We Grew A Butterfly!!

We had intended to take our chrysalis on vacation with us, so that we could potentially catch it opening up and make sure it got outside. But, OOPS! We forgot to pack it!!! Knowing that Black Swallowtail Caterpillars take 1-2 weeks to emerge from the chrysalis meant that we had a good chance of killing it by not getting home in time. We came home and found it---hanging out just a few feet from where the jar had been kept.

And even better---the butterfly was alive!!!

We were relieved. It wasn't doing so well (it seemed to be confused and was doing an awkward flapping thing) , but we managed to help it get outside and off it flew.

Success!!

Bryce checking out the butterfly.

Here's the empty chrysalis. You can really see how it was attached to the stick in this shot. I'm saving it for the kids to take to school. 

Let's recap:

black swallowtail caterpillar (blurry-he's fast!)

Found the perfect branch and "hangs out" for 2 days.

Forms a chrysalis and we wait. 

We forget to take the chrysalis on vacation and come home to a beautiful Black Swallowtail Butterfly!

Garden Harvest & Update August 28

Another slow week in the garden. Not much pickin' goin' on here!

Monday:

First cabbages of the season! Yet another cantaloupe (this is #6, I believe) and 2 Anaheim peppers.

Another first for me: growing cabbage. No reason why I'd never grown it before, I just hadn't.  I watched a video on You Tube made by a NDSU Extension center person, and he showed that you can just cut the head off and leave the outer loose leaves intact (and the roots) and in 2 weeks or so, that same cabbage plant will produce new shoots. Worth a shot! I have plans to turn these 2 heads into a traditional lacto-fermented kraut.

Tuesday:

I picked heavily on Tuesday as we were going out of town for a short vacation. 

Sunday:

Cantaloupe #8 and 2 bell peppers, which I photographed on their "pretty" side because they are rotting . Sigh. I may give up on bell peppers altogether. A few tomatoes (cracked) and a misshapen pickling cuke .

We returned from our vacation and due to cooler temps the garden continues to be slooowwww. Our neighbors who were taking in our mail were told to harvest what they wanted and they managed to get a HUGE cantaloupe (#7 for the summer! and the first GOOD watermelon. I'm told they were amazing and that if we hear strange noises at night, it's just the neighbors looking for  more produce. I estimated the weights of both melons and did add them in my weight totals. 


All of my cukes are succumbing to mildew and I'm considering giving them one more week and then yanking them. My tomatoes have grinded to a halt (again, b/c it's been so cool) and the cantaloupe is also suffering from a disease. However, this coolness has been AWESOME for the broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts and cabbage. I've also spotted blooms on my summer sowing of snap peas. 


I guess Fall is closer than I want to believe!


Here's a photo from our vacation up to Brad's parent's cottage:

We bought a 3rd rain barrel while on vacation (the kids are sitting in front of it). If you look in the upper right corner of the photo, you can see the lake. It was a nice week. 

This post linked to:
Daphne's Dandelions Harvest Monday
An Oregon Cottage Tuesday Garden Party

On Vacation...

This was our view this morning. Misty fog on the lake and a beautiful sunrise. Temperature was in the low 50's and it was absolutely AMAZING. God is good. 

Deck Visitor.

Check out this grasshopper I found one morning. He was hanging out on "my" chair, sunning himself.

I don't recall seeing one like this before; his body was long and thin like a pea pod, and he was the most glowing shade of green! Very much more elegant and graceful looking than the "standard" grasshopper I see jumping like freaks all over my plants.

But I Don't Need A Nap!



When you fall asleep on your Mom (who has also fallen asleep) while watching your favorite show, "Curious George", yes, yes you DO need a nap!

Room to Play.

An amazing thing happened last week. The kids and I spent almost an entire day cleaning the playroom. The playroom had become a dumping ground for all sorts of stuff and it meant that the kids weren't using it. What's the point of having a playroom that nobody can use, anyway? So we picked up, sorted, organized, rearranged and tossed pretty much every single item in the room. And the results were great.

Look what happens when you clean the playroom:

The kids actually play in it.

Ni-ice. Next up for the playroom (now that we've found the floor!) is painting. And new blinds. And some shelves. And a bookcase. And some wall art. Stay tuned!

Garden Harvest & Update August 21

It's been a slow harvest week!  We've had cooler temps during the day and nights, a few rainy days and I have been battling mildew on the cukes AND cantaloupes. It's just not hot enough for the tomatoes to do much of anything. They are painfully slow at ripening.  I managed to pick a few things, however.

Tuesday:

Our very first ever cantaloupe! It was a biggie--5lbs 8oz. I don't know the variety; I purchased these plants as a flat.

Brett and I devoured this beauty. Turns out we're the only cantaloupe eaters in the house. WHOO HOO!!

Wednesday:

The anaheim peppers have been steady producers. I've been seeding & dicing  & freezing them for either pepper jelly or salsa.

Our 3rd cantaloupe of the week (no photos of #2) The cukes are a couple of pickling cukes that were hiding and grew BIG!

Sunday:

a couple o' cukes. Good thing we love 'em!!

and TWO more cantaloupe!! These were about 4 and a half pounds each.

