Several months back I started narrowleaf milkweed plants (seeds from livemonarch.com). About a week ago I noticed the first caterpillar, and the next day the second. Today the one at the top of the photo left the plant and started looking for a spot to pupate. Also today, found 4 (!!) more caterpillars amongst the plants. I am beyond thrilled, I never expected to get monarchs actually laying eggs on these plants so soon.
Photo is from the ones I already very carefully, removed from my lemon tree. These are saddleback slug catapillars.
Went to get the last stalk of corn, and they are all over the leaves in this bed. I didnt realize and one brushed my face! It hurts!
Aside from the minor panic attack, that I was about to have to call an ambulance, I think I'll be okay? It def hurts. I did like the internet said and took sticky tape to the area and washed it with soap and water.
They are everywhere in my garden, making me want to not go near it.
I dont think the mantis can eat them for me. Has anyone ever dealt with this?
Is this a watering issue, nutrients, blight, or something else?
Have a longleaf pine I’ve been trying to grow in the SC Sandhills which has mostly been a trooper but suddenly a lot of the leaves turned brown and the remaining ones turned yellow. This is what also happened for the only other one on the property before it gave up and died very shortly thereafter the better part of a month ago.
Not sure what precisely is the cause but I imagine lacking water is the issue since we’re having very hot days and are still in a drought, although it weathered much more severe drought earlier this year no prob maybe the sheer heat pushes it over the edge. It was planted in the fall of last year so some but not a ton of time to build up the roots (which were also probably jacked up from curling around in a pot up until then anyway although I tried to gently break up the binding of the root ball to itself when I replanted it). I have been giving it supplemental water but if it’s doing this I imagine not enough.
Is it possible to bring a pine back from the brink when its already in this state by making sure it gets water every day or would you call it hopeless at this stage? Anyone have miracle stories? … if not, honestly I should try to get one of the plugs for it at a small stage if I need to try again so that it can grow the taproot properly instead of having to fix a messed up one… just sentimental because this is one of the first plants I tried to put in so I want to save it if I can but it’s following a trajectory I saw before.
This snake plant has been through a lot. My best friend/roommate and I went through one of the hardest times of our lives together, as our apartment was almost completely gutted in a fire. My snake plant survived and is thriving, but I can’t say exactly the same for hers. We made it out okay, but this once-strong, stiff snake plant is now thinner, smaller, softer, and perhaps not long for this world.
I’d love nothing more right now than to give it another lease on life. I know the general potting soil it’s in is not ideal, and was thinking of repotting it in a succulent-focused mix.
Does anyone have any input? Similar circumstances? Ideas on what else might be the cause? Tips on repotting? I’m just terrified that once I pull it up, there will be like three roots left, and the shock will kill it for good.
So my original intent when I started this a couple years ago was to fill in between the wood with aggregate. Given my current health issues, and the fact that I’ll likely need to clear the snow, I decided to change the pathway to wood.
This is what it looked like when we bought the house.
The cheapest quickest thing at the time was to just sod everything.
Next year I got the flower beds started
Fence and gate
More flower beds
Still grass
And the start of the pathway
If you have any particular questions, feel free to ask.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/50909928
Tobacco hawk, moth. Found adjacent to my tomato plants, this moth will likely spawn tomato hornworms which will be devastating. But it’s part of the ecosystem. Without them parasitic wasps will not have food and would not survive. So keeping a few pests means success for their predators as well.
Potato harvest is excellent this year! My tomatoes are okay, but I have not gotten as many as id like. Feel free to laugh with me on my pathetic corn lol
gardening is so legit. Learning more with each season :)
Im always planting potatoes though. Its beyond easy, and I absolutey enjoy the act of digging for the spuds. I was sad I had no more to dig!
Pickled all my garden beans, was gonna save some by freezing for a family dinner, but the recipe I used called for 1.5lbs, and well I had exactly 700grams, so I used them all.
I mostly followed this recipe, with some modifications, that I got from another post earlier this week.
I doubled the sugar, and put 4 cloves in each jar instead of 2 for all. I don’t like vinegar that much, so hopefully these are more dilly and garlic.
I’ll see how they turned out in a week!
Spice up your August garden with a bit of colour. Consider trying the many varieties of hibiscus, writes gardening expert Brian Minter
For context, FreshetNews is an independent news co-op in Metro Vancouver, Canada. The articles may be focussed on the climate of this region.
https://www.freshetnews.ca/in-the-garden-summer-hibiscus/Open linkView original on piefed.caDon’t think it’s worth spraying down with neem oil or something at this point.
