Stalking the Wild Monarch

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All About the Monarch Butterfly

by Sandy Swegel

It’s Show and Tell time.
It’s time to take the kids or some curious adults outside and prove your superior knowledge of the ways of nature and introduce them to butterfly eggs.  It’s been a good milkweed year in the wild this year. Lots of spring rains followed by warm days have made the perfect home for milkweed plants.  Milkweeds are growing in my garden and along roadsides and ditches.  If milkweed plants are fully grown…mine are in tight bud about to bloom…you can walk up to almost any plant and look under the leaves and find little tiny white monarch butterfly eggs.

Milkweed plants, Asclepias, as you probably know are the ONLY host plant for the monarch butterfly.  The butterfly lays her eggs on the underside of the leaves. The eggs hatch hungry little larvae that chew up the leaves.

The larvae get big and fat and eventually form pupae, also on the underneath side of a milkweed plant.

Finally, “ta-da” a monarch butterfly emerges.

I have two favorite kinds of milkweed plants in my garden.  The “showy milkweed” Asclepias speciosa with the big pink seed head you’ve seen in fields, and “Butterfly weed” Asclepias tuberosa which is my favorite because it’s bright orange and looks good in the dry August garden next to the Black-eyed Susans.  It also makes a great picture to see a Monarch butterfly on one of the orange flowers.

Monarchs are happy to choose either of these two “milkweeds” or any of the other more than 100 different species of milkweeds around the world. So you can pick the flower you like and grow it in your own garden. Grow it and the monarchs WILL come.  I’ve had good luck with fall or winter direct sowing of the seeds that easily grow into blooming plants the next year.  After that, they reseed themselves gently.

Video links
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=9Q2eORu1hP8

http://www1.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?title=Monarch_butterfly_laying_eggs_on_milkweed&video_id=51640

And, just in case there are any monarch butterflies out there that don’t know how to do this, here is an instructable!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Monarch-Butterflies-Egg-to-Butterfly/

 

 

Pollinator Week 2014

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Celebrate Pollinators with Pollinator Week

Seven years ago the U.S. Senate’s unanimous approval and designation of this week in June as “National Pollinator Week” marked a necessary step toward addressing the urgent issue of declining pollinator populations. Pollinator Week has now grown to be an international celebration of the valuable ecosystem services provided by bees, birds, butterflies, bats, beetles, etc.

Often overlooked or misunderstood, pollinators are in fact responsible for one out of every three bites of food that we eat. In the U.S. bees alone undertake the astounding task of pollinating over $15 billion in added crop value, particularly for specialty crops such as almonds and other nuts, berries, fruits, and vegetables. Beginning in 2006, pollinators started to decline rapidly in numbers.

BBB Seed Company (Boulder, CO), The Colorado State Beekeepers Association, Northern Colorado Beekeepers Association, Boulder County Beekeepers Association & 16 garden centers/stores from Fort Collins, Boulder, Denver & Colorado Springs are teaming up to celebrate National Pollinator Week! We will have a Pollinator Table set up at all 16 locations during Pollinator Week June 16-22nd with pollinator literature, brochures, pollinator wildflower mixes and more. On Saturday, June 21st from 10am-2pm, some of the garden centers listed below will have a beekeeper there to answer any questions adults & children may have about pollinators, planting for pollinators, protecting pollinators, etc! Come help us Celebrate, Honor & Protect our Precious Pollinators!

So visit your local nursery or garden center during Pollinator Week, pick up some seeds or flowering plants and learn about the vital role of bees and other pollinators!

Locations in Larimer County include:

• Fort Collins Nursery, Fort Collins
• Bath Garden Center, Fort Collins
• Gardens on Spring Creek, Fort Collins
• JAX Ranch & Home, Fort Collins
• JAX, Loveland

Locations in Boulder County include:
• Flower Bin, Longmont
• JAX, Lafayette
• McGuckin Hardware, Boulder
• Harlequin’s Gardens, Boulder
• Sturtz & Copeland, Boulder

Locations in the Denver area include:
• Country Fair Garden Center- Colorado Blvd
• Nick’s Garden Center & Farm Market
• Tagawa Gardens

Locations in Colorado Springs include:
• Phelan Gardens
• Rick’s Garden Center

Is It Time?