I pulled out the cantaloupe plants that had produced the first 5 this week. They were severely mildewed (I think it's mildew) and since they were done I wanted to get them out to put in some carrots. I've been trying to cut off the nasty leaves on the remaining cantaloupes, but I'm not sure if my efforts are enough.

Lest you think ALL of my soil looks like that---rest assured, it does not. This section was just ammended with cow manure.

The cukes also have powdery mildew. I just don't understand how powdery mildew works...these plants are in full sun...when the mildew hit, we'd had no rain for about a week AND the humidity was insanely LOW (like 36%--that's really low for Hockeytown). I clipped off all the mildewed cuke leaves, hoping to slow it's progress.

cuke vines, stripped of leaves near the bottom, in an futile attempt to ward off mildew.

It seems to be working as I just need to pluck a few leaves daily to keep that upper growth green & free of mildew. If you have any ideas about what I can do about this problem-or prevent it next year-please post in the comment section. The strangest thing about the mildew in the veggie garden is that I have ZERO mildew on my 75 year old lilac, which has never happened in the 14 years we've lived here.

Peas are taking off in our (unseasonably) cool weather:

they are caged to protect them from herds of viscious rabbits...and they are in the bottomless deck planters that Brad replaced for me.

The broccoli starts I put in last week are happy, happy, happy. I am bound and determined to harvest some broccoli--take THAT, rabbits!

I've harvested about 53 pounds out of the garden this year. I set a goal to double last year's harvest of 68 pounds. I think I'll get close to hitting that goal as I still have 8 watermelons to harvest (hmmm, 10 pounds each), 5 cantaloupes (4 pounds each) and we still have 8-10 weeks before we'll get any frost.

Linking this post to:

Daphne's Dandelions

An Oregon Cottage

Sidewalk Shoes

Ms. Green Thumb Jean

Fishtail Cottage

Quotable Kids.

Brendan has been mowing our lawn recently. I know, I know, he's 13, he SHOULD be mowing the lawn. (click here to read about the first time he mowed...he had a funny comment about that, too.) But our lawnmower is terrible to start and the front wheels point in so it's terrible to push. Trust me, it's really a bad mower. But he needed to mow it yesterday before the rain came, so I started it for him.

Then the handle broke on one side.

Then he ran out of gas. (he gassed it up)

Then the pull-start rope broke.

Then we put the mower away.

Brendan was later complaining about how awful the mower is and why don't we just get a new one. I told him that it still cuts the lawn and as long as it does that, we don't need a new one.

Brendan replied, "Mom, a nail clipper would cut the lawn, it doesn't mean I want to use one."

True. I offered up that he COULD use a nail clipper if he wanted...or he could stick to our ramshackle mower. =)

Homemade Seed Tape!!

I've wanted to try making seed tape for a few years now, after seeing it available for purchase at the store. It's quite pricey but seems like such a good idea to achieve proper spacing and less waste of seeds. It was super easy to do at home and is a great kid-friendly project. Start to finish, including clean up, was under 1 hour. Having an "assistant" kind of slowed me down a bit, but he had fun helping.

Make a "glue" out of flour and water. You don't need much!
Cut strips of newspaper about 1" or 3/4" wide. (some people use toilet paper, which I find to be too flimsy, or paper towel, which I don't buy)
Dab dots of glue along the strips. I used the end of a child's paintbrush for this.
Add your seeds to each glue dab. I tapped them into the glue with a toothpick.
Let dry.
Plant!

I dabbed on the glue, Bryce added the seeds. 

Bryce and I got into a groove and got quite a few finished!

They dried in no time and I planted the lettuce later that day. It started germinating 6 days later!

I made seed tape for lettuce, spinach and green onions. I spaced them according to the seed packet directions and then will thin the seedlings once they come up. This would make a nice gift for a gardener, too. Keep in mind that if you use newspaper, you will have to make certain that it is completely covered with soil when you plant it and that it stays covered, or the newspaper will "wick" dry if it's exposed to air. Enjoy!

Clink to go to ABFOL linky party!

This post linked to: Delightful Order, Life As Mom

Black Swallowtail Caterpillars

I discovered 2 caterpillars munching on my parsley last week. They were large & colorful and a little shocking.

I brought them in for the kids to watch. We googled them and learned they were Black Swallowtail Caterpillars. We got some empty plastic containers and cut them a LOT of parsley and watched them do their thing. It was fascinating to watch them eat. Boy, can they eat!  After they eat, they poop. A lot. Trust me.

Two days later, the smaller of the two died. The one remaining started racing around his habitat. We didn't know what was going on--until we googled it. (We google a lot around here!) When they have eaten enough, they hunt for the just the right stick to form a chrysalis. This guy wandered and wandered around his habitat. The kids brought in a load of different lengths of stick and these caterpillars prefer them to be the width of a pencil-so we left the "best" ones for him to choose a final resting place.

We realized that in his frenzied search for the right stick, he could escape the double plastic container system.  Another google search for habitat ideas and we popped him into a quart sized mason jar with just a few sticks. We covered the jar with a coffee filter and left him out on the deck overnight.

