Wildlife - November 2014

I'm a few days late to joining into Tina's Wildlife Wednesday posting - that's what business travel will do to you, but I wanted to make sure to post my pictures from wildlife in my garden this past month.

Butterflies & Caterpillars
The highlight of the wildlife in my garden have been all the caterpillars and butterflies.  It gives me a sense of pride to know that I'm providing enough host and nectar plants to support these beautiful creatures in my garden.  I hope that I can continue to grow the variety and number of caterpillars and butterflies that I can host.

Monarchs
The monarchs have definitely been the stars of the garden this month.  I probably had around ten or so monarch caterpillars taking up residence on my milkweed.

After learning that only about 10% of monarch caterpillars make it to adulthood, I took matters into my own hands and reared three caterpillars to adulthood.

The bittersweet day came when I had to release my monarchs back into the wild.  I hope they will return year after year with their future generations.

So far, I haven't gone a day (except for one day when it rained) without seeing my monarchs in the garden.  Just yesterday I saw three of them hanging out on the milkweed.  I wonder if they are the same three that I raised?  It will be getting cold soon and they will be making their way to Mexico, so I'm savoring the moments that I get to see them flit around the garden.

Eastern Black Swallowtail
I also had a handful of swallowtails munching on my parsley this past month.  The caterpillars look like they are a different species than the ones that visited earlier this year.  These guys have more black than green on their bodies.  The mother swallowtail butterfly was too quick for me to take any snapshots, but here are a few pics of the different caterpillar instars that I was able to capture.

Second instar:

 Third instar:

Fourth instar:

I took in one of these guys to see if I could rear him to adulthood like I did for the monarchs.  I'll share my experience on that in a later post.

Painted Lady
I didn't see nearly as many painted ladies as I did monarchs or swallowtails, but she was still a welcomed visitor.

Queen Butterfly
I have a handful of Queens in the garden.  They can easily be confused with Monarchs, but a few ways I can tell that the butterfly is a Queen and not a Monarch is:

1.) Queens feast on the Gregg's Blue Mistflower while Monarchs prefer the milkweed
2.) When they open their hindwings, Queens don't have the black stripped veins like Monarchs
3.) Queens are a bit smaller in size than Monarchs

Unknown
I haven't yet figured out what this little guy is.  Any thoughts?

Birds
I haven't snapped too many pics of birds this past month.  I've had fewer than normal at my feeders.  It is just the sparrows and doves that are generally hanging out at the feeders right now.  That probably means that the seeds and berries are plentiful right now, so the birds don't have to resort to my feeders.  While I'm happy they are finding other food sources, I look forward to their return to my feeders in a month or so when fresher food is more scarce.

Eastern Bluebird
I did see a few Easter Bluebirds, at least as far as I can tell.  Their color wasn't very vibrant, so it might have been several females that have more muted colors.  Or, maybe it was some other species that I just can't place.

Pests
While there have been a lot of beautiful and beneficial insects to my garden this past month, there have also been quite a few pests.

Cutworms
I found probably around 100 cutworms wreaking havoc on my cold weather vegetables - the nerve!

What did I do to get rid of them, you may ask?  I looked under every single leaf and picked them off one-by-one...then squashed them.  It was definitely effective, but not very efficient - so if you have any other organic solutions to preventing and killing cutworms in the future, I'm all-ears.

Here is the aftermath on my broccoli.  Hopefully I got rid of at least most of them so that the new leaf growth won't look completely munched through.

Squash Vine Borer
My arch nemesis is the squash vine borer.  I love squash.  It is delicious and (usually) easy to grow.  But the squash vine borers do not want me to have my squash.  No - they prefer to lay their eggs on my squash and have their larvae eat my squash vine from the inside out - bastards.  I've tried picking off all the eggs that I could find as well as cutting the larvae out of the vine, all with no luck.  The borer still wins and I end up with little to no squash.

Has anyone else beaten out the borer?  If so - please share your tricks!  I want to grow squash so badly, but if I continue to have these challenges with the borers, it is not worth the effort and space in my garden to try time and time again.

