Thursday, June 28, 2012

In the Garden: The Good, the Bad, the Beautiful

The good--a swallowtail butterfly caterpillar munching on carrot leaves. Now this is the kind of bug I like to see in my garden.


The bad--hoards of Colorado Potato Beetle larva demolishing my potato crop. I've picked hundreds off my potato plants the past week and new ones appear each morning...


The beautiful--a thistle flower getting ready to open. Yes, I may be crazy, but I do encourage the thistles around my garden to feed  the butterflies and finches. 


And we might as well throw in the tasty--this summer I finally know what it like to have too many raspberries. I've picked over twenty quarts so far and have barely made a dent in the crop. It is a good problem to have, though quite time consuming!


What is happening in your garden right now?

7 comments:

  1. I can hardly wait until my raspberries produce enough to actually make something! In my garden, I'm picking green beans, zucchini, cucumbers, potatoes, and picked my first tomato today! :)

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  2. We have tons of swallowtail caterpillars in our garden, we grow parsley specifically to attract them. We catch them when they are ~1/4" and keep them safe until the chrysalize, then emerge as a butterfly. Sorry to hear your spuds got attacked.

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  3. what an amazing photo-essay - love the title of this post

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  4. Delicious! We managed to get only potatoes (2 different types) and carrots in our garden...pathetic. But we should have some new potatoes in a few weeks!

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  5. I love the caterpillars too! They usually love my parsley. I'm afraid I don't have much for a garden this year. :-(

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  6. Oh how cool to spot the Caterpillar. Now I know that I need to plant parsley so maybe they will show up in my flower gardens. We have the butterflies but I've yet to see the caterpillar.

    Sorry about those other "nasty" bugs and the damage they are doing.

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  7. That's a very good garden mixture! Wish ours was that good!

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