Butterfly Update-- Eggs and Eclosures!

My garden's first Black Swallowtail egg of 2017

As I mentioned several months ago, I had a LOT of Black Swallowtail caterpillars at the end of the summer. I think I ended up with 26 (!) chrysalises to babysit over the winter. Sadly, three of them eclosed too soon. The first one was when the sun's seasonal shift sent a beam of light into their cage and warmed one chrysalis up way too early: in January/February. I handfed the butterfly (sugar water, in a 4:1 water to sugar ratio) from a cottonball for several days, and eventually set it free during one of the weird early thaws we had this winter. I knew it was unlikely the butterfly would live very long, let alone find many flowers for food, but I wanted a more natural life for the butterfly than constant captivity. Since that butterfly eclosed during a snowstorm, we named it Snowflake.

Then while we were away from the house for about a week a second butterfly eclosed. Unfortunately since it never got any food it died before we returned. Sorry, little one.

The last early eclosure happened during the storm Stella, in mid March. It was a male but I couldn't resist naming the butterfly after a blizzard, so Stella he was. Again I fed him by hand. Something interesting about both of these butterflies: they didn't seem to recognize when I put them on the moistened puff that it was food. I had to gently unroll the proboscis with a straightened paper clip and place the tip on the surface of the cotton ball to get both of them to eat. But as soon as they tasted the sugar water they were happy to suck it up. The second butterfly we also set free a few weeks after eclosure. It was still pretty early but I know Stella survived for at least 24 hours because I saw him soar back through my yard the next afternoon.

A few weeks later, once temperatures at night were reliably in the 40s, I put the cage of remaining chrysalises outside to start their natural end of diapause. Last week several butterflies eclosed: three females. Then two males this weekend, and finally another female two days ago. Today while bringing my tomato and basil seedlings outside for some sunshine I spotted a female Black Swallowtail in my garden laying eggs in my carrot greens. I followed her around and managed to find two eggs. I'm pretty sure she laid more than that, but they're really hard to spot.

So the cycle begins again! I hope I get more eggs soon, I have plenty of carrots and dill sprouting in the garden.

The second egg this year. I'm so excited for little tiny caterpillars to hatch!

My Gardening Goals for 2017

After reviewing what I did wrong in my garden this year, I’ve already started planning what I want to try next year. Honestly I think the planning phase is one of my favorite parts of gardening. I get to imagine all the wonderful perfect veggies I imagine will come out of my garden, and of course in my imagination I have no troubles with overscheduling, pests, or unexpected weather issues!

A late season harvest from 2014, one of the best years so far for my garden.

My goals for next year fall into three main groups: techniques I want to try or continue; specific crops I want to grow; and results & motivational hopes.

Garden Planning & Techniques to try

I was definitely happy with growing separate crops in the “shoulder” fall and spring seasons this year, even if I didn’t get it perfect. Actually, I got the summer crops cleared out enough to plant my fall lettuce on time, but was then foiled by late warm weather in October and November. The lettuce actually bolted (went to seed) in mid November! Arrgh, so much for fresh fall and winter salads. Next year.

My tall, bitter lettuce after it switched into flowering mode.

So to improve next year, I need to be prepared to put up spring crops for storage if I haven’t consumed them all fresh by the time I need to plant for the summer. For example, I could make batches of yummy kale chips (which I've been meaning to try anyway), or quick-freeze kale to put it in soups and stir-fries later. Another way I might make sure I don’t have the same problem next summer is to plant my early crops in a separate bed that isn’t also supposed to grow summer crops. Then when the spring crops come out (whether that’s on time or not), I could plant that bed with a quick-growing cover crop to keep down weeds until it’s time to plant late fall crops.

Speaking of cover crops, that’s something I’ve been meaning to try for years. Again I run into the difficulty of having to pull my summer or fall crops while they are still producing. That probably is one of my biggest challenges in gardening! I can’t bear to rip out plants that might still give me more harvest if I just let them stay in the ground. I might be able to interplant a fall cover crop around the lingering summer tomatoes, though. That still means I need to at least order the seeds on time, which I didn’t do this year. I never got around to actually ordering any cover crop seeds, although I did spend quite a bit of time reading about them and planning what combination I’d like. If I do an early spring cover crop where the majority of my summer tomatoes, etc. will go, I might try fava beans. I love eating fresh favas when I can find them in the grocery store. I’ve read it’s good to mix a deep-rooted grain in there as well, such as rye. We’ll see; I have a lot more time to dream and plan this winter and peruse my favorite seed catalogs. As always, I'll make sure to list ideas in my garden journal. Maybe starting now and creating a calendar reminder for when to order seeds for a cover crop will help me finally achieve this goal!

Some of my favorite seed catalogs. I can't wait until this year's arrive!

So all those are fairly practical, realistic techniques to try. The most far-fetched goal I have for next year’s garden is to build a squash or cucumber archway, like this one I saw on Pinterest.  How fun would that be to be able to walk down an archway and see fruit dangling through the wire mesh? I think it would probably be a significant amount of work to build one, though, especially since I don’t have any raised beds yet that would serve as a base. I love the idea, though, so we’ll see what kind of time and energy and funds I have available this spring and summer.

