plant hopper Archives : Cast Iron Garden

October 29, 2023October 29, 2023

10/29/2023 first freeze forecast tonight

Piles of vegetable greenery on a concrete front poor with a black double door in the background — So, in spite of rain all day and temperatures in the 30s F, I went out and cut all the plants. That’s the giant pile of cut basil on an overflowing Rubbermaid tub and assorted cut off pepper plants nearby. The rest of the day was getting basil leaves off the stems.

An inch thick basil stem cut off, with my hand nearby for scale. — The basil stems were so big I had to use the loppers to cut them at the base.

A blue-gray rubber made plastic tub almost full of bright green basil leaves — 3608 grams of basil leaves. This is 7.95 pounds. Yes, we did tare the tub weight. Yes, it is a lot of basil. No, I don’t even know what’s going to happen.

Close up view of a red and blue striped leaf hopper. Its legs and tip of snoot grade to yellow. It has tiny hair like antennae. — Leafhopper

A small true bug nymph on my fingers. It’s small enough that you don’t see around my whole finger. The brown colors are speckled — Leafhopper

June 11, 2023June 11, 2023

06/11/2023 roots

Unless you’re taking a herbarium specimen or moving stuff in the garden, we often don’t see how deep some native plant roots are. Today I helped two friends rescue plants from a remnant prairie that is about to be dozed and built on. (We dug with permission.)

A Winecup had the taproot I’ve read about but it was concentrated near the surface. This seems likely to live.

I figured this big milkweed has a very deep root so we didn’t try it.

Briar sat in the shade of encroaching cedar trees and helped check the reference book.

The Pediomelium/Psoralea type legume had a long thin root. The end broke so we shall see if it lives.

Scarlet pea had a very long root. Again we’ll see how it grows!

Spiderworts, native perennial dayflower, an all yellow Gaillardia, fleabane, western horse nettle, and Heterotheca (I think?) all came up easily with a sharpshooter shovel. Little bluestem has very deep roots but I think they are supposed to be okay to divide. Fern acacia (I think??) had a longer root (over a foot for a 6” tall plant) that may have broken.

June 26, 2022

06/25/2022 mysterious new friend

Abby kindly identified this new sprawling but small plant as green carpetweed (*Mollugo verticillata*). It reminds me of bedstraw but is not sticky.

According to Wikipedia, it is a spreading annual, but has been found in North America for at least 3,000 years. So its status is a bit mysterious as native or invasive. So, for now I think I’ll let it grow and see if it suits this patch of the garden.

Two Sachems were resting on dayflower leaves. You can just barely see the back one’s face.

Three sharpshooter plant hoppers on a giant ragweed stem at night.

June 18, 2022June 18, 2022

06/17/2022

I had always assumed this plant, *Dichondra*, was introduced but apparently it’s not! The taxonomy is confusing but it’s at least probable that this is a native species.

That’s great because it was hard to get rid of haha.

Gram is so long but he still loves to sleep on this scratcher box.

Abby was right, this is *Monarda fistulosa*! It finally bloomed. I put these seeds out either in 2019 or 2020.

Rainbow garden continues to do mediocre on yellow and orange. But the others are fantastic!

I like that this plant hopper has a big spot on its underside.

June 12, 2022June 12, 2022

06/12/2022 yard

I found at least four leaves full of my amazing tree hopper friends.

Each leaf had a different set of adults or immatures.

The leaf bends where the treehopper eggs were.

Frogfruit east of patio is doing well. Just moved a piece there this spring.

Rudbeckia maxima from Abby has a new leaf.

A planthopper (Flatidae) on curly dock. First time for this family in the yard?? I used to see them regularly at home.

Passionvine (seeds from Bartlesville) doing well in their second year.

June 12, 2022June 12, 2022

06/11/2022

The Chef made no bake lemon curd/ cheesecake layered parfaits with homemade whipped cream, farm share blueberries, and homemade granola for a garden tour.

Prepared the night before in the fridge.

Two Texas dandelions from home! White specks are elderberry petals.

A second *Coryphantha sulcata* seedling came up!!!!!

Lace bug (Tineidae) on giant ragweed leaf.

My keeled treehoppers have a big family!!

Shackleton and Briar disagree about social distancing.

It’s on a houseplant that is outside for the summer.

June 10, 2022June 10, 2022

06/10/2022 exciting friends

I wasn’t sure at first if this was a bit of debris on a bird seed sunflower stem.

But I saw it walk!! It’s a plant hopper!

I think it’s *Entylia sp*, possibly *carinata* if I understand bugguide saying there’s only one species and it’s quite variable. That’s the species shown in the new Abbott and Abbott Texas insects book.

A beautiful white lined sphinx visiting the non native verbena.

I love the different wing angles the camera catches.

Slime mold very happy after 3.46″ rain in the past seven days.

Blurry but you can see two seedlings: the winecup above with three leaves and the lyre leaf sage with two seed leaves. Working on my ground covers out front around the raised beds.

June 5, 2022June 5, 2022

06/04/2022 unexpected excitement

Saw a great little jumping spider on the ironweed leaves.

An interesting bee or velvet ant male or something, on white avens leaf. It was one of the nervous kinds who keeps flicking their wings constantly.

The rain of the last few days prompted the Missouri fluttermill primrose to bloom again!

The Chef and I cleared leaves off the patio. In several places they were up against the wood siding which is not great as they are essentially composting. Here Briar holds down a leaf pile for us. We leave the leaves in the rest of the yard as that is best for a healthy woodland environment!

The worst offending area of leaf collection next to the house. This is after I pulled out the bulk of leaves. Our compost pile should be happy now!

An extremely tiny planthopper that the Chef found on the outdoor work bench.

The last round of tepary beans I planted are coming up.

The big thrill of the day… The horse crippler cactus in the rock garden has bloomed!!!! I imagine this means it’s either happy here or thinks it’s about to die. Hopefully the former. Since I just planted it this spring I wasn’t expecting it, and its flower bud was not obvious, or grew in really fast the last few days when I wasn’t looking with the rain.

May 29, 2022May 29, 2022

05/28/2022 after planting

Plants I got from the “pop up” location of Prairie Wind Nursery: Copper canyon daisy, Pineapple sage, local genotype Baptisia australis (planted between roses near the trellis fence), Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias incarnata, planted near the elderberry as apparently they like similar soils), rattlesnake master (planted on drier side of brush pile), chives (the round green type as only the flatter white edges kind survived the winter this year), and five kinds of basil in my ongoing attempt to find where they like in the yard. Varieties were African blue (in raised beds in front of tomatoes), mammoth (small plant but big crinkly leaves) in the herb bed (where I have not tried any basil before), and amethyst, Genovese, and large leaf in the front strawberry bed near porch.