Caterpillar Heaven

     As a disclaimer, I can and am willing to be corrected for any miss identification of any insect mentioned in the proceeding observations.

     In general, I am not bothered too much by insects on our property.  We have the occasional problem with aphids (ant's farming) on the potted Sempervivums and Sedums, Mockorange and Burning Bush.  Sometimes the ants decide that a pot of perennials would make a good home.  It's nothing a little soap won't take care of.

Last year we pulled out a Snowball bush because I had enough.  It had leaf roller which caused the leaves at the tip of the branches to roll up and the leaves became skeletonized (not leaf roller).  It looked so bad for so many years, it had to go.  This year the High Bush Cranberry is being attacked.  Viburnum Leaf Beetle is skeletonizing the shrub.

     Both the larva and the adult feed on the leaves.  These are not the insects you want in the garden.  I don't like to spray and I feel that if something can't survive on its own it is gone.  I really don't want to give up on my Cranberry yet.  Control (organically) is by removing debris and searching for egg cases and pruning in the spring.  That sound like too much work.  To add insult to injury, these little guys are going to go into the ground and reemerge as adults who will continue to eat at the Cranberry.

     I have fixed my cabbage worm problem on the broccoli and cabbage by getting some curtain sheers at Louis (our Frenchys) and covering a frame.  So far that has been working very well.

     The pussy toes (Antennaria) had a caterpillar cocooned around its leaves.  It is very interesting in the garden but most customers don't want to see them on the leaves in the pots for sale.

      Most of them were quite small but I found this one on the edge.  I think it is the American Lady Lava.  And I had seen them earlier in the spring in the garden.

     The Scotch Thistle always gets this webbing with a caterpillar inside chewing on the leaves and leaving little deposits.  I guess it depends on your point of view as to whether it is attractive or not.  But what is the point of a butterfly garden if there is not a bit of damage.  The larva need to eat.

We are quite sure it is the Painted Lady.

      The Wormwood (Artimesia Valerie Finnis) plants are having their leaves curled, again, of course, in the potted plants. 

      I have read suggest that it is the Painted Lady, and they really like the grey leaved plants.

     I have the book 'Caterpillars of Eastern North America'  David L. Wagner, although it is a great looking book, the pictures and description are great, it really doesn't have a good Key for figuring out the moth or butterfly larva.  I have had more success surfing the web.

 

      The Monarchs showed up last Friday, two of them.  They are still flying around.  When we first built our house back in 1991, within a few years, on my Butterfly Weed (Asclepia incarnata) we had Monarch larva.  The last time was about 5-6 years ago and they were on both on the potted plants and the plants in the garden.  Last year I did see one down in the woodlot, the butterfly, not the larva.

But this year, I have high hopes.

Scotch Thistle

Scotch Thistle (Onopordum acanthium) also known as Cotton Thistle, will not be found in many perennial books or guides.  It is in a class of its own.  As I have always told my customers, you either like it or you don't, and by the interest, may gardeners do.  However it comes with a few warnings.

Scotch Thistle is a true biennial.  It forms a soft, spiny rosette of gray leaves the first year.  The centre of the leaves are downy soft yet when you touch the outer edges, they are as sharp as a cactus needle.  The plants forms a deep tap root making it difficult, but not impossible to move.  What you see is what you get the first year.



The second year the rosette elongates late may through June - July to form a large imposing, impressive thistle. 

 It is at this stage that my customers say 'wow, what is that plant?'

How can you not like that beautiful pinkish-purple flower.  It is short lived, but so are paeonies and poppies.  Being a true biennial, the plant dies after it flowers.  And being a true biennial it reseeds prolifically. 

What I do, and what I tell my customers is that after it blooms, remove (with seriously tough gloves) all the flower heads but a few and alow the few to mature their seed.  When their seed is ripe, I remove the seed and line it out in a row where I have removed the mother plants.  The seed usually germinates in the fall but goes through the winter just fine.  In the spring, I place out what plants I want for the garden and pot up some to sell as 1st year plants.

Seed is their only means of reproduction.  The plant can produce up to 40 000 seeds. Don't put the mature seed heads in the compost.  In may areas it is concidered an evasive species.  But if you follow my advice above, you will have no problems.

Tonight (June 27th), I came home  to find my beloved thistles lying over.  It had been rainy and windy the last few days.  This has happened in the past but not every year.

So we found some stakes and hauled them up.  As long as they remain till they bloom (any time) and the seed matures for another year. 

Usually I don't take them away till mid to late August. 

I think it will be much earlier this year and I may need a bit of filler.

I wonder what is left in the greenhouse ........

A Bit of Everything

 

Why is it the grass grows into the beds at such a remarkable speed??

