 |
|
|
|
| |
The Garden Plot for December 11, 2009
3:55 PM - 4:00 PM
[Program Website]
Today's Highlight: "Butterfly Design"
Winter solstice is the perfect time to sit down with all those flower catalogs coming in the mail and plan a butterfly garden. Flower nectar is the primary food and water source for adult butterflies. To create a butterfly smorgasbord, design a landscape with a variety of plants that bloom from early spring through late fall. Sulfur butterflies, that look like lemon-yellow fall cottonwood leaves, were still sucking up nectar on my late asters on Halloween. Earlier in October, my favorite butterfly, the Red Admiral, was showing off his scarlet bands while he sipped on the yellow flowers of our native shrub, rabbitbrush. For an early spring source of nectar, plant willow, currant, and primrose. In May, columbine, wild strawberry, and hawthorn provide nectar. June begins the butterfly “horn of plenty” with blossoming beebalm, honeysuckle, and penstemons. In July, our Montana natives, wild rose, elderberry, and butterflyweed bloom. Sunflowers and yarrow also provide good butterfly food in July. Look to mallow species, echinacea, asters, and rabbitbrush to tempt butterflies into your late season garden.
Butterflies need foliage plants as well as flowers. They lay their eggs on plant leaves, so their young will have an immediate food source when they hatch. As all gardeners know, caterpillars feed on leaves, sometimes with abandon. Most butterflies choose specific plant families for their caterpillars. For example, all those Painted Ladies we saw in Montana this spring laid their eggs on thistles. Nobody much worried about the big holes in Canadian thistle leaves this summer. Good butterfly books will tell you which plants specific butterflies use for caterpillar food.
Besides nectar for adults, and leaves for caterpillars, butterflies need a mineral source. When you see mud-puddle parties of blues, skippers, or swallowtails by the dozen, they are slurpinging up dissolved mineral salts from the soil. So, don’t forget to provide a little mud puddle or moist sand in your landscape.
To be honest, sometimes dainty, flower-loving butterflies can be found sucking up to some nasty stuff; bear poop and road kill for instance. I don’t recommend providing these last two butterfly foods in your garden. Many butterflies also seek out rotting fruit, running plant sap, and the “honeydew” from aphids. So, maybe a few aphids in the garden aren’t such a bad thing.
If learning about all the specific caterpillar plant preferences seems a daunting task, an easy way to lure butterflies into your landscape is to provide season-long, sequentially blooming flower nectar sources.
Helen Atthowe's new short program of gardening tips
|
|
|