When Black Swallowtail caterpillars find the perfect stick, they rest there--for 24 hours. They will make a silk thread to hang from (up by their head) and the only part of them that touches the stick is the bottom. Then, you wait. For up to 24 more hours for them to form the chrysalis.

They shed their skin and POOF! they are a chrysalis. The chrysalis is either brown or green, depending on the stick color.


Look closely...the part of the stick pointing towards the glass jar isn't a stick at all!

It takes 1-2 weeks for the butterfly to emerge and we are counting down the days.

Garden Harvest & Update August 14

The garden has been producing quite steadily. I had to pull the leaf lettuce as it was getting too bitter to even eat mixed in with other lettuce. I'm thinking I'll try some Bibb lettuce in those planters for Fall. I also ripped out some tomato plants, trimmed up a few more and pulled a few plants from a perennial bed.

Let's tour the garden:

I've started pinching off the ends of the watermelon and cantaloupe vines, hoping they will focus their energy into ripening their loads of fruit.  The climbing vine on left side is the cantaloupe, on the right is pickling cukes.

A better shot of the pickling cukes...they are growing like crazy! Lots of fruit have set, too.

My slicing cukes that were supposed to be bush are starting to yellow. The plants look terrible but they are still producing. The cabbage is looking good, too!

The cantaloupe vines growing up the privacy fence. Next year, we'll trellis these bad boys!

My pathetic pole beans. I got them started late, then we had massive rains, then the tomatoes grew too tall so they got shaded, then it was scorching hot....sigh. I pruned back the tomatoes and they are starting to take off. I don't expect to get much out of them, however. Lesson learned: put the darn tomatoes somewhere else!

This is the perennial bed that I've started reworking. To the left of the photo is our deck, in the background is the neighbor's yard-blocked visually by the 12-15' miscanthus (currently about 8' tall). I re-edged the lawn and pulled out a few plants that I just don't like (a red-orange day lily and some wandering Russian Sage). I planted iris "Caesar's Brother" on either side of Bryce's little playhouse. If you look hard you can see tent poles; this is a shade tent we use for Bryce. The lawn  underneath stays nice and green!

Here's what I harvested:

Monday

A nice sized cuke, several tomatoes, even more cherry tomatoes, a jalepeno my garden "assistant" (Bryce) just HAD to pick, and a few onions picked as green onions. Not too bad! The dark tomato is an heirloom vairiety called "Black Prince". It has a nice mild, sweet flavor.

Tuesday

The remaining leaf lettuce (and I pulled the roots and chucked them in the compost), 2 tomatoes and a few cherry tomatoes. It was a "cool" day today (only in the low 80's) and we got about 2-3 inches of rain last night and I think the plants were trying perk up after the pummeling they took!

Wednesday

Yikes!  What are those? I went out to harvest some parsley and found these 2 guys chomping away on the parsley plants. The kids and I googled what type of caterpillar they are (Black Swallowtail) and "harvested" them by bringing them in on their parsley stems. We're feeding them and hope they will do their "magic" here in the house.

Thursday

I harvested a lot of parsley for the caterpillars-boy, can they eat! I'm having trouble regulating the watering of the tomatoes so they are cracking; I've been picking them when they just start to blush & then ripen them on the table outside.
Friday

I pulled my cherry tomato plants, "Sweet 100" because they are making me crazy!  The tomatoes are very small, they are NOT sweet and they crack like crazy! They also grew taller than I'd expected and were shading my jalepeno plants too much, so out they went! This is really the first time ever that I've ripped out a veggie plant. I have always felt it was wasteful to rip out a happily producing plant, but I'm over that! ( ha ha). Now the peppers can fill in and those darn Sweet 100's won't vex me anymore. The yellow variety is an heirloom called "Jubilee" and I really like it's sweetness.
Saturday

Agh. Not much. It's been cool and rainy the past few days so the garden has slowed down. But the cukes are YUMMY and are eaten practically before I can get into the house. 


Sunday

I needed some green onions so I went out and harvest 10 ounces of AMAZING organic green onions. Fresh green onions are much stronger than store-bought. They're larger, too-these were each about 2 feet long. 

I've harvested about 26 pounds of produce so far, and used over 700 gallons of rain water. (the rain water is used on everything-veggie garden, perennial beds, water ballons, etc).

Caterpillar Update
We started with 2 Black Swallowtail caterpillars, brought them in and fed them judiscious amounts of organic parsley. It was fun watching them eat and eat and eat! After they eat and eat, they poop and poop!

One was smaller than the other and it didn't survive. The remaining caterpillar ate like a pig and on Friday evening began racing all over his habitat. We learned that he was looking for just the right stick to form a chrysallis and that maybe his habitat was too big.

We switched up his habitat, putting him in a canning jar with just 2 sticks to choose from. We covered the jar with a coffee filter and put him outside for the night.

He found a good spot, spun a silk thread and now we wait to see him change.
****Update: The caterpillar has formed it's chrysalis!!!!!!!! Soooooo cool.

This post linked to Daphne's Dandelions. An Oregon Cottage. Ms Green Thumb Jean, Sidewalk Shoes Garden Tuesday, Fishtail Cottage,