Here is what I have done to mark the plants, particularly the SEEDS>>
When plants are settled in and esablished I may get some better markers, however for $1(24 bamboo sticks) and 74c(roll duct tape)..It will work for now.
:oD
Butterfly Host Plant Seed Exchange? Anyone interested?!
Deb,
It looks fantastic! Ya done did good! It's easy to see how pretty it will be in the Spring when all of the seeds come up. Love those markers.
Janet
Deb - The markers are adorable!!! They are YOU! Too cute! And your garden is going to be butterfly HEAVEN! Can't wait to see it in the Spring. That's really helpful that you labeled everything in your photo. You'll have to post it on the "Before and After Photos". We don't mind waiting until next Spring/Summer to see the "after" photos! :-) You've done an amazing job preparing and planting your patch of garden. Pat yourself on the back and enjoy God's creativity as it unfolds into something remarkable! It's going to be gorgeous!
Do you get freezing temps at all where you are at?
Is your garden similiar to Paige's garden plants? I would love to know what plants Paige put in her garden, too. I need all the ideas I can get!
I didn't know what a "Texas Mistflower" was. So looked it up ..... Ooooooo ..... really unique and pretty flowers! I've never seen it in Florida. (Probably for a reason because it is called "Texas" mistflower. LOL!)
Looking at Deb's great garden/design reminds me that I was going to ask what you all grow your passionflower vines on? my butterfly garden is an island so I can't trellis it up against the side of the house or a fence. although I supposed it doesn't HAVE to be in the butterfly garden. I could put up a trellis in one of the beds by the house.
ideas?
here's my butterfly garden (put in a lot of new perennials this fall)
gram ~a girl~
Thank you Becky, your acolades gave me goosebumps!
Yes we do get freezing temps, so when I know they are eminent I will cut back and cover a lot of this, keeping the cute markers in place so I know whats under there.. Another good reason to have markers.
Here is what I might potentially host:
Parsley, Dill, QAnnes Lace (josephine), & Fennel > Black Swallowtails
Snapdragons > Buckeye
Hollyhock > Painted Lady (from Siggy)
Milkweed > Monarchs & Queens (from Paige, Sheila, and Josephine)
Cassia > Sulphers (from Rylaff)
Dutchmans Pipe (not planted yet)> PV Swallowtail (from Ted)
Blue Crown, and Purple (from Paige)Passionvines> Gulf Fritillary
Lupines> Silvery Blue
Almost forgot, there is a stem in there I did mark with a marker, but missed labeling in the picture.. It is a Goldenrod plant I got from City_Sylvia at the plant swap.
>>it's in there Syl, I am taking good care of it like ya told me to...LOL
Oh Grams!
What a nice BF Garden you have.. Wowie!
Lovely property too!
I am not planting my PV directly in the BF "patch".. I am planting them behind to the left in that wooden box the size of a twin bed. This way it might be easier to keep under control, and I plan to put some lattice all along the back fence.
Does that help?
Deb
thanks much, Deb. I put it in spring '05, but was planning it in my head for a couple a years before. yours is going to be great! your labels are so pretty..never would have guessed duct tape LOL
I'm guessing the vine could get pretty heavy? just want to make sure I'm prepared for it. could possibly put it in here
Looks like a great place for it Gram! How nice!
Are y'all all sitting down? You won't believe what I just found on the side of my house...growing there for years, and I never knew what it was. It never became invasive, I would just see it in spots, and sometimes popping up beside the driveway.
Wild Violet, yeah ....go figure!
Today I looked it up on DG Plant files and saw a picture. And then had a real WOW, and Thank You God! moment..
Here is what I dug up>
This message was edited Oct 15, 2006 11:27 AM
I put it behind the Hollyhock and taged it >>
And what's that I see there? A bud?
Doin' a happy dance~~
How cool is that?
Like I always say: "Expect to be lucky, and you will be."
BTW~~
If y'all are wondering where Tobasco has been, I am guessing she has been working to find some host plants in her neck of the woods. We shall see when she returns :o)
What is SASBE?
:) Jesse
SASBE=Self Addressed Stamped Business Envelope..
For seeds I send out, I rather just send them and all I ask is for the person to send seeds to someone else when they get them. If they have something I need, it is an even trade (usually).
If it is a whole plant I go and send from a post office or mail room. Then tell the person how much it costs and they can mail me $ in a folded note.. OR Trade plant for plant.