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Is There Still Time to Plant Seeds?

by Sandy Swegel

Is it time? Is it too late?  Can I still plant seeds?  These are the questions I heard this week.  In our Zone 5 area, garden centers are already starting to discount plants and seasonal workers will get laid off by the 4th of July. Does that mean it’s too late to plant seeds and you should just buy the biggest plant you can find?

Generally, the answer is, of course, there is still time to plant seeds…It’s only June!  For gardeners, the truest answer is always, “It Depends.”

There are a few seeds that it is too late to plant. In Zone 5 or other short growing season areas, it’s too late to plant watermelon or winter squash or tomatoes by seed.  The “days to maturity” info on the back of the seed package tells you that you need 90-100 days before the plant makes its first ripe fruit.  100 days from now is mid-September before you might get a watermelon…that doesn’t work when we might have frost by then…or at the very least cold nights.

The flip side of this question is, “Are there seeds I should plant rather than buy plants?”  Absolutely.  It makes no sense to buy a broccoli or cauliflower plant now for $4.00 when it’s just going to bolt in the summer heat.  It likes cooler weather.  And you could probably buy the broccoli itself cheaper.  But in a couple of weeks, market farmers are starting their broccoli seeds to get their fall crops going. Planting broccoli and cauliflower soon is a great idea!

Annuals are still a great bargain to plant.  I went into sticker shock when I went plant shopping this year.  Plant prices are up about 30 percent in my area.  For less than the price of a 4-inch pot with a marigold, I can get one seed packet of marigolds and have dozens and dozens of plants in bloom in only 45 days.  They’ll be super cute all over the garden and in the vegetable garden, they’ll help repel pests.

It’s the same for cosmos and California poppies and zinnias and all the annual wildflower mixes.  There’s still time.  For perennial seed, some plants might not bloom till next year, but the plants will be strong and it’s a lot easier to start seeds now in the garden where you want them to grow instead of inside under lights in the middle of winter.

Buying bedding plants is great for instant gratification, but gardeners know that if you want a garden full of hundreds of flowers (without breaking the bank), SEEDS are the way to go!

So there IS still time. Lots of time for annual flowers like cosmos and zinnias and sunflowers and bachelor buttons and zinnias and for big flowery herbs.  Then there all those vegetables to seed.  And the perennials you are admiring in bloom now. You get the idea. There is plenty of time to plant by seed and enjoy them this year.

 

Heirloom vegetable seed

Wildflower Mixes

Pollinator mixes

Make Your Own Mud Puddle

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How To Attract More Pollinators

by Sandy Swegel

I’m always in search of how to do things more easily and efficiently in the garden. Once again today I was at the garden center eavesdropping and heard a typical customer question: ”What should I plant to get pollinators to my yard?” The answer the garden center owner gave surprised me.  I was expecting a list of bright colorful flowers that were good sources of nectar and some host-specific plants for butterflies. Instead, I heard the best and simplest answer to this common question: “There are lots of good plants to use,  but the most important thing you can do is provide a good source of water.” He then elaborated that it couldn’t just be a birdbath or water fountain…it needed to be shallow and ideally have the minerals pollinators crave.

So the quick and easy way to get LOTS of pollinators to your yard is to make mud puddles.  Or if you’re a bit tidier, a water sand bath.

Any way to get small puddles of water will work. You’ve seen this when flying insects gather around a dripping spigot, or when there’s a ledge in your water feature that water flows slowly over. In nature, pollinators gather along the edges of streams and lakes.

To mimic nature, take a plant saucer and fill it half with sand and fill with water to just over the sand.  The sand is the source of minerals and gives an easy surface to rest upon.  Bees especially will drown in deeper water.  To make it extra nice, sprinkle compost over the sand to add extra nutrients.  If you’re out in the country, a nice flat cow patty will do the trick…Put it in a big round plant saucer and add water.

If you’re in a very dry climate like me, the water evaporates much too quickly in hot weather.  The customer I was eavesdropping on at the garden center had a burst of inspiration: “I’ll put one of my drip lines in it so when I water the plants, the “puddle” will get water.”

A less elegant solution is to take a one-gallon water bottle and put a pinhole in the bottom and place it on some bare soil. Fill the bottle and water will drip out slowly keeping a mud puddle going.