It’s only its second year, the buds are just forming, and I wasn’t expecting to do much with them. If I’m gonna try brewing a batch of beer the first will be with some store bought dried hops to get the feel of things first.
On the plus side, I did get a decent haul of bush beans, a couple dozen are over ripe though.
Jerk seasoned kebabs. Very spicy from the habaneros.
These plants on my balcony were nothing but work for most of the year, but it's finally starting to pay off.
Greetings, I recently started a new raised bed in the yard out of old galvanized metal roof panels I had laying around as I ran out of room in the greenhouse’s. Planted some leafy greens such as Vates Blue Scotch Kale and Black Simpson lettuce. Seedlings just started to come out and I was impressed with how quickly the Cardinals came out to mow them all down. I put a quick screen over it for now to give the seedlings a chance, but man, wasn’t expecting that so quick. Anybody else run into that situation as well? Do they eventually let up once the plants mature a bit? Thanks for reading and Cheers!
What I ordered was tea seeds. What I got was… whatever this is.
They came by mail without any sort of accompinying letter or leaflet or any other information. The sender was something completely non-descript (uparcel-somethingsomething). Technically, I don't even know if this is even related to my order of tea seeds.
There is a phone number on the package. No idea if it would be a good idea to call…
*Edit: Many of you have said those look like mung beans. After googling what mung beans look like, I tend to agree. However, given the weird circumstances under which they were delivered to me, I'm not going to plant or eat them.
I'm in my 3rd year gardening from my balcony and living room. Here's a quick overview of my experiences to help newbie apartment gardeners navigate the many options available.
Note: I am comparing my results with other 'traditional' gardeners' who I share seeds with. So I've seen how more soil directly translates to larger growth.
Soil Based
I find these to only be good for sweet potatoesm flowers and herbs. You have to fill them too full for larger plants which causes the bags to bulge. I tried Tomatoes/Zuccini but both got blossom end rot and didn't produce viable fruit.
Main issue is not enough soil for plants to grow their roots out.
So I tried these with a dwarf bell pepper variety and the fruit were smaller than the ones that got planted in the ground. I also had significant problems getting the right amount of drainage leading to blossom end rot.
I never tried the "upside down" versions with the plants growing downward as that is counter to the plant biology of most plants.
Overall I would only recommend this if you have zero space and zero access to alternatives. Could be more viable for herbs, strawberries, and climbing plants.
So I only tried these this year and I made several mistakes. First off, I put it in an area with too much sun. Second, I direct seeded my greens into it because I didn't want to do any more seedlings this year. 3rd, I did not water it 'correctly'. Because of the small soil space, the sun expose, and my climate it require red more frequent small waterings. Everything that sprouted either dried up or drowned.
Next year I will start them as seedlings and transplant them, use dripping irrigation or some other form of water management.
So these are pretty consistent, their main limiting factor is of course shallow soil. Great for herbs and flowers, strawberries are okay. Grew a sunflower out of one but it was much smaller than the others.
Definitely a good place to start. Just make sure they have drainage holes.
Hydroponic Based
So these are legit, but they're also over priced. This was my first hydroponic grow system and while it worked well for some things, the "one size fits all" has it's limitations.
The main strength of these are the vertical aspect and the aeration. Which I will discuss more in other methods.
So KRATKY is essentially growing in water with nutrients. The biggest drawback is there is no aeration. As such you need to refill only to 2/3 leaving 1/3 of the roots above water to absorb oxygen from the air.
Size of container limits root potential and thus overall plant growth. I've used 5gal jugs and gotten much larger plants simply from the size increase.
I do NOT recommend the coloured pots in the picture. They are too small. Might be viable for non-edible plants but for anything you wanna eat the smaller harvest is a drawback.
So I highly recommend these type of systems in general. They have drawbacks and can be overpriced but they are easy to use and produce. They all have water circulation pumps that provide aeration, so you can fill them fuller and you get much larger harvests. This is the primary advantage over KRATKY. I highly recommend adding an air stone to any existing KRATKY to massively improve growth.
Downsides are they tend to be smaller so roots can only grow so big. They also tend to use switches whose timer resets when it loses power, so you have to turn them on at the correct time for them to turn off when you want them to.
So this is by far the most complicated option. BUT fish water is amazing garden fertilizer, so it's a viable part of any growing system.
Main consideration is tropical fish want warm water that doesn't hold oxygen, meaning you need airstones and will always have stunted growth.
Secondary is algae, which grows from light entering the aquarium. The challenge is getting light on your plants while minimizing the light hitting the water.
I've done strawberries, sweet potatoes, and spider plants. I would suggest going with non-edible plants like the spider plant or pothos.