To me it would be hard to know how much postage to put on the SASBE... could take more stamps depending on the quantity and what kind of seeds.
Hope this helps
I just asked that question on another trade and someone told me SAS Bubble E, because the seeds can be crushed by the automatic sorting machines. And that standard postage (first class), unless a large amount of seed, would be .63. So what I have decided is, it's probably a good idea to double-check with the person you are trading with to be sure that you are meeting their needs/expectations. Because I am so new at this and everyone has been very kind to me, I don't want to make mistakes so anyone is sorry they sent me something.
Deb, cool on the violets :0)
gram
Thanks Gram,
Certainly Bubble envelope is MUCH safer, rofl @ myself(duh). Sorry folks! and thanks Gram for catching me. I have sent a few seeds out sometimes in just a business size envelope and I believe they all arrived safely. If they had been very fragile seeds I would have used a bubble envelope, but this time they were not. In any case>
I just bought some USPS square bubble envelopes (8x9") at BigLots > 5 for $1.50. I will definatly use them from now on.
Thanks yall!
Deb
When I needed bubble envelopes once and just couldn't bring myself to buy the big ones for something so small, so I bought the smaller plain yellow ones, cut a piece of bubble wrap and folded around the seed packets. It worked great.
Sheila
I know the milkweed seeds I got are very flat and came in a regular envelope. good deal on the envelopes. I'll have to check BigLots
Very good Sheila!'
I'm glad you suggested that too, it can so much cheaper, and I noticed at BL they did have rolls of bubble wrap there with the Bubble Envelopes, really cheap too.
Deb
PS.
I amost forgot one more that you all can scout out in your area and that In the Borderpatch BF, they feed on sunflowers and seem to love one in particular called Cow Pen Daisy. Here is a bit on that> http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/650348/
This message was edited Oct 15, 2006 6:41 PM
Oh Deb, Deb, Deb...what have you done? Putting wild violets in your fertile beds? Woman, you're crazy!!! And if you want more, I'll send you a box full, seriously. They COVER my back yard, literally. Maybe they aren't invasive where you are, but here in my yard they are actually my groundcover (not my groundcover of choice, but still...) They spread by little stolons underground and they live on air, I swear it! I've pulled them up to plant things, thrown them in the weeding bin and two weeks later they are still growing and blooming 0_0
So if they're not invasive in Texas, I can send you a box full of them. Mine look like the photo below, in bloom.
I really like that plant marker idea there Deb as well; and you're SOOO organized. Now that the days are short, I feel like I never have time to get anything done except in the morning before work.
Gram, LOVELY plants in your BF garden.
Welcome Sylvia~~!
Beck, let me know how that ground crew hiring goes...bwahahaha...I AM the ground crew, although DH helps tons with the 'heavy' work of shoveling and ripping up roots and digging out stumps, oh, and getting the rock chunks out of the ground. Secretly I think he's relieved that it's fall because we worked HARD the last few months in the heat.
~Sunny
Sunny~
I am not so worried about them becoming invasive, I know they can be. This is a patch of earth I will be examining every single day and if it ges too thick, I will cut some out.. Ask me again how it goes next Summer. I might be pulling more than extra plants out, maybe my hair too. lol. This is my 'day job' now that I am simi-retired, along with 3 dear children at home still. They are all in school now, so I spend a lot of time working in the gardening these days. Still a long way to go.
Nice plants Sunny, exactly like mine. If one is hosting Meadow Fritillaries it is probably good to have a lot of it. And like you said it moves very easily without dying. Have you ever noticed any of these BFs in your garden? http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species?l=1694
If I dont get any bites this year I will probably move them, maybe sooner if I learn there is no chance at all.
:oD
Ok, there isn't ANY chance at all the Meadow Fritillary will show up here, (or South of NC), according to all the material I have dug up in the last hour. So I have an announcment to make:
Anyone want any Wild Violet? I will have to post this on the Seed Exchange for those in the North and Canada.
This message was edited Oct 15, 2006 8:14 PM
Grampapa - Welcome to this wonderful and helpful group of gardeners who just happen to love butterflies and caterpillars!
Everyone - I want to share 2 things I have discovered that have helped me with my gardening.
