Paula saw insect droppings and holes in the basil.Then she saw this jumping spider eating a caterpillar! A healthy yard ecosystem leaves room for some chewing on our food plants because the herbivores have natural predators.
Something completely chopped off one of the two baby Asclepias viridiflora in the rainbow garden. I was pleased to find it is growing back! As of today (06/11/2023) it has grown another pair of leaves too.
One of our four new prairie larkspurs has bloomed!!I took several angles as I was excited. Three of four plants tried to bloom but their flower stalks got knocked over or snipped off by something toothy. The showy milkweed in the side yard (north of the rainbow garden) is coming up!Our three kinds of milkweed are growing!! The lower left one is a green milkweed. The two biggest plants are whorled milkweed (A. verticillata) from Abby. The one remaining viridiflora is not in the picture.
The Agastache survived with its defensive ring of petroleum jelly. Gonna have to go buy another tube. The Blackfoot daisy made it overnight!The second daisy made it too! There are fewer earwigs in the rock garden. Paula pointed out last night that our other agastaches that got completely chomped by earwigs are putting up new shoots. Here’s the second one also having a tiny sprout.
Past me ordered plants in the winter!Pets very much liked the box. It had good smells. Here Gram steps right in before I’ve unpacked the crinkle paper. Good thing there was cardboard protecting the plants too.
Gram moved to sit on the crinkle paper and smells one of two Blackfoot daisies. Briar observes. We put the daisies in the rock garden. I had one in the backyard once when we first moved here but I think it was too wet. The rock garden is the driest hottest spot in the yard.
The other plant we got was an orange Agastache. The damn invasive human-introduced earwig horde has already started eating it, so we are trying petroleum jelly around the base. It has worked for tomatoes before but didn’t work on a different Agastache recently, so we’ll go back out before bed and check again.
Kieffer pear leaves look fine. A lot (or all?) peach flowers look wilted. This is okay, because it is such a young tree I want it to concentrate on growing, not fruiting. it looks like the leaves are coming out okay without wilting. The agastaches in backyard planter are fine. These just-transplanted ones are less fine, but something has been nibbling on them too (we’ll assume earwigs…). I think the front one made it but it’s hard to tell on the back one because it was mostly chewed up.
We got some greens out and there was ice pooled in the greenhouse edge. The greens were fine!Cozy enough in the greenhouse on the bok choy for some caterpillars!
The rainbow garden in the morning. Only orange not blooming.Dinner with garden onions in the quiche and up in the corner, a watermelon salad.Here’s a close up of the watermelon salad. The feta cheese and balsamic vinegar really helps the bland watermelon. I really hope the next moon and stars actually gets riper.Tragedy strikes. The scurf-pea got chopped off at the stem. I assume it is too small yet to come back from that.