The Monarchs are Here!

Monarchs arrived in the area about the 12th of May. Almost the same week as last year. My friend Bob has already collected almost 100 eggs. Since I work full time I am a little limited in my time. I will start collecting this coming week.

I have been preparing the garden all month. I have 18 swamp milkweed plants in the garden now. I planted 6 this spring. I have been purging the garden of over abundant plants and replacing with more butterfly-friendly plants, i.e. milkweed, coneflower, liatris, salvia... The images above are a group of planters all filled with milkweed, just for the caterpillars. I paired them up with tidal wave petunias to feed the hummingbirds. Two planters are filled with dill and parsley. I also planted bronze fennel to the garden. These three plants all attract eastern swallowtail b-fly attractors.

I have 7 swamp milkweed in pots for the cat. house for the caterpillars to munch on. I will put them in and they will get eaten and then I will pull it out and put a new one in. The mw plants will re-leaf and then I can put them back in. So the mw will be rotating. Now I just need to clean the cat. house and the 2 aquariums that were passed on to me by a couple of friends. If you choose to use an aquarium instead of a cat. house or plastic storage container, you will want to put in a piece of 2" foam to cover the bottom. When the cats. make their chrysalis' they will , on occasion fall down. This protects them from being damaged.

The next time I check in, I hope to have caterpillars!

Let me know what you are doing and if you need help or advice. I am coaching anyone who wants to raise cats this summer! Later!

Starting Seeds

Before transplanting... After transplanting...

Starting seeds at home is really easy. All you need is some potting soil, seeds, and containers to grow your seeds in and a clean spray bottle for water. A grow light is helpful. A table at a sunny window with a clip light and grow light bulb will work. I put my seed trays in my utility room in front of the window, once I added the clip light the seeds started popping right away!

Here's how you start, choose the seeds you'd like to start. Oh by the way if you are going on vacation between now and, well frankly when you garden you don't travel that much. LOL! Someone needs to be around to water! So, choose your seeds...I am starting some seeds this spring that are attractive to butterflies. I have dill, parsley, milkweed and Tithonia. I am also growing some edibles.

Choose your containers, you can strart seeds in recycled flower containers and trays or collect yougurt cups. Make sure to put a couple of holes in the bottom of the cups. You need to allow water to drain. Or you can even make your own containers out of newspaper. Basically you just fill your containers with soil, and read the seed package to seed how deep the seeds should be planted in the soil or should they be on top of the soil? After the seeds are planted I sprinkle the top of the potting soil with a little "seed starting mix". New seedlings are susseceptible to a fungus called "Damping Off", the fine ground peat moss in the seed starting mix keeps this in check. This is also where the spray bottle comes in. When starting seeds you don't pour water over the containers. After all if the seeds require being on the top of the soil to germinate, the drench of water will surely wash the seeds off the soil. Use the spray bottle to saturate the soil once or twice a day. I do not usually pour water over the top until the plant is in its permanant spot. You can water from underneath by pouring a little water into a tray with no holes and let the soil wick it up. You don't need to do that until the seeds are growing.

After the seeds have sprouted and have grown about a week the seedlings need to be transplanted. Mostly this is necessary if the seedlings are very crowded. So you can either transplant or "thin" the plants out by cutting off some of the seedlings to make room for a few strong plants. I will continue to use the spray bottle until the plants are bigger and very strong. Most plants that I start from seed are not put out in the garden or a planter until after Mother's Day to be sure it is warm enough for the new tender plants. So you see? It is pretty easy! Leave me message if you have any questions. Happy Planting!

Happy Spring!!!

Well hello everyone! Happy Spring! I am beginning to start my summer butterfly flower plans. I thought I would share those plans with you and inspire you to do the same. First I got my paperwork today and my yard sign from Monarch Watch. My garden at home now officially a Monarch Waystation. This means that I have full filled the requirements of Monarchwatch.org to have a monarch friendly and sustainable garden. I am really excited about this. If you are interested got to monarchwatch.org. So what am I doing for the summer? Well late in the season last year I learned that not only does milkweed have sap in it that has a chemical makeup that makes them taste bad to birds, but there is some evidence that some milkweed plants have more of this chemical than others. Not only that, the chemical is a protectant from diseases that monarch caterpillars are sussespable to. So those two species are swamp milkweed and tropical (or red) milkweed. Right now I am starting seeds for both milkweed. I will be filling my big ceramic pots around the house with tropical milkweed (*sniff* I will miss my geraniums) and petunias for hummingbirds. I am really excited about doing this. I have a really large blue ceramic pot that I moved to a more prominat position in the garden and that will the new focal point of the garden. The swamp milkweed I am growing will go in various open spots in the garden. The point of all of this milkweed is that I want to collect monarch eggs more close to home. I will also be growing a few pots of dill and parsley (which is a biennuial). I want to attract swallowtail butterflies too. So I really hope this works. Last summer I had about six secret spots that I visited every couple of days for eggs. I exhausted myself running around collecting eggs. So I have a different plan this summer. More soon!