First - I have started trying to garden without digging up the ground. Here's how it works - In the early fall but no later than early winter - take newspaper and lay all over the area on the ground that you want to use for a garden. Spray it with the hose and soak all the newspaper to hold it down. Be sure to use at least 10 layers of newspaper everywhere and then cover with a heap of mulch about 6 inches deep. Leave it there until you are ready to do your Spring planting. The longer it sits, the better to completely kill all the grass/weeds/etc. underneath. When you are ready to plant, just push the mulch away from a small area in the garden where you are going to place a plant. I do an X cut, fold back the newspaper, dig out the dirt for the size of your plant, mix in some compost and good soil, put the plant in the hole, add more compost and good soil around plant, fold newspaper back over the area around the new plant, re-cover with mulch, and there you go! Move on to the next spot you want to add another plant.
I have actually done this with my herb garden, both of the side gardens along my backyard fence, and that is also how I did much of the front garden. I physcially can NOT dig up the ground. Of course, if you are removing plants, then you will have to do some digging and plant removal. It was a real chore to remove the shrubs we had in the front yard along the house. Luckily our yard was pretty bare except for grass/weeds before I put in several of the new gardens. So the newspaper/mulch did the trick for me! You can actually do this any time of the year, but it works best when everything is dying from the onset of winter.
Try it! It actually works. Remember - the trick is to smother and kill the growth underneath the newspapers & mulch. So the longer it is down, the better!
A fence trellis:
The second little trick I have used and this may or may not work for many of you. It really depends on how your fence is built. When we had our new fence put in, we just happened to get the kind of fence that has two horizontal supports that are about 2 inches deep across both the top and the bottom of the fence. I was trying to figure out how to get a trellis on the fence because the fence is vinyl and there was nothing for the plants to hold onto. I was looking in Home Depot and saw just plain vinyl lattice and an idea came to me. Why not buy some sheets of that and cut it in strips and mount it to the fence. The only thing was that I did NOT want to be drilling holes all over my new fence. So I bought packages of 14" and 24" long plastic multi-purpose ties. I cut the lattice into 2' wide and some were cut into 1' wide strips and fastened them to the fence using the ties. (See photo.) (The lattice came in 8' X 4' sections.) Instead of using the entire piece of lattice on one fence panel, I was able to get enough to do several panels, so it saved me quite a bit of money. And it looks really nice! Because the particular fence I have does have the 2" clearance behind the lattice, I was able to weave my vines in and out of the lattice from the front to the back. I waited to tie down the bottom of the lattice until after my plants were woven through the lattice which made it so much easier to do.
If you are needing a trellis in the middle of your yard .... buy the correct panel of fencing, set the panel into the ground (using concrete) where you need it, and then attach the lattice to it, and weave your vine. The vine will gradually cover both sides of the fence!
I hope I was clear in describing my 2 suggestions. Try it on your next garden project!
This message was edited Oct 15, 2006 9:14 PM
Here's how my fence looks from the inside of my backyard.
Here's how I attached the lattice to the fence.
This is how one of the fence panel trellis look.
This is another panel along the same fence. I just used a 2' and a 1' foot wide piece of trellis on this fence panel.
Very helpful Becky!
I was going to put lattice along the back fence for the PassionVines, and that is a great way yo attach it. Im going to do that tomorrow probably, because I need to move the PV to the back behind the BF garden.
Yours looks great! What kind of vine is that one?
The first photo where I used 3 lattice strips is a passion/maypop vine (I don't know what the flowers are going to look like.) I was given the seeds from a lady at work and all she told me was that the flowers are purple. Those vines grew that tall from seed that I planted in June! I know the GF Butterfly cats are chewing it up as a host plant.
The last photo using 2 lattice strips is holding up a Mexican Flame Vine. It is the fence panel right next to the other one. I bought that starter vine in a little pot in July. It grows like crazy!! It has happy little orange-yellow flowers on it.
Which makes me really believe that I am going to have WAY TOO MANY vines on my backyard fence in another year or two. I have a different starter vine on almost every fence panel on each side of my back yard fence. I haven't done anything with the back fence. Maybe I shouldn't!?
Is that scary or what????!!!
AND if that isn't bad enough ..... I have the dreaded and invasive Trumpet Creeper vine - in a small flower bed just for it - in the very middle of my backyard growing up a short 6' high 4"X4". I know I am going to regret planting that one! But I have seen it in bloom and fell in love with it. Plus I am trying to get hummers and have heard that it is a hummer favorite.
