General Gardening
Tags: beneficial insects, butterflies and bees, butterfly garden, butterfly gardens, caterpillars, climate zone, cucumbers, flowers, gardening, harvesting, host, nectar, novice gardener, plant, plants, pollinators, stamen and pistil, sun, tomato plant, tomatoes, vegetable garden
April 5, 2009
Butterflies tend to hang out near one of two plants: ones that produce a tasty snack of nectar, and plants where they will lay eggs. These are known best as nectar and host plants. And, since butterflies can tend to be picky eaters, they often use just a single plant family as a food source for the caterpillars. Prevailing wisdom is to plant both nectar and host plants to draw butterflies into their gardens.
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Plantings
Tags: Add new tag, butternut squash, cantaloupe, cold nights, cucumbers, damping off disease, failure rate, onions, red sun, rule of thumb, seed trays, seedlings, Seeds, sunflowers, sweet watermelon, waltham, watermelon ice, white bush scallop squash
March 3, 2009
We even kept the tops on the seed starting trays until the plants were hitting the top of the lid. Then, within a week or so, several of the plants started to die off; starting with the cantaloupe, then the onions, Early White bush scallop squash and finally most of the Cal Sweet watermelon. I was able to salvage the Waltham squash, some of the Ice Box MickyLee Watermelon, a small amount of the onions, a single start o the Cal Sweet watermelon, and several the cucumbers.
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