Seeds and varieties to add or change

As for the actual seeds I order, over the last few years I’ve been trying to buy mostly heirloom varieties. It wasn’t because I dislike the bigger seed companies or want pure strains for saving seeds, I just really enjoy the feeling of being connected to previous generations who grew the very same variety. (I’ve dreamed of saving my own seeds, and do once in a while, but usually not for the more expensive heirlooms I’ve been buying like tomatoes.)

However, I’ve had smaller tomato and sweet pepper harvests than I wanted the past few years. Some of that is certainly my fault and/or due to weather, but I also suspect the varieties I’m choosing have generally smaller yields than modern hybrids would. Some heirloom varieties I’ll keep no matter what because I love their unique flavor, like the Cherokee Purple tomatoes from this summer and the Hot Lemon hot peppers that I've grown the past few years. (The hot peppers also are heavy yielding, so no complaints there.) Other than those, the heirlooms I’ve tried haven’t made up for small harvests with an overwhelmingly fantastic flavor. So next year I will probably try growing more hybrids in hopes of  a bigger harvest. As mentioned in my garden year wrap-up (linked above), I may also try an early-yielding variety to spread my season out a bit more. All the heirloom tomatoes I’ve been growing have fairly long days-to-maturity. For example, Cherokee Purples are listed at 80 days to maturity.

My fall tomatoes ripening on the counter. The round, dark ones at the back are Cherokee Purples.

I plan to try again to grow some of the seeds I ordered for 2016 but never planted, such as winter squash, cucumbers and cantaloupe.  (Maybe one or more of those will go over my archway trellis!) I missed having winter squash from the garden this year.

I also found I dearly missed my annual fall ritual of spending a few afternoons shelling beans. I love eating fresh shell beans as well as drying them for longer storage. So I’ve got to make room for beans in my 2017 garden. I enjoyed growing red beans last year, but found they were smaller than the Borlotto or Cranberry beans I used to grow, like this one.  I will grow those fat meaty beans again in 2017, and make sure I build tall enough trellises for their vines (six feet or more!).

Borlotto beans are delicious and gorgeous to boot!

In my flower beds, I want to try a couple things different from this year. I’d like to find room for some Tithonia, or Mexican Sunflower. Their bright orange daisy-like blooms seem to be magnets for butterflies at Brookside Gardens, especially Monarchs. I also want to plant more milkweed, but place it at the edge of one of my beds so it's more easily accessible. This year’s milkweed ended up getting lost in the center of the bed, so I couldn’t see whether I ever had monarch caterpillars. I should also try to get more than just a couple plants so I have a big patch of the milkweed, easily seen by butterflies cruising overhead. I may create  an entire bed that's just milkweed, for that matter. We'll see how much room I have.

American Lady enjoying the Tithonia at Brookside Gardens

I did enjoy the zinnias I grew this summer, but oddly enough the only colors that germinated were pink, orange, and white (from a seed mix packet—there should also have been reds and yellows in there). Hmm. I didn’t see a lot of butterfly activity on the zinnias but I was really busy much of the summer. I’m undecided on whether I’ll grow them again.

Results I’m aiming for-- Lots to put up!

As I mentioned in my wrap-up, I hardly stored anything from the garden this year. I didn’t really have time or energy to actually make a batch of tomato sauce even if I had a big enough crop, but I still hope to be able to do so next summer. If nothing else I could make a batch in my slow cooker while I’m at work. I also hope to pickle some cucumbers, store some winter squash, and of course dry some of my shell beans for cold weather soups.

So now that I’ve gotten my goals organized, I get to do the really fun part, which is reading new seed catalogs as they arrive in my mailbox. I’ll compare prices, disease resistance, days to harvest, and so forth. What are your goals and dreams for next year’s garden? Any favorite varieties you think I should grow? Please chime in the comments, I love hearing from you all!

Garden Reflections 2016: Three mistakes I made

This year was a challenging one, both for me and for my veggie garden. Weather in particular was challenging, plus I took a second job for the end of the summer that left me only one day per week free to do all my chores, writing, gardening, butterflying, etc. Yikes. I think it wouldn’t have been quite so bad though if I hadn’t made a few key mistakes:

1. Letting my spring crops take over the summer

Lacinato kale turns into monsters if you let grow from spring all the way through fall!

I was so proud of myself this year for actually fulfilling my plan to have some “shoulder season” crops in the ground when it wasn’t yet warm enough for things like tomatoes. However, when it came time to swap them out I just couldn’t bear to pull plants that were still producing. I didn’t harvest my beets until mid June, and my spring Lacinato kale is actually still in the ground! (I haven't gotten around to harvesting the kale yet partly because of a whitefly infestation which I keep hoping will die down once we get frost.) So several summer direct-sow crops never got planted: cantaloupe, shell beans, summer squash and winter squash.

My Red Ace beets, delicious despite the late harvest. Definitely a good keeper variety.

• Next year I need to either plant less of my spring veggies (so they’re gone by the time I need to replace them), or not be so ambitious with plants to reuse the same beds for both spring and summer crops.

• Also I may want to look at planting even earlier in the spring: the beets and carrots in particular were slow growing so didn’t seem ready to harvest when I needed to pull and replace them.

2. Setting out peppers and tomatoes late

We had some really cold, wet, rather miserable weather late this spring. I used this as an excuse to procrastinate planting my tomato and pepper seedlings. I told myself they’d get stunted if I planted them at the usual time—each weekend I looked at the weather forecast and saw chilly temps. But in the end I planted them so late it wasn