter herb that is sometimes used in salads.  You have to be careful in handling the leaves because the oils in the leaves can often irritate the skin.  However, Giant Swallowtails like to lay their eggs on this egg.  The Giant Swallowtail is, in fact, giant.  And it is a wonderful visitor to the garden.

Giant swallowtail

 

 

Mature giant swallowtail caterpillar

 

You will also likely receive visits from butterflies that lay eggs on indigenous trees and bushes that are naturally plentiful.  Here are a few examples:

Butterfly                                Host Plant

Cabbage white                   cabbage, broccoli

Tiger swallowtail                cherry trees

Commas                             elm

Question marks                 elm

Banded hairstreak             oak

Buckeye                                plantain

 

 Tiger swallowtail

 

In Dallas, you are going to get migrating Monarchs in April and late September.  You can plant milkweed for migrating monarchs to lay eggs, but I would not expect a resident population of Monarchs.  I have planted milkweed, but I have not been able to get the monarchs to stay around.

 

 

 Monarch

 

Monarch

 

In terms of flowering plants that I like to use in my garden to attract butterflies, here are my favorites:

    Perennials

    1.    Butterfly bush

    2     Catmint - Walker's Low

    3.    Purple coneflower - Magnus

    4.    Shasta Daisy - Becky

    5.    Gayfeather / Liatris

    6.    Agastache

    7.    Lantana

    8.    Blue hyssop

    9.    Veronica speedwell - Sunny Border Blue

    Annual

    10.    Pentas

    11.    Zinnias

Cicadas and Cicada Killers

 

©iStockphoto.com

The cicadas have come out in the last two or three weeks, and you can hear their constant chirping throughout the day.  We occasionally find the shedded skin of their larvae in the yard.  The photograph above is of an adult cicada emerging from its larval form.

Along with the cicadas, cicada killers have also appeared as well.  Cicada killers are enormous wasps with yellow striping on their lower body that prey upon cicadas.  Because of their gigantic size, they are very menacing looking.  Until you come accross one, you cannot even imagine how big these are in size.  Despite their menacing appearance, they have never bothered me in my garden, and I work in close proximity with them.  They have a reputation for being very tame to be around and non-aggressive.  That has also been my experience.

http://www.cirrusimage.com/



http://www.cirrusimage.com/

The other day, I felt something "thump" me in the back very hard.  I didn't know what it was.  As I turned, I saw that our resident cicada killer had tackled a cicada in mid-air.  It must have run into my back from the momentum of attacking the cicada.  After bumping into me, prey and predator had fallen into one of the raised beds where the cicada killer was working to subdue the cicada.  It can be a tough life being a bug.  Cicada killers take their prey to their burrows where they store them for their larvae to eat.  I wish that I had my camera with me, but the photo below shows a similar struggle between cicada and cicada killer.

 

 

 

Ladybug eggs

This year, our garden has been inundated with lady bugs.  That is a very good thing.  About three years ago, I sowed lady bugs in our yard to jump start the population.  Last year, with the harsh winter, the population started out very slowly in the spring.  It has been a different story this year.  I began noticing pairs of lady bugs very early in March, and they are now everywhere.

I am always finding insect eggs in the garden.  It has been a learning process to determine which eggs are beneficial and which are bad.  To help you out, here is a photo of some lady bug eggs.  They are a bright orangish-yellow, oval shaped, and laid in a group.

The lady bugs will usually lay their eggs where there is a food source.  In the photograph below, you can see one of our broccoli raab plants inundated with aphids.  I don't feel the need to spray an organic pesticide on the plant, because you can see that our beneficial lady bugs have kindly laid some eggs right within the aphids.  The lady bug larvae will devour the majority of these harmful aphids.

Last fall, to help the lady bugs overwinter, I purchased this lady bug shelter.  I don't know if there is a true cause and effect relationship here, but I will say that my ladybugs did better this spring with the shelter, compared to last spring.

March Gardening To Do List

This gardening to-do list is focused on zone 8, but it should also be somewhat germane for zones 7 and 9.  (The photo above is of a peach blossom)

Plant fruit trees and shrubs - bare-rooted plants should be planted by the end of  the first half of the month.  Potted plants can be planted the entire month.

Plant trees and shrubs that are potted.

Fruit trees can be pruned before the buds begin to bloom (wait until after fruiting for the fruit bushes)

You are running out of time to prune shade and ornamental trees.  Ideally, pruning should be completed before the trees and bushes start to leaf out.

Clear out dead foliage of last year's perennials such as turk's cap.  I do not cut back the bare stems of hydrangeas.

Spring flowering plants can be pruned after they finish blooming, e.g. carolina jessamine, wisteria, lady banksia roses, spirea, forsythia, flowering quince.

Continue vegetable seeds and transplant per the following schedule - Planting Schedule.  Finish cool season vegetable plantings.  You can begin planting warm season vegetables after the last frost date, which is approximately March 20th in Dallas.  Visit the following site for last frost dates - Interactive Map.  You will want to wait until the soil warms up further for some vegetables like sweet corn and peppers.

If you did not fertilize in February, fertilize lawn and beds with organic fertilizer. 

If you did not do so in February, add compost and topdress mulch.

After the last frost date, begin spraying fruit and vegetables with compost tea or Garrett Juice mixture.  I try to spray every other week with a backpack sprayer, but it is not necessary to spray this frequently.  (This year, I am going to experiment with a mixture including Garrett Juice, Seaweed extract, Bt additive (for caterpillers and pests), garlic juice (insects), and actinovate (prevent fireblight and other fungus) -- I'll report back as to how it does).

In the first part of March, spread diatomaceous earth around your strawberry plants to deter slugs and pill bugs.

You can continue to plant cold weather annuals - e.g. petunias, pansies, pinks, alyssum, etc.  After the last frost date, you can begin planting warm weather annuals.

Even after the average last frost date, keep an eye on the forecast for any unexpected late freezes.  Be prepared to water your tender, warm weather transplants before the frost hits.  Be prepared to cover those tender transplants with frost cloth or some other type of covering.

After the last frost date, begin sowing beneficial insects if you do not have an existing, abundant population.  Ladybugs, green lacewings, praying mantids, trichogramma wasps, beneficial nematodes, etc.

Prepare for the birds.  Get your Eastern Screech Owl and Barn Owl houses up.  Put out the goldfinch feeders with thistle.  At the end of March, get your hummingbird feeders out in case there are any early visitors.  Get your purple martin house up and ready for the scouts.

Cut back and trim groundcover in the first part of the month, if necessary.

Late March is a good time to put down sod.

Water as needed.  March is the rainy season, so only infrequent watering should be necessary.

** The Organic Manual, Howard Garrett (Tapestry Press 2002).