Tropicals & Tender Perennials: Passiflora 'Fledermouse' in bloom, 1 by BugFreak

BugFreak wrote:
Clare,
Really, these butterflies remind me of the frogs and locusts from Ten Plagues of Egypt during biblical times. I have friends that come over that joke. They refer to my passion flower collection as my "twig" collection so I know the damage is more than just noticeable. Permanent maybe not but I have a difficult time keeping them alive when they have no leaves like this. The water requirements change practically over night. They tend to not need/use as much water and I lose them to this since I water large scale and not by hand but rather with large sprinklers to water all of them at the same time. I have about 60 passion flowers. There are acres and acres of the native/wild P. incarnata all over this area. So I know that my passion flowers are hardly their only food source. They just like to drive me nuts. I hate pesticides so I have this problem to deal with. I"ve been looking into organic solutions. Maybe BT or predatory mites that would eat the caterpillars as they hatch.

I love insects. Really, I do. I don't think a garden is complete without them. Certainly not my garden. I just like my passion flowers a WHOLE lot more than I like the Gulf frit. I also plant stuff for butterflies but certain things are just off limits. I plant milkweed, fennel dill etc. I even have plans of planting some sweet maple for the luna moth and some citrus for the giant swallowtail butterfly. A bat house, barn owl house and a honey bee apiary are all in the master plan. I'm still trying to figure out what attracts the milipedes. I see them around but not in my garden. In Texas I had them all over. They were the thickness of my thumb in some cases. I just love those things. So you see, I'm not a total bug hater. I'll post a picture of my "vines" or "twigs" as my friends like to call them.

This message was edited Oct 14, 2004 1:17 AM