I know, you can say it ..... I'm totally crazy! If you never hear from me again .... you know one of the vine tendrils grabbed me, dragged me to the fence, and embalmed me as part of the garden!
But what a way to go becky !
I used lattice on the fence after the neighbor put it up so the ugly side (stringers and posts) is towards me. All along the driveway. It 's a beautiful cedar fence but so stark when it first went up. Fortunately it was exactly 8 feet between the posts so I hung it sideways. I put a red passion vine on one and a peachy bougainvillea on the other about 20 feet further down. Finally the passion vine is up to the top and starting to reach out. I even suspected the nursery had stunted it somehow to keep them from intertwining until someone bought it. I partially screwed a deck screw every about 8 inches along that 2 X 4 stringer on the top so it would have something to wrap around as it started to get on up there. It's doing it on both ends! Hopefully it'll keep on a going as far as I keep putting screws for it to wind around....No blooms yet. My other passion vine is purple and really took off in no time. I took this tonight and it's sprinkling.
This message was edited Oct 15, 2006 11:12 PM
Very pretty shade!
The Frits are going to go for the purple PV, I believe the red is not a host plant, though I would love to have a red one too:o) in an ornamental garden. GFs will lay eggs on red PV, but they will not live. So it is strongly recommended not to put them in BF host area.
I have wood fence too, after I take Ben to school I will pop into HD and grab a few panels. It's supposed to be warmer for the next 2 days, and I need to make hay while the sun shines.
Deb
This message was edited Oct 16, 2006 2:57 PM
you guys are great! good info on the trellising. thanks much.
gram
Thx & yw gram..
We are all sort of stealing each others ideas.. lol. I really was going to use lattice for my PVs, we were all on the same channel with that. I moved those huge pots to the back and transplanted them today. Took a while to untangle then vines from inside the tuteurs, (they held up good), and the babies are all still on them.. As I began a familiar shadow came over me, she couldn't wait for me to finish so she could lay her eggs. I would grab another piece of vine to lace, and she was right on top of every part of the whole transition, lol. Gulf Frits are the most friendly of BFs I have had so far.
I read several folks talking about "lasagna" beds. I didn't know the newspaper/mulch/whatever garden beds were called that! I just learned something new today! lol (I guess I'm a little slow......)
Cindy - I saw some of those beautiful light purple asters at the store yesterday for pretty reasonable, so I picked up 3 pots of them. Two for the front garden and one for the back. I was amazed that when I came home they were still very perky! Usually when I plant something new into the garden they looked pretty withered for about a week or so until they start getting established in their new home. Not these asters, they look great! Thanks for inspiring me to try some plants I wouldn't have thought of! :-)
Got the seeds today Becky thanks again!
I have a great garlic bread recipe to go with your lasagne~~
D
Hi, everyone--
Sorry, I have been a little behind on the Trade threads and notice this one is especially long so l've created a fresh thread .... There's a new TRADE thread, too, FYI.
But, in any case--here's a link to the new thread, so if everyone makes new posts on the new thread it should speed the loading for everyone---
http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/661953/
See you over there-- (and I will catch up and be back on line as usual Thursday a.m. when my guests take off!)
Good luck. t.
Ok ladies, someone needs to "back away from the computer"! I can not get caught up on with these huge posts so I just sort of skimmed. I have no idea what this thread is or was about. LOL!
I did notice that City_Sylvia stopped by tho! I'm glad to see you over here, and glad that you enjoyed the butterflies. I wasn't sure, but just thought maybe someone would be interested in seeing them be released. I'll do it again next year if possible! West Texas Mist Flower...you'll be glad I forced it on you! ;)
I am sooooo glad Paige,, lol it is safely planted in the new bed now, with all the other goodies.
This thread is about what we are doing to pull together our Host Gardens for BFs.. The Trade Thread is for seeds and cutting trades of the same. Sorry if there was any confussion. So much to learn about hosting BFs, so much I don't know still.. Whew!
Thanks Debnes, but it was more of a joke than my not really understanding the thread, although I think the topic has changed a few times like every other thread does. I know you'll enjoy the mist flower, but I did really force some on City_Sylvia. lol She commented about it on another thread so I was just reinforcing to her how she'll love it!
Paige I am going down right now to see if its still alive. :)
(Cool Paige np :o)
I know how things can get sidetracked, and lost in translations etc., but it is staying f-a-i-r-l-y , sorta on topic. lol)
This message was edited Oct 17, 2006 7:47 PM