Nothing like a nice crisp edge to make it look finished.

And of course a husband who likes to have things nice and tidy and doesn't mind doing it.

 

Oh, those pesky weeds who hide under the skirts of the primula.

Clematis recta, one bloom open, hundreds to go.  This plant needs staking.  I say that every year and do I get it staked??  No.  Then it flops over on the other plants.

Nothing like a pure white Iris.

Or maybe a pure yellow paeony (Yellow Crown).  Absolutely love it!

Oh and the picture frame is coming along really nice.  No, it is not for sale, I am going to enjoy this one.  I do have another frame I am going to do at some point and I need to get some more wreaths started.  Maybe later.

Everything has Popped

Everything has popped.  What a difference two weeks make.  Here it is the last days of May and this past week you would swear it was July or August.

 

I have Daylilies blooming.  Aztec Gold is early but not that early, it's not supposed to bloom till the end of June

 

The Hosta are up.

Almost fully out. 

Remember, I spaced them out last year?

 I think they will be good for a few

The bog garden is looking good, a bit on the dry side, not very boggy, but nothing is this spring.  I do think a few too many holes were punched in the plastic, but it is a bit moister than the rest of the garden.

In the lower part of the display gardens, I had lost just about all my Euphorbia (have no idea why), and the Saponaria (Bouncing Bet), which I love, were bouncing around a bit too much.  This year they were out.  Will have to find a new spot for them.  Anyway, I moved the Helenium (Helen's Flower, Sneezeweed, Swamp Sunflower) into the centre of this area around the second week in May.  Well since it hasn't rained here much the month of May, you can probably tell that they didn't like it.

 

But a nice coat of compost and a little rain this past day and they are smiling.

 

Now I have to get the Woolly Thyme path to smile.

 

Back at the Semps

So what do you do if you just can resist all those varieties of Semps out there, and you have amassed a collection.  Guilty.

You can make a wreath (may be I'll post a how to do some day), but to day we are going to do something different.

I am a 4-H leader for Gardening and Floraculture in our local club. The young lady I teach Floraculture to came to me with this idea she found on the Internet for making a picture out of Semps.  It didn't take us long to decide that this would be a good project. Even Lady thinks so.

My Father-in-Law throws nothing out.  He had this great frame that he basically made a shadow box for.  We used hardware cloth, 1/4" in size.

Marla's Dad made hers but they used 1" cloth (much better size), you learn as you go.  She filled her box from the back, adding soil first,

 Then adding a thin layer of sphagnum moss to hold the soil in.



Then screwing the 'frame' down to the shadow box.

Mine was made upside down, laying the moss down first on the hardware cloth.

Adding the potting soil, sliding the back on and screwing it down.

Now the fun part, we get to fill it with whatever we want.  Marla's frame is huge, she added semps, small sedums and some creeping thyme.

Surprisingly, you don't need a lot of material, you actually want the smaller pieces (chicks) and little sprigs of sedums and thyme.  Marla took hers home to her little greenhouse until she is ready to display it at our 4-H Achievement Day towards the end of July.  By then it should be looking quite good.

I had to cut out some of the hardware cloth so it gave me 1" squares for adding some of the semps.  I kept mine pure, semps only.  They will take a little while to root in, but I can't wait until it can be hung up (carefully of course).

Hmmm, I wonder if Papa has anymore frames lying around??

Out With the Old, In With the New

Can't really tell from the top picture that the front half of the bench collapsed last fall when I loaded it with just a few too many pots. 

 

 

After all, they are over 14 years old, made from the pickets of a fence and subjected to years of high humidity and watering.  It is surprising they lasted this long.  'Finally' said Andrew.  He knows my motto of trying to get the last tomato from the plant.  I will not throw anything out if it still has some life in it.  I had to admit it was a goner.  Andrew wanted metal benches.  "They won't rot."

 

Ok.  The bench was ordered.  Out came the old one.  You know it is rotten when you can practically break it apart with your bare hands.  The greenhouse always had a gravel floor from day one.  We had put a few large patio stones in a few years ago, but that was as far as it went.  Andrew's dad seemed to have this large stock pile of stones at his place (he throws nothing out) and with a few trips to the local building supplies, we put in the floor.

I have to admit, I am really liking it.  And even though I am busy outside, I was not putting a brand new bench on a brand new floor with walls looking like that.  

But it didn't take long to clean, and boy does it ever look better.

After all that, the realization that we ordered the bench 6" too long; What were we thinking??  Out came the dremil (great little invention) and the bolt cutters and everything fit perfect.

And it didn't take me long to fill it up.

I wonder how long the benches on the otherside will last?