Red Wasps

My last group of unwelcome visitors for the month were red wasps.  They built their nest in the ceiling of my front entry-way porch - a nice cozy and cool spot for them out of the way of the elements.  Of course, I didn't want my welcomed human guests to get a nasty sting when they come to visit me, so the wasps had to go.  They got a decent spraying of a very non-organic pesticide which did the trick.  Bye-bye wasps.  If only the squash vine borer was as easy to get rid of.

Thanks for stopping by to check out the wildlife in my garden.  Be sure to visit My Gardener Says to see even more posts on garden wildlife.

Evil Lurking

My arch nemesis has arrived...the squash vine borer.  Dun dun DUN!

A couple of weeks ago, I planted a late planting of summer squash with the hopes that I could do some harvesting before the cold weather comes.  But more so, I was hoping that by doing such a late planting, that I wouldn't have to combat the squash vine borer that has wiped out my squash plants the last three spring seasons.

Apparently, no such luck.  I found THIS in my garden this week:  a female squash vine borer moth laying her eggs on my plants.  Oh, the nerve!  It was like she was just waiting for me to plant more squash so she could crush my hopes and dreams (am I being a little too dramatic?...well, I don't think so, and you wouldn't either if you've had to deal with this horrible pest).

Now the question...do I go around and try to pick off every single itty bitty egg on my ~12 squash plants?  Do I let the eggs hatch and the larvae burrow into my vines, hoping that I can maybe cut them out later, like I did earlier this year, and hope in the meantime that I can harvest a few squash?

Well, I just couldn't stand the thought of losing all my squash again to this pest, so, I did end up going around all 12 plants, and checked around every leaf and stem, picking the little rusty red eggs off one by one.

Apparently, the moth preferred laying most of the eggs around the base of the stem, just below the soil level - nice and hidden.  So, I had to pull the soil back and scrape off the eggs.  During the whole process, I probably missed a couple eggs here and there, but that gives me a much lower chance of having to deal with the larvae later.  At least, I hope so.

One thing is for sure.  Next year, IF I try squash one last time, I'll give it the royal treatment by planting in a bed that I haven't planted squash in the last few years (otherwise the squash vine pupae that burrow into the ground may hatch and crush my dreams again), and cover with row covers.  If that doesn't work, then I should really just give up, which breaks my heart because I LOVE squash, and squash plants are usually such great producers!

RED ALERT - Squash Vine Borer Invasion

The dreaded day has come.  My worst enemy (other than Bermuda Grass) has arrived - the abominable squash vine borer.  I first noticed some of my squash leaves starting to turn yellow - the first sign of trouble.  I then inspected the vines, and sure enough, there was the dreaded yellow "saw dust" - the sure sign that the squash vine borer larvae had burrowed into my beloved squash plants and was eating and killing it from the inside out.

I couldn't just let my squash plants die... they had been producing so well!  I just wasn't ready to throw in the towel.  Drastic times call for drastic measures - I had to perform surgery on my plants if I wanted them to have any chance of survival.

I grabbed a sharp knife and cut into the base of the vine, where the "saw dust" had accumulated - the most likely place where the larvae was hanging out.  I tried to keep the cut as small as possible, to limit the trauma to the plant, but large enough to see and dig out the larvae.

Sure enough, I saw the little bugger in there.  My first cut wasn't wide enough to dig him out, so I had to cut away a little more of the vine, but I finally got him out... SUCKER.

I then covered the base of the vine up with some dirt, hoping it will heal from the horrible incident.  I'm really hoping the plants bounce back.  I was able to extract larvae from my zucchini and acorn squash plants.  I'm pretty sure the borer got to some of the other squash as well, but I couldn't find the larvae, so it might have been too late.  I'll have to wait and see if my efforts did the trick.  I might end up ripping out some of the dying vines and try to get another planting in.  One thing is for sure, I'm going to use row covers next year to keep those nasty squash vine borer wasps off my plants.