Passionflower Update

In Season: Tomatoes & Thai Long Beans

More Happenings

These eat oak leaves, so it probably fell onto the beans.

Anoles are good for the garden.

African Blue Basil is blooming. Even the hummingbirds like it.

Dug up the last of the onions, which were forming little bulbs.

More Passionflowers

I bought two more passiflora vines to help feed the caterpillars.  There's at least one Gulf Fritillary on the new plants, too.  I hope that's enough food to go around.

Two for One

The hibiscus has two blooms on it today, a first.

Garden Friends

Caterpillar Growth

Saturday, the Zebra Longwing caterpillars looked like this.

Two days later, they look a bit bigger (and the third one crawled up the vine to its brethren).

They look much whiter now as they grow and the spacing between their spots gets bigger.  Ghostly caterpillars!!

Zebra Longwings

I bought a trellis for the passionflower vine and took a closer look at the caterpillars on it. They are mostly white with a little orange tinge on the underside, black spines, and speckled with black.  They are still tiny, but are obviously different from Gulf Fritillaries.  GFs are orange with a black line down their back.  Not much if any white (unless they are the albino version, which still has the dark stripe down the back).

These are Zebra Longwings (Heliconius charithonia)!  I'm excited!  I hope my small vine can give them enough food though...

My native garden looks untidy (it could use hand weeding, but it's never ever mowed), but most of what you see there is Coreopsis, Passiflora, and Aquilegia.  Native magnolia leaves make OK mulch but probably hold a little too much water for my mosquito-disliking self.

Week's Update

The second hibiscus bloom opened today.  The first bloom is growing its seed pod, and I hope to collect a few more this year.  I want to try growing them from seed.

There are at least two eggplants developing.  The dark purple is Rosa Bianca, and the lighter one is Listada de Gandia.  I've already picked one full-sized Listada eggplant and will probably have it with supper tonight.

And here's the rest of this week's harvest (dragon tongue beans not shown).  Tomatoes seem to be peaking, and peppers are fruiting more.

The Passionflower vine needs a trellis, and I noticed some bright orange/yellow eggs on it a few day ago.  Now there are a few caterpillars on it!  I think they are Gulf Fritillaries, but need to look more closely when the weather's not so stormy.  They definitely look spiny, so another option that uses passiflora as larval food is Zebra Longwings.  I've seen both butterflies in my yard often this year.

Vacation

Well, going on vacation was nice, but my cucumbers are ruined by worms and my beans have a new batch of aphids.  I'm tempted to re-plant the cucumbers.  The beans I can spray with soap and essential oils again.

I did pick the eggplant (more are fruiting), a handful of new crop dragon tongue beans, and a bowl of tomatoes yesterday.

The Black Swallowtail caterpillar has disappeared.  I looked and couldn't find a chrysalis, but hopefully it's just well-hidden.

The hot peppers are doing well since it's gotten so hot.  I'm picking Serranos and could pick some Tabasco and Jalapenos if I wanted.  There's even a single Goat Horn pepper growing.

I woke up this morning to this though...

There are about 10 more blooms developing. I'm excited to see if any of them open on the same day.

Big

The Black Swallowtail caterpillar continues to eat & grow.

Sweet Gardenia Blooms

My small plant produced 5 blooms this year.  I think all but one has opened.  Although it's not a native plant, it's pretty traditional to have one of these somewhere in your yard.  My plant is from the plant my parents' have in their yard.  Mine blooms a little late because it gets more shade.

Upkeep

The garden is doing fairly well.  A couple of the tomatoes fell partly over from the weight of the fruit, so I had to re-tie them.  It's been a battle to keep everything watered, so I set up the timed sprinklers again.  Not the best solution since it sprays lots of the foliage with water, but it's easier.

That eggplant.

 Today, I added straw mulch to the raised bed beans and installed the trellis for the long beans.  I need to string up some support for the dragon tongue beans in there, too.

The native hibiscus is really going to put on a show soon. I've counted 8 bloom buds... 5 on this stem and 3 on a smaller one not shown.  Last year I had 3 blooms and one got bent over before it could open.

There's a caterpillar (probably moth) nibbling the hibiscus' leaves that I need to identify. 

I also found the first cucumber for harvest on the vines. It was pretty hidden and was large enough that I should have noticed it sooner, but it was the perfect size when I discovered it.  No harm done.  I'll have to keep a closer eye on them since they are going to hang down below the netting.

I had some more beans, a few carrots from the market, and garlic from my dad, so I made another pint of quick pickled veggies with the cucumber.  I added two Serranos that seem pretty spicy this early in the season. 

I Like to Call Them Pre-Pickles

As the cucumbers continue to grow, I've had to extend the netting for them. 

 The plants have been blooming quite a bit, and baby cucumbers are developing.

The plants are wilting a little bit each day from the heat of the sun and from the unprotected soil drying out, so shortly after taking the above photos, I added a thick layer of straw to the top of the planter.  It's helped to keep the soil cooler and more moist longer.  The mulching has definitely helped the peppers and eggplants in the raised bed, so it seems to do a lot to keep moisture in the soil and temperatures down.  The cucumber leaves still get warm enough to wilt a bit, but they recover quickly as long as their roots are happy.

Black Swallowtail Caterpillar Update 2

The dill has been stripped of foliage, and the caterpillar has moved on to the parsley.  :)

Black Swallowtail Caterpillar Update

The caterpillar is growing at a rapid rate.  It looks slightly different each day, just as it grows and becomes more yellow/white than black.  It likes to stay near the bottom of the dill plant during the daytime to hide from predators and have some shelter from the sun.

The dill is chomped at the top, but there are a few more limbs it can eat, and there's plenty of parsley nearby.

Here's a wider shot of the area.  Although not visible due to the basil, the parsley is within easy reach.