Well I finally broke ground yesterday and today amended the soil with organic compost as well as top soil with peat moss added and time release fertilizer and then added the plants. They look a bit droopy right now but I was expecting that. Here are some photos.
Here are some close ups of the differnt areas. I will also add adjscent to that bed a trellis for a dutchman's pipevine and hopefully in the backyard as well and some citrus trees but it will be little by little as funding is limited.
Another shot.
And the last one for now. The empty spaces will house zinnias, gaillardias, purple cone flowers and against the fence mexican sunflowers. The current plant population is; Hamelia patens (dwarf variety) Butterfly bushes ( buddhelia) milkweeds ( asclepsias curassavica) pentas, lantanas, 2 salvia farinacea and some little daisies that scape my mind.
This message was edited Jul 22, 2010 12:34 PM
The Butterflys and the bees are going to love them and the eye candy for us humans is going to be great :))
Keep the pictures comming
Greg
Looks like a buffet to the bf eye! Good job!
Very nice! Only thing I would suggest is putting the Shrimp Plants in a more shaded area. I have some and they seem to HATE any touch of Sun. Maybe yours will do better for you than mine are doing for me. Looking good, cant wait to see updates with pics of your first critters! :)
I'm with Brandon on your shrimp plants......Yellow and Red morning sun at most. I grow 4 differnt ones and the only one so far that takes the full sun is the White Shrimp plant ( Squirrels Tail).
Other that that it looks great ! Add a small saucer or rocks with shallow holes in them to collect water for any small creatures that make their home in your new flower bed. !
Roly....how is the bed doing now? Has it rebounded from the transplant yet?
Here is an updated photo of the bed which I took this morning after watching the Monarch
Very cute garden, Roly!
Have you had any butterfly's checking it out???
It looks so much less stressed than the first picture. I think you are doing great with it.
Buffet is open.....
Oh yes, much better, are you getting the temps we're getting here....HOLY COW ! 107º heat index today!
Yes it is horribly hot during the day. Then it takes so long to cool off at night. It is still 93 out there. It will be 103 tomorrow, in fact it will be in the hundreds all this week. We are running sprinklers every night for 10-15 minutes a zone just to keep up with evaporation. I passed a house the other day that had umbrellas laying out in the yard shading a flower bed.
Thanks everyone for your kind comments. We are staying in the high 90s here but no higher. Being close to the ocean help a bit. The plants have definetely perked up. The ones that are a bit stressed out still are the Butterfly bushes but I see new shoots coming up everywhere so soon it will be ok. Some places say hardy to my zone some others say not but I like to try with as many things as I can and care for the to the best of my ability. I ordered some Aristolochias to try to attract swallowtails.
Hope you read the plantfiles info on the Aristolochias that aren't butterfly friendly (A. Gigantea and A. Elegans).
http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/56130/ Look at the comment section.
Roly ,
Do you want to attract Pipevine Swallowtails? Or are there some other kinds of swallowtails that like pipevine down south?
FYI Here's the FLA map for the Pipevine Swallowtail:
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/species?l=1350&chosen_state=12*Florida
They get the polydamas that use pipevine there. I should have said not pipevine friendly.
I ordered Aristolochia maxima, fimbriata and Calico after ready your comments on other posts. I did my reading before ordering. Thank you very much for your concern. I hope that these 3 won't do any harm to the swallowtails. I also need to get me a citrus tree for the Giant Swallowtails and a bunch of other stuff for nectar and larval hosts.
Great! I have not had much luck with eggs laid on my citrus trees. I don't know why. One I brought in as second instar and it died a week later. Then I have seen a lot of eggs on leaves and go back a few days later and no sign of feeding or cats anywhere.
I bet you get the trees a lot cheaper in FL than we do!
I actually found Giant Swallowtail chrysalids in the citrus trees at Home Depot. I wanted to break the branches and bring them home but didn't.
Ohhh, too bad you couldn't take it home with you. I'd like to have a citrus tree for my giant ST but I don't know what I would do with it in winter.
I did not know the polydamas ST used aristolochia as a host plant. Very interesting. Of course we don't get them up here.
I do have rue and prickly ash for the giants though.
Keep us posted on what's going on in the garden.
We have a lemon tree that's about 15 feet tall and find Giant Swallowtails on them all the time...I don't even bother bringing them in as they seem to do just fine on their own. Have no clue as to the "variety" of lemon tree it is but it works fine for them.
I see more Polydamas swallowtails in the pipe vines here at Fairchild than actual Pipevine swallowtails but they are both there.
I don't trust leaving my citrus trees in the ground, so I put them in large pots and put them in the shop. We put in the daylight plant bulbs last year and the lemon bloomed! I have huge lemons now but haven't a clue when to harvest. It is a Improved Meyer Lemon.
Well I went plant shopping yesterday and came back home with a lot of plants. I got 2 native porterweeds, 1 corky stemmed passionvine, 2 white butterfly bushes, 1 cassia bahamensis, 1 senna polyphylla, 1 sweet almond bush, 1 red salvia, 1 mexican flame vine, 1 wild coffee and a verbena x hybrida. All but the verbena came from 2 nurseries down in Homestead so I got to walk around and see how the plant were doing and pick the ones I liked the best. I have yet to make another trip. Probably sometime before the end of the month. I will be taking some pictures in a bit.
roly,
I don't think the Pipevines are "as" common down there, at least from what I've read...for what that's worth. I have both also, but the Pipevine's seem to be more common early, then again later.
Well here in the garden as of today after planting some more things and with a lot of color
roly, that's really taking shape !!! Wait till next year when your plants are more established ! You'll have ton''s of BF's...Let us know if you get a Malachite, some of the host plants are ruellia, plantago. Not likely that we would get them here, too far north, but you could !
