All the Dirt on Gardening

Many people love the sight of butterflies, moths and skippers in their garden. Planning ahead can help bring more this summer. Carole Sevilla Brown recently posted a list of five actions to take to improve your butterfly gardening and it's an important place to start. Brown's blog entry is at http://www.beautifulwildlifegarden.com/5-steps-to-butterfly-garden.html Maybe you have some ideas that work for you. We'd love to hear those since we always want more! Start Here Find out what kind of butterflies, moths and skippers are common or native to your neck of the woods so you can plant what they raise their babies (caterpillars or larvae) on. When these insects are born in your garden they tend to stick around and make a few new generations as long as the food lasts.  Butterfly weed - Asclepias tuberosa Mass planting instead of spot planting is a great suggestion from Brown's blog. A single zinnia here and there will bring a single adult butterfl...

Grey Hairstreak Butterflies are fairly common here in North America. Gray Hairstreaks fly throughout the US, north to southern Canada, South to Mexico and Venezuela. Their caterpillars eat many many plants but do the most crop damage to beans and cotton. Favorite caterpillar foods include anything in the pea family (Fabaceae), mallows Malvaceae and Malva), beans (Phaseolus), clovers (Trifolium), and cotton varieties Gossypium). Project Noah Not all Hairstreak caterpillars are pink - some are the usual colors: beige, bright green, brownish, etc. But check out this guy - he's positively pink! Shady Oak Butterfly Farm posted a photo of the pink caterpillar on their Facebook page today. http://www.facebook.com/#!/ShadyOakButterflyFarm I've had hundreds of Gray Hairstreaks in our garden over the years and I have yet to see a pink caterpillar. I will be positively vigilant this coming butterfly season! Their flights are May-September in the north and in the south they have t...

This afternoon an adult giant swallowtail butterfly (Papilio cresphontes) was all over the lantana flowers. They are so shy it is difficult to snap photos of them. Then it flitted rapidly which is usually a sign of eggs.  I checked the Rue and Moon Carrot plants carefully and counted 22 newly hatched caterpillars/larvae. Here's the life cycle in photos - some taken last year and some this year Single eggs are deposited on a leaf Indiviual eggs on leaves Newly hatched larvae A few days later, they have the same appearance but are larger Then, they take on their characteristic bird droppings appearance. The chrysalis photo is from the http://www.naturemuseum.org/online/thebutterflylab/fieldguide/native.html This butterfly is the largest one. Its other common name is Orange Dog because they decimate citrus trees - not killing the trees but damaging crops. Northeast OK used to be just barely in their range but their range has grown significantly.