The heat is here and so are the butterflies! I’m seeing monarchs, fritillaries, sulphers, skippers, plus various swallowtails —pipevine, eastern black, spicebush and giant swallowtails.
I’m also seeing lots of predator insects. (The other name for predator insects is “beneficial insects”.) Assassin bugs and paper wasps are very prevalent, and dragonflies are patrolling. Lizards and toads and frogs are also on the hunt for a meal of unsuspecting insects.
Predators of all species are doing “their job”, but sometimes it seems like the pollinators don’t have a chance. Especially butterfly eggs, as they are deposited on a leaf with no way to avoid a predator. (I am watching a giant swallowtail lay eggs on my satsuma as I type.) Of course, we want the “bad bugs” to be eaten but not the butterflies!!
I have learned so much from butterfly gardening. After opening The Garden Gate as a native plant nursery, to my surprise, butterfly gardening became the largest part of our business for the 19 years that we were open. I would often worry about having enough “host” plants for the butterflies to lay their eggs. Every species of butterfly has a particular plant or family of plants that it can lay eggs on, and that their caterpillars can eat.
I would particularly worry about milkweed for the monarchs. In the very early spring, we would root or seed about 200 or more milkweed plants. Along the milkweed already growing, we would have about 300 milkweed plants on the premises. But we had few to no monarchs coming in to lay eggs. Customers and GG employees would begin to worry that all the monarchs had died over the winter, that we had lost our beloved butterflies.
It is true that butterfly populations have drastically decreased in the past two decades. And it is also true that nature provides a balance for every species. Every living species needs other living species to survive, and butterflies are part of that cycle. Some monarch eggs survive predation in early spring and go through their life cycle. Each adult female butterfly might lay as many as a thousand eggs. Within a month, those eggs will hatch, grow, then lay their eggs, each time increasing the population. The balance will shift and the monarch population will overtake the predator population. By late summer, we were always out of milkweed plants to sell and to feed our own butterflies. One balance restored and another out-of-balance!
Meanwhile, insects other than butterflies will become food sources for the predators. (This includes the insects we wish were removed from our gardens!) If we wait long enough, nature does the work!
Out in the garden, there are a few strawberries still ripening, but the thornless blackberries have stopped producing berries. The birds and squirrels got a lot of the crop, but there were enough of the large berries for everybody. Often there are more berries in the fall, on new growth. This blackberry “vine” is well worth finding a place to plant. It can grow upright with very little space needed. My plant is held up by a trellis and grew close to 8’ high this year.
The rabbit-eye blueberries are ripening too, and are very tasty! But the very best tasting blueberries are from the Darrow’s blueberry. Darrow’s blueberry is a native evergreen shrub that produces lots of small blueberries (beloved by birds, so you have to be vigilant to get the berries!). These small shrubs are great as landscape plants in sun to part shade.
My vegetable garden is producing lots of cucumbers and beans. The okra is growing — and the zipper peas planted at the base have germinated. Sunflowers are coming up, and there are still peas and butterbeans to plant. Seminole squash is on my list to plant. This vining plant will climb or sprawl. The fruit looks like a small pumpkin.
Gourds can still be planted — they love the heat. We planted gourds on the arbor in the children’s garden at the Garden Gate in September. By the time we opened for the first time (on October 1st, 1997), the arbor was covered with leaves and there were small gourds growing.
There are so many types to grow, including birdhouse gourds, snake gourds, apple gourds, and luffas.
The luffa “sponges” are actually the inside of a gourd. Their skins are papery when dried and easily peel off to reveal the spongey inside full of black seeds. What fun to grow. especially if you have kids or grandkids around. An improvised teepee made with sticks or stalks of bamboo, can support luffa vines. The kids can play inside the teepee, then collect the seeds when ready.
Now that school is out for the summer, gardening with children is an opportunity to play and explore. It is fun to have scavenger hunts, make fairy gardens, plant or harvest fruit and veggies. Taking the time to experience the sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of the garden with children is so valuable. Reading about nature is good, experiencing nature is amazing, and sharing nature is priceless.
In general, kids see better than their elders. I often find out that I have missed something in front of my nose! I was with my grandchildren on a canopy walk at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens many years ago. I can usually recognize plants and bugs pretty easily from a lifetime spent outside. But on the canopy walk, my grandson would ask me “What’s this bug?” “What’s that bug?” and I didn’t know the answer. I discovered that the insects in the canopy are different from the insects on the ground level.
The most important thing I learned from that trip was that nature grows in layers. In nature, nothing much grows by itself: where there are trees, there are also shrubs, and grasses and herbaceous plants, their root systems growing around and through each other to hold the soil and the plants in place. Above ground, the trees shade the plants beneath and cool the soil, keeping everything alive. There is a built-in resiliency for each ecosystem.
(My grandson, Ben, is now an entomologist. Now I ask him, “What bug is this?” We are planning to feature “Ben and Bugs” on this website, with information about the insects that we encounter in our gardens. Stay tuned!)