I’ve put out an attractive saucer with sand, and a water bottle over bare dirt to see which works better. So far, the plain wet dirt is winning when they’ve got a choice. Now, why do I suspect they’d probably like the wet cow patty the best.

 

 

Pollinator mixes

Heirloom vegetable seed

Wildflower seed mixes

Buzz Pollination

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An Important Part of Pollination

by Sandy Swegel

We love pollinators at BBB Seed and we keep learning how many kinds of pollinators there are beside honeybees.  There are all the native bees and the moths and the flies.  Yesterday’s comely pollinator in my garden rounds was a giant bumblebee that was rather drunkenly going from iris to iris.  A bumblebee can be very big and noisy.  I could hear its buzz from several feet away. It was a delightful way to be digging weeds on a sunny day.

I wondered about the loud buzz and big hairy size of the bumblebee.  A little Googling later and sure enough, the buzzing is an important part of the pollination. I love how this bee pollinates. It has its own kind of pollination: buzz pollination.

The bumblebee flies up to the flower and literally grabs onto the flower tubule and starts to vibrate up to 1000 times a minute.  All that vibration makes the loud buzz.

Botanist Mario Vallejo-Marín wrote in a fancy scientific journal about buzz pollination: “The bumblebee has to hold on because the vibrations are so strong that otherwise, it could come flying off the flower.”

Wow.  Just to make the process even more dramatic, the bumblebee maximizes its pollen pickup by using its hairy body to create static electricity as it flies. As soon as that bumblebee hits the pollen, say hello to static cling.

Bumblebees remind me of Tim Allen’s old TV show Home Improvement.  Tim always wanted “More Power” when working in his shop.  The bumblebee has “more power”! Its little motor generates a powerful electrostatic field.  Then its bee vibrating motor sends pollen flying everywhere which effortlessly clings to its hairy body like Velcro.

Gotta love how clever nature is.

Photo Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bumblebee

Hummingbird Moths aka Sphinx Moth, Hawkmoth or Hornworm

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About These Important Pollinators

by Sandy Swegel



When we think of pollinators, we think of bees and butterflies, but one of the larger groups of pollinators are moths.  They go from flower to flower looking for nectar and their hairy faces and bodies pick up lots of pollen that get taken to the next flower.  Most people think about moths just when they notice the moths flitting around the porch light at night, but gardeners see moths all the time without even realizing it.  The little white “butterflies” around our veggie garden are cabbage moths.

One of the most intriguing moths in the garden is the Sphinx moth or hummingbird moth.  It hovers especially over flowers, especially at dawn or dusk, looking for super sweet nectar. Most people think it’s a hummingbird the first time they see one.

Unique Facts

They are the only moth that “hovers” over flowers like hummingbirds do, fluttering their wings rapidly while they “drink” nectar.  This is why they are called “hummingbird moths.”

They can fly very fast, up to 30 miles per hour. They can also fly swooping down as hawks do. This is why they are called “hawkmoths.”

They are big. Their front wingspan can be eight inches and their proboscis (for feeding) can be 10 inches.

They are more active at night but you can see them during the daytime too, especially around twilight.

They find their flowers from a distance by their scent.  They love sweet-smelling flowers.  Once close up, the use their vision to find white or light colored flowers. They often feed on the same flowers by night that the hummingbirds use during the day.

The weirdest thing about the hummingbird moths is that their larval form is a hornworm. Gardeners see them most often as the dreaded tomato hornworm.

They get their name The Sphinx moth because the larvae will raise the front portion of their body up when you disturb them, causing it to resemble the Egyptian Sphinx.

Flowers that are Pollinated by Hawkmoths:

Evening Primrose
Moonflower
Azaleas
Four O’Clocks
Peonies
Bee balm
Honeysuckle

These amazing hawk-sphinx-hummingbird moths are so useful in the garden, that now I have to let some of the tomato hornworms live just so I can have more moths around. Yikes.

