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Cool Plants
Butterfly and Hummingbird
Gardening
When gardening for hummingbirds and butterflies, consider these things, you must have nectar plants, and host plants. Know this if you plant things that are hosts
for the larval stage of butterflies, if found by that butterfly you will lose A LOT of those plants. DO NOT USE INSECTICIDES IN A BUTTERFLY GARDEN.
For hummingbirds they seem to love the color red, and .like long tubular
flowers. See now that they do not ONLY visit red flowering plants. To attract hummingbirds to specific plants planted just for them it is good to tie a piece of red streamer
or yarn to flap in the breeze, early in the spring the scouts will see these and come down for a closer look. Be sure to add one or two feeders to supplement your plantings. I
am including the list of plants for butterflies. The one for hummingbirds will be in the next issue. I hope you enjoy these charts.
Plants That Attract Butterflies
Plants That Attract Hummingbirds
This accidentally was deleted I will be re-adding the items through out the week to
permanantly be here for reference
Beneficial Insects
Play an important role in the balance
and harmony in the garden.
And a great alternative to harmful insecticides.
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Beneficial Insects
It Attracts
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Honeybee, hover fly, parasitic wasp,
ladybug
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Angelica archangelica (Angelica)
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Cosmos bipinnatus (Cosmos)
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Ipomoea purpurea (Morning Glory)
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Solidago spp. (Goldenrod)
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Ladybug, predaceous beetles, parasitic
wasps, lacewing, honeybees assassin bug, spiders
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Attracts beneficial insects, bees, and hummingbirds
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Oenothera biennis (Evening Primrose)
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Beneficial Insects
From the book
Gardening through the year
By:
Jane Courtier
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There are many species
of beetle that are useful. These include the ground beetles, which live on the
soil surface, hunting out insects, slugs, and worms during the hours of darkness; rove beetles such as the scorpion-like devil’s
coach horse, and the familiar ladybugs.
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Some are well known pests,
but, there are other species that are definitely helpful in the garden. The best
known is the predatory black-kneed capsid that helps to control aphids and red spider
mites on fruit trees
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Golden brown centipedes
scamper over the soil in search of insects, their eggs, larvae, along with small slugs and worms. Often confused with millipedes (a pest) but millipedes are
darker, have more legs that form a thick fringe down the sides and roll up into a ball when disturbed rather thn running for
cover.
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These could easily be
mistaken for bees at first glance, their method of flight is quite different, they hover almost stationary and dart in one
direction. When they are at rest it is easily distinguished from the bees as
it only has one set of wings. Bees and wasps have two. They are a very efficient
predator of aphids and soft bodied insect pests.
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These are very delicate
looking creatures with lacy looking wings, they have a pair of antennae that are constantly moving. Both the larvae and the adult lacewings eat aphids. Lacewings are found all around the garden and are sometimes
attracted into the house at night when lighted
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Nearly everyone could
recognize a ladybug, but their larvae are often destroyed just to be on the safe side.
The larvae are small armadillo-like blue and orange creatures.. In its
3 week life as a larvae it can consume as many as 500 aphids. Then it pupates
into a black and yellow beetle looking thing that is often mistaken for a Colorado Beetle.
When it is a mature ladybug it can be red, yellow, orang,e, or brown with 5 to 7 black spots
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Although an annoyance
with their stinging, and feasting of ripened fruit, they are quite helpful. Leaving
aside the antisocial behavior of wasps they play an important role in the control of harmful insects. They collect all manner of soft bodied grubs and insects to
feed to young wasp larvae in the nest
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