First butterfly visitor of the year

First butterfly visitor of the year. (Click to see more detail.)

Anyone know what kind of butterfly this is?  With the camera picking up details my eyes couldn't catch, it almost looks a little mothy.  (Side note: The plant he's sitting on is a flowering bok choy. True story!)  He and his buds were as eager as I was to get out in the sun after these last few days of clouds and rain.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm absolutely ecstatic about the rain -- all 1.96 inches of it that fell on my yard. I'm just equally enamored by cool, sunny afternoons. We don't have too many more of them left this year before the heat really turns on to bake. I can't help but revel in the temperature today.

Despite the perfect weather to be out in the garden, I'm holding off until after March 15th before planting my tomato, cucumber, and zucchini transplants. (I really do need to get a post up about them!) Austin's average last frost date is March 15.  Although I'm eager to see if I can grow a significant amount of tomatoes this year, I've been nurturing these plants since they were seeds on January 1st. I have to keep reminding myself that they are warmer weather plants. I certainly don't want to throw away all that time, love, and energy because of a little impatience!

Invasion of the Mosquito Hawks !

Just like the Marfa lights, mosquito hawks can be
tricky to catch in action.

It started a couple weeks ago. I found one or two of these flying bugs near the front door under the porch light. No problem.  Later that week one was bobbing around the kitchen windows (on the incorrect side). I know they're harmless, so I ignore it.  Then, with a turn of my back and the weekly calendar, mosquito hawks are *everywhere*! Soaking up the rays from the front porch light. Spa'ing in the bathroom by my 10x mirror. Bobbing above the artichoke plants like daytime Marfa lights.

I swear I've never seen so many as I have this winter, and while we've had a milder winter than usual, it's still too cold for mosquitoes. So as I sweep up their deceased carcasses from my window panes, I wonder.  What the heck are they eating?

This crane fly was trapped in my greenhouse. Sorry,
there's nothing to scale. Wingspan is about 2 inches.

Turns out, not a lot. First of all, mosquito hawks in Texas don't eat mosquitoes. (Just wishful thinking on our part.) The nickname comes from the fact that ours look a heck of a lot like mosquitoes, only bigger. In Florida I knew them as daddy long legs, but because spiders eek me out more than mosquitoes, I gladly switched nomenclatures. Turns out, these flying insects are actually a type of crane fly.

Crane flies are a beneficial garden insect, but their benefits wear off once they reach adulthood. In their youth, they eat decaying matter and help break down dead plants in your backyard.  In their adulthood, all 1 to 2 days of it, they look for mates by bobbing around like drunken June bugs.  They don't really eat as adults and they don't bite or transmit disease, so no need to panic when they get indoors. But alas, no need to try to rescue them either. They're like house flies in that they can see your hands coming a yardstick away, and there's no convincing them that you're just trying to help. I do feel a little bad that my house lured so many of these garden beneficials astray, but Nature has already planned ahead by sending us such a bumper crop this year.

Check out the Department of Horticultural Resources at Texas A&M for more info about the crane fly.

I Grew a Watermelon!

With the dismal luck I've had keeping squash plants alive because of that darn squash vine borer, I was really surprised to find a watermelon growing in my backyard.

One of the reasons that I think this plant might have made it while all my summer squash didn't is the fact that the stem of this plant is really, really, prickly. Maybe the squash vine borer moth can't find a comfortable place to lay it's eggs!

Here's a couple of close-up shots of the stem:

Of course, there's more to nature than Cucurbitaceae-killing moth larva. With such a hot, dry summer, the squirrels were particularly adamant about getting at this unique specimen of sugar water.  Despite the daily check-ins on my baby melon, I was surprised when I saw the little imprints of squirrel paws on it. So I covered it with bird netting and stuck lots of intimidating sticks around it.

Once the squirrels noticed that I was protecting that little green blob, reverse squirrel psychology kicked in and they were even more inclined to brave the unstable netting and get their little paws on it.  I eventually made a tent out of chicken wire and winter-weight garden cloth and completely covered the watermelon. It worked pretty well, except when the wind blew it over or I forgot to re-cover it after sprinkler day.

Then one day I noticed that the watermelon was splitting.  I found it hard to believe I could over-water a plant during the hottest summer in Austin, but the split could not be ignored. So I went ahead and picked it, wondering if there would be enough undamaged flesh to even recognize it as a watermelon.

You can see the split on the side that had started to dry out a bit.  The little white divots are squirrel tracks (my best guess). Also note that the top of the melon still maintained the little Dairy Queen curl where the melon had attached to the stem.  I wonder if the fruit had grown bigger if the watermelon would have eventually rounded out to a nice oval?

After cutting away the bad parts, I ended up with enough edible watermelon for two people. And the taste? Incredibly like watermelon. It wasn't too sweet and the texture was firm. I was able to save some of it to enjoy the next day with breakfast. My pride and amazement rekindled.