Extension Fact Sheet about Hawkmoths

How to Start Mothing

Pollinator of Month

Slow Motion Video of Hawkmoth

How to Rear Sphinx Moths

 

A Year of Surprises

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A Stellar Wildflower Year

by Sandy Swegel

People often ask how long do seeds last, but they usually are referring to seeds in packets.  The question I’m astonished by this year is “How long do seeds last in the soil?” Colorado is a pretty dry place and there aren’t that many plants that reseed prolifically the way that happens in warmer, more humid places.  But this year is a year of surprises.  Most years we are lucky if we get 20 inches of rain all year. But last September we had 17 inches of rain in one month and the highest annual precipitation ever recorded here.  All that moisture refilled our underground water reservoirs, remoistened soils desiccated by recent years of drought, and awakened seeds and roots that had long been dormant.

Since September, gardens have been a constant surprise for me. It started in October when Naked Lady bulbs I planted 6 years ago appeared. The bulbs had bloomed the first year I planted them and then never again.  I assumed they died….but somehow those small bulbs were deep in the ground just biding their time for the right conditions.

Yesterday I watched new blooms on pink columbines that were first planted 14 years ago. Those hybrid columbines gradually all reseeded to yellow but yesterday, about 20 feet from the original bed of pink columbines, a seed that had waited patiently in dormancy suddenly lept to life.  Pink! That seed had been brought by the wind or birds to a spot where it was just waiting for its moment.  Near the asparagus bed, tulip bulbs that had been planted too deep many years ago found their way to the surface and are now late bloomers blooming with the iris. A strawberry patch that had dwindled to just a few puny plants exploded three feet in every direction. Even weeds seem like old friends.  I thought I had successfully weeded horsetail out of the rock garden years ago but ten shoots are poking up through the snow in summer.  There is something so abundant about this year that I’m even happy to see the weeds.

I can’t wait to go hiking in the foothills this weekend.  Reports from around the state suggest that we are having a stellar wildflower year. All of Colorado is going to look just the pictures on our wildflower seed packets!!!

Photo Credits
Todd Caudle http://outtherecolorado.com/gallery/1735/pictures/281747

 

Less is More

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Give Plants the Attention They Deserve

by Sandy Swegel

One of my favorite things to do is spend other people’s money.  Or better said, to go shopping with them and encourage them to buy the cool things they want to buy.  I always covet plants and yet I know I don’t have the time or space to buy as many as I want, so it is fun to live vicariously through others. “Yes that Japanese maple would look beautiful by your front door.”  “You just have to get this hand-forged trellis, wooden ones are so dinky and break after awhile.” etc.

I’ll still encourage people to buy quality garden structures or funky garden art, but I’ve slowed down on encouraging them to buy lots of plants.  It was writing last week about biointensive gardening that reminded me. One of the themes of John Jeavons’ book is to create one garden bed and create it well (double dug, good soil amendments). Better to have one bed producing a lot of food than three beds barely eking out enough for dinner.

Plants need attention to establish, at least if you live in a difficult climate like Colorado.  You can’t just plant a bunch of plants and ignore them.  I know, I’ve accidentally killed a lot of plants that way.  You just end up guilty at the waste or feel like a failure as a gardener. So slow down before you buy out the garden center or plant out hundreds of seedlings. Just because it’s inexpensive to grow from seed doesn’t mean your work growing and planting isn’t valuable. We’ll leave for another day, and a bottle of scotch, the esoteric discussion of the karmic implications of killing plants.

How to Practice Less is More

Focus on one section of your garden for new plantings
Decide to spiff up just one area this year with new plants. I encouraged my friend to focus on the entry bed for now and later get plants for the rest of the yard. Many gardeners have “nursery” beds for new plants where they let them grow the first year.  They can remember to take care of the babies in the nursery.

Pick a learning theme of the year.

I kept twenty new plants alive and thriving the year I made an herb bed and planted twenty different herbs just to learn how they grew. (FYI, it’s easy to grow lots of ginger and one tansy plant is enough for the rest of your life.) Another year I focused on containers and planted containers of annuals each of one color in a matching pot.  So cute.  The focus on one kind of plant helped me be a better gardener.

Repetition

I love one plant of every kind, but a designer friend showed me how cluttered and unattractive that can be.  Pick a few plants and repeat them and your garden will look professionally designed.  For example, in a perennial bed, plant one kind of grass as a “bones” of the bed and plant a few native flowers around the base of each grass.

