My moms Butterfly Habitat thus Far

Leslie,

They are Zinnias, Cactus Giant variety, amazingly simple to grow and the color spectrum they cross is astonishing to me. After the first or second Bloom, I thought....ok, these are going to be so so.....I will maybe plant half as many next year ( already making plans for 2009....LOL ) after about 10 of them exploded, I was like, " Oh My God!" We have to have twice as many of these!!!! I have been taking crap loads of pictures of just all of the different Blooms!

Thanks for yourcompliments

TJB

WWoooww! Your garden is really an amusement park for butterflies! No wonder we're not getting any over here! They all found your place this summer!

Great pics! Thanks for posting. t.

Thank you for letting me know which Joe Pye Weed that is. : ) Now you need to tell me why I have the same one 'Atropurpureum' and mine is not any where near 7'! lol
What is your soil like?

Has anyone been able to view the list I attached?....I am not sure if I did it correctly or not. It is a google spreadsheet.

Thanks,

And LOL........no, they are not in our garden, only been a few popping their little heads in here. I contemplated renting one of those helium balloons and flying it with a sign for Butterfly's " Fun, Food and Frolicking here at Grandma Pats secret Garden"

Not really that good of soil that I am aware of.......its on the west side of the property and gets sun from 7:30 a.m. until at least 7 p.m......not sure otherwise. Now I will say that I left all of my wood stems in it until spring.......and only pulled it out to cover it those few nights we had frosts......I put Styrofoam coolers ( $2.00 dollar genneral ) over them to protect them from the frost....other than that it has been business as usual...

It came up just fine for me. Nice list!.

Thanks for your response Jack. I knew when I asked the question the answer was going to be zinnias. I just have never seen any that tall or with the pretty colors. Like I said mine came up from some seed mixture I threw out into the garden (I have thrown out about 10 seed mixtures to fill space, lol) and thought they were gorgeous and looked a little like zinnia but none I had seen before. My hummer likes them okay, still no BF's on them though.

Thanks again,

Leslie

Man do I hope my Zinnias end up better than what they look like right now! They are horrible, not like your beauties shadowjack. I think I think that every year too though, I don't know if it's usually this bad. I think mine may have gotten some root disturbance because they look like crap!

This message was edited Jul 14, 2008 12:18 PM

If I can get a handle on how to collect the seeds from the Zinnias, you guys are more than welcome to some of them.....

Oooh yes please : ) I've always wanted to try those cactus types (That's what you said they were right?). You'll have to let us know if the bf's love them or not.

Yes....the cabbages love them...I saw a Monarch hit on one the other day and a number of swallowtails as well....Thing is, I don't think they are Cactus now.....It is the only package that I misplaced.....I am thinking they are State Fair variety, regardless, I am stunned by the diversity in color and different petal shapes....

I think that's supposed to be one of the bf's favorites, so that's not a bad thing. I'm always wondering if the double blooms are less attractive to bf's, but it seems like they will use the doubles. I noticed out of all the ones I had last year they went to some orange ones that were semi-double the most.

Wow what a great job. I especially love the curves to your garden....

Janet