Unfortunately, that was the only fruit produced all summer on a rather long, gangly vine. I've got another watermelon growing now that's about the size of my fist, but as November is right around the corner, I doubt it will have time to mature.

Next year I think I'll try more watermelon vines. I'll plant them on the shadier side of the tree ring so that the soil near the roots doesn't dry up as quickly during the summer heat and let the vines run roughshod through the herb garden.  So far that watermelon is the biggest fruit or vegetable I've ever grown, and I'm eager to try more of that next year!

Catching up: Spring review of artichokes, ladybugs, and alien purple flowers

Last year I tried growing some bare root artichoke plants that I got from the Natural Gardener. Although the plants sprouted, they never got very big and died as soon as the heat hit in May. This year I tried again, but planted transplants instead of bare root subjects. Now, perhaps I also paid more attention to them, watering and fertilizing more regularly, or perhaps it was just the breed of plant, but this spring, my two artichoke plants really took off.

(ps that's a baby dill plant in the far, upper left.  More on that guy later)

Though I got the transplants at the same time from the same nursery, the one on the left decided to grow tall and the one of the right decided to grow short. The above picture shows them young and happy.  I found out later that artichoke plants can get pretty ratty as they grow, and require pruning to remove dead/dying leaves  that the roly-polys love to chomp on.

And you know what other bugs love artichoke plants? Aphids!

I sprayed some neem oil on the plants, but by the time I saw these buggers, I thought for sure the infestation would win.  But then I saw a new form of foe.

Ugh! I felt like the worse gardener ever! I was totally powerless to help my plant.  But then, I put aside my panic and did a little research.  Turns out, these guys are 2 different forms of developing ladybugs.

(Sorry. That's the best shot I have of one.)  So the ladybugs had come to munch all the aphids.  Yay! The system works!  Really.  After less then a week I never saw any more aphids on the plants.  I was amazed b/c watching the ladybugs, I never actually saw them eat anything.  In fact aphids would just walk right up to a ladybug and then walk away unscathed.  Well, at least as far as I could see.  Apparently, they were way scathed when I wasn't looking.

And then came the first hints of artichoke.

I was totally stoked. And come to find that a plant can produce more than one artichoke at a time.

In my case, the secondary artichokes were never as big as the first one. Plus, the first one wasn't that big, but it was tasty.

Dan and I had to do some research about how to prepare and eat them (read: Alton Brown cookbook from Christmas) but it was a fun experiment.

Because of the smallish size of the artichokes we were picking, we thought we'd wait longer to see if they would get bigger.  In this case, the just started to flower.  But that's okay too.  As artichoke eating by nature involves a lot of butter eating and it was probably time for us to cut back on that for the spring.  Here's a photo sequence of the flowering:

Overall we got three purple flowers, but the heat is really taking a toll on the plants.  Most of the leaves are yellow and shriveled and the flowers look like someone singed them with a lighter.  I don't know if the plants will survive until next year (it's not likely in texas) but if not, I'll be looking for transplants to grow in 2011. And this time I think I'll give them more room to grow.  They start small but become very big additions to the garden.

November in the Garden

It's a drizzly day today and seemed like a perfect day to take pictures of the garden.  First, though, I had to do a little bug defending.  The squash bugs are persistent but don't seem to be taking over or causing too much damage. I knock them off with a streamed mixture of molasses/citrus oil. Not sure if it kills or just annoys them, but there are definitely not as many bugs as there were weeks ago.

Another nemesis that I met this week is some kind of caterpillar on the cabbage.  I think it's an imported cabbage worm, as they are the bugs that are often described as leaving a trail of 'poop' everywhere.

(Blech) Picked a live caterpillar off the chinese cabbage this morning, then sprinkled the plant (and the neighboring broccoli and cauliflower plants) with some BT.









And speaking of broccoli, one of the three plants I have is starting to show.

(That's the BT dust sprinkled on it.)

By the numbers, I'm having much better success with transplanted vegetables from the garden centers than plants from seeds I start.  But my biggest success from seeds has to be the Small Wonder spaghetti squash I planted from seed. This is my second year growing this variety, and I love them.  Here are the three plants I have growing up a frame. 

That's a basil plant in the foreground.  It was growing there when I first planted the seeds.  Despite the fact that the squash plants now tower over the basil, the basil still seems happy, so I haven't pulled it.

My other plants in the concurbita family aren't producing fruit. The pumpkin plants continue to bloom but only boy flowers as shown below, so no pumpkins.

Other fun stuff growing, Swiss Chard and carrots.

Now I've got to find a way to keep the squirrels from digging in the beds.  They don't seem to be eating the plants, or even burying nuts.  But they are wreaking a little havoc with some of the smaller seedlings I have started.  Sure, chicken wire around the boxes would probably do the trick, but I've been too lazy to measure and buy some. I guess I'm waiting to see if nature will just help the squirrels figure out that there's no reason to dig in the garden because I haven't stashed any peanuts there!

First Bug to Identify

I think this is a young assassin bug. At least I hope it is. I need more beneficial bugs in my garden!