So enjoy the season and the new plants…but make “Less is More” your mantra. Unless of course you have a full staff like Martha Stewart does.

Photo Credits:

http://justfood.coop/the-co-ops-mothers-day-plant-sale-starts-saturday/


http://www.king5.com/community/blogs/community/The-Fall-Plant-Sale-you-dont-want-to-miss-167857525.html

 

What to Unplant

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How to Help Your Plants Stay Productive

by Sandy Swegel

I’ve been watching my neighbor Tory’s vegetable garden with great interest this year. She worked as a farm intern (ie. Full-time farming, almost no money) the last couple of years and has brought farm techniques to her home garden. Yesterday as we enjoyed the latest harvest of arugula she announced it was time to dig these up and plant something else.  I was surprised since she just seeded these arugula in early March.

From a market farming perspective, you grow greens to harvest a lot of food quickly.  She seeded the arugula early and when they are big enough to harvest she cuts them to just an inch or so above the soil level.  Then she lets them grow again and the cycle repeats.  Plants grown like this produce a lot of food, but they also get tired and worn out.  The plant itself is depleted.  Tory made her decision to dig under the arugula because the plants weren’t growing as vigorously as before and, the biggest factor, they didn’t taste as good. Whether it was the hard fast growth or a recent week of warm weather, the arugula was getting a little too spicy.  It seems harsh, but if you want to keep eating from your garden, you have to unplant the less productive plants and know what to unplant.

Things I’ve unplanted this week:
Arugula that has been harvested three times and is losing vigor.HERB, Organic Arugula, Wild
Kale that had overwintered. It was great to have kale from last year’s plants, but the old woody stems are no longer producing as well as the new plants.
Radishes that got bitter.  A week of rain followed by a week of heat made huge bitter radishes. They look great but we crave sweet young vegetables.

Garden more productive and more beautiful.

In the perennial garden, I’ve been unplanting too.
Poppies that have spread everywhere.  They are at risk of becoming a weed.
Plants that have grown too big for where they are planted.
Plants that are blocking sprinkler heads.
Plants that I’ve never liked.

Gardeners are often loathe getting rid of plants. They feel sorry for them.  They’ve come to know them as friends.  But there is a time and season for every plant and a good gardener learns to be a little ruthless. If you want to have succession gardening, you have to create the empty space for the next plant. It may seem harsh, but you have to declutter and make space for new growth!

 

 

Elderflowers!

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Elderflower Recipes

by Sandy Swegel

My favorite foraging is for the elder plant…both the elderflowers now and the elderberries later in summer.  I adore elderberries in jam or sauce and that’s my primary use for the berries (in addition to a medicinal elixir.)  But once I knew the location of sufficient elderberry bushes and trees that I could risk taking the flowers also, I became a big fan of elderflower drinks.  Especially champagne. Who wouldn’t love do-it-yourself-in-a-few-weeks champagne?

Making elderflower cordial or champagne is super easy and has only a few guidelines:

-Find a good plant, preferably not on a busy road where it picks up car exhaust and pollutants.

-Pick the flowers earlier in the day. (I don’t think you have to actually make sure the dew is still hanging from the blossoms.)

-Process the flowers right away.  Experience has taught me the flowers spoil easily. Things that don’t work:  keeping the flowers in the car all day while you run errands; keeping the flowers in the refrigerator (they brown), leaving the flowers in a bucket of water for a day.  Just process them within a couple hours of picking for best flavor.

There are lots of recipes online, but the basic recipe is flower bunches, sugar, acid (either lemon juice or vinegar.) You don’t have to add yeast…there are usually plenty of wild yeasts on the blossoms…although connoisseurs use champagne yeast from the brewing store.

Here’s an easy recipe: http://www.farminmypocket.co.uk/harvest/home-brewing/elderflower-champagne-recipe

Here’s a recipe that uses champagne yeast: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jun/01/how-to-make-elderflower-champagne

Last year I was very happy making elderflower cordials…which is the same basic recipe but it’s ready in just two days.  But it doesn’t have bubbles, so now that I know I can turn elderflowers into a delightful drink, I’m aiming for bubbles this year.

Elderflower cordial http://britishfood.about.com/od/recipeindex/r/efowercordial.htm