My First Butterly Release!

Today I volunteered butterflies and a few hours of my time at the 40th anniversary celebration of the Valpo Visiting Nurses Association. It was a very nice event with reminiscing on the humble origins of the association and the importance of hospice. I have known a few families who have used hospice and my sis-in-law was a hospice nurse for 10 years. So I know what a wonderful, compassionate and important service it is. Congratulations VNA! We gave away many packages of milkweed seeds today and I hope they will all get planted because the more milkweed planted the more monarchs will come to our area and lay eggs!

I met two new friends today who also raise monarchs. Lisa, Jane and I combined our butterflies and a few from other friends, to create a really beautiful release. In total we released about 60 butterflies. All the visitors who stopped by our display were so amazed at our endeavor of raising butterflies. Well we just love doing it. In fact Jane said "Yeah they are my pets." Mine too! This has been a long 3 months, lots of hours cleaning caterpillar frasse and covering the cat. house in the rain, searching for clean milkweed, searching for eggs, I can't imagine spending this summer doing anything else. I can't wait until next summer! I have such big plans for my garden in order to make my butterfly garden even more butterfly friendly!

I have included some photos of today's event and my last caterpillar!

And Caterpillar Season Winds Down...

So cat. season is winding down, There are only three more feeding and 2 making their chrysalis, probably tonight. I have about 35 chrysalis I am waiting paitiently to elcose soon. I am a little concerned because tha last 5 butterflies or so have eclosed and not been healthy. I don't know what is going to happen to these last chrysalis. I really hope they hatch healthy. I certainly feel like I haven't seen a healthy butterfly in my cat. house in a while.

On the other hand I can't wait for next year! I have lots of plans for attracting more monarchs and swallowtails to my garden. New combo planters, big patch of dill and lots more milkweed. I am going to grow Tagetes tenuifolia (tiny marigolds) because they have a lot more fragrance than normal garden marigolds. This is supposed to keep flies away and with milkweed comes aphids and with aphids come flies- yuk. So that is a few of the changes I will make. If I fill up my large ceramic pots with tropical (red) milkweed and dill, it won't leave a lot of room for my beloved geraniums, well maybe just a few...

A few picture from the last week...

Happy Talk like a Pirate Day!

Grrrr! Arrrrggg

Ahhhh that backbend feeeels good!

See the seam on the chrysalis? It almost looks like the stiching on a baseball huh? The part on the left is the flap that will open first when the butterfly ecloses.

My one and only black swallowtail butterfly chrysalis. It will stay in the cat. house all winter in the garage. Unless it hatches soon which would be bad.

Still Going Strong....

A Chrysalis about 12 hours before eclosing, notice the air pocket around the butterfly?

Butterfly number 251 hanging out for a little while on my sweet autumn clematis.

Peek a boo!

Feeding the monarchs that I had to keep for a few days.

Molting time!

I have begun collecting again....

"Hey watch out! I was here first! Find your own sunny branch!"

A newly formed chrysalis (right) and one that hatched (left) not too long after this photo was taken.

Today's first b-fly, sunning herself on the outside of the caterpillar house.

A newly hatch monarch from today

Hello Peeps, I can safely say that my monarch raising is back on track. After loosing 38 cats. (which was really sad), I left it all alone for a week and did not collect anymore eggs/ cats. Mostly because I didn't see very many in the garden- strike that I couldn't find any! So I thought I was winding down for the season. I have 2 cats in the cat house right now. One is resting before pupating and the other little guy- bless him- he is eating ravenously. So a friend of mine brought me a few cats. because she needed a sitter for the weekend (thanks Sara! ) and I took them hoping whatever killed the others would not strike these too. I have sterilized all of my containers and keeping all new additions quarantined until every cat gets big enough to move into the caterpillar house. My hope is renewed! Friday evening I spent a while out in the garden sitting on the ground scouring all of my milkweed plants to see if there were any cats. or eggs. Lo and behold- I found 16 caterpillars! Today I went out again and found 4 more and 4 eggs. YAY! The only drawback to that method is all of the aphid ick that gets on you and under your nails- ewwww!