An example from our own ecosystem is the built-in resilience for humidity. Because of our proximity to the Gulf and to our bay systems, the evaporating water fills our air as humidity. For people, the humidity level contributes to discomfort. For plants, heat and humidity can contribute to disease or other unhealthy conditions. Excess water on the leaves can give diseases the perfect conditions to grow. Bacterial, wilts, and fungus diseases begin to flourish in our gardens when the weather is humid.
It is actually perfect that we have such well-drained soils. Plants take up water through the roots, and release the water through the foliage. And it is harder to release the water when the air is already holding so much water in the form of humidity. Some plants might look like they are dying of thirst, when actually they are drowning from being unable to release the water in the already soggy air. Because our soils drain so quickly, plants can take up what they need without excess.
This is especially true for plants with fuzzy leaves such as lamb’s ears, wooly mullein, certain black-eyed Susans. The fuzzy leaves allow moisture to collect, and diseases to proliferate. One of my favorite plants as a child was wooly mullein. Mullein isn’t frequently used as a garden plant in our area, but it is still common along the highways.
As a child, I would collect the large wooly leaves to use as “wall-to-wall carpet” in my “forts”, or in my fairy gardens. This beautiful plant has large, blue-green, fuzzy leaves, and is a stand-out in a garden. I brought a wooly mullein home from Atlanta this past fall. I haven’t yet planted it, but I plan to put it in my un-irrigated, sunny front bed. If it can grow on the interstate, it ought to have a good chance growing there.
Tomato leaves are textured enough to catch water on humid days. One of the best ways to prevent diseases in tomato plants and other fuzzy leaf plants is to make sure there is enough room between the plants for good air circulation. This allows the leaves to more readily dry out, before diseases can grow. My major crop of tomatoes is planted in October, just before the cooler weather starts. There are two reasons to do this. The first is to prevent the diseases, the second is that old fashioned varieties will reliably set fruit only when the night time temperatures are below 70 degrees. This means that I have to be prepared to cover tomato plants if a freeze is predicted.
Watering practices can also promote or prevent plant diseases. Watering early in the morning (or before dawn) allows the water to reach the roots. Less water is lost to evaporation at that time of day. Watering the ground beneath the plant will also let the water go directly to the root system, and is more efficient than watering the foliage, or spraying from afar..
As we settle into summer, the garden colors grow more vibrant. The bee-attracting blue flowers of spring are giving way to brighter yellow and reds to attract more butterflies and other pollinators. Many species of Rudbeckia (black-eyed Susans) begin to bloom. In my garden, there are four species of Rudbeckia.
The most spectacular of these (and my favorite!) blooms are on the Big Leaf Coneflower (Rudbeckia maxima) and the Shining Coneflower (Rudbeckia nitida). Native to the prairie states, these species rarely self-seed here, but they can be easily divided. Both species have large leaves that form a clump at the base, and both send up a flower stalk 3’ to 4’ tall. A dark 2” cone rises above the bright yellow drooping petals.
The Brown-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia triloba) is not as tall, but will easily reach 2’ -3’ tall, with many stems bearing small flowers. Brown-eyed Susans are annuals but they freely re-seed, forming a large “drift” of color.
As for the plants commonly called “black-eyed Susan” — not all species are created equal. Rudbeckia hirta has large daisy-shaped flowers, and usually grows as an annual for us. But because this species also has fuzzy leaves, it is susceptible to the fungus diseases.
Rudbeckia fulgida is a very reliable black-eyed Susan. It is long blooming and showy in the garden, and a very hardy perennial. This black-eyed Susan species will also form a basal rosette that can be easily divided, and will re-seed.
Another native that freely re-seeds is our native Ruellia. This native perennial is related to a plant that many of you are familiar with — Mexican Petunia (Ruellia simplex). The Mexican Petunia is an upright plant with purple trumpet blooms, and spreads quickly from the root. Because of its rapid spread, Mexican petunia is included on Florida’s list of invasive exotic plants. (Invasive exotic plants are deemed to cause environmental damage to native ecosystems).
The native Ruellia caroliniensis (sometimes called Carolina wild petunia) has lavender trumpet shaped blooms that open in the morning and fall in the afternoon. It is a shorter, thicker plant than the Mexican petunia, but almost as aggressive, spreading from seed rather than by root. Native Ruellia grows in sun or shade in well-drained soil. This plant also serves as a host plant for Buckeye butterflies, a butterfly that uses several different plant families as hosts for its caterpillars.
Carolina petunia goes dormant in the winter but blooms for three seasons. When they pop up from seed, it is often in a spot where I had not planned to plant them! But I usually leave them in place, since they always bring color, and I want to host all the butterflies I can get. Sometimes I pot them up for other gardeners. This summer, I plan to thickly plant them in a mostly shady area. Hopefully they will fill the space with color and butterflies (and I won’t have to mow!)
Black-eyed Susans, Carolina petunia, and other plants that attract pollinators are colorful and beautiful this time of year. But beyond the beauty, the life brought into the garden is fascinating to watch. If your space is limited, adding these plants to your space in a container will bring the bees and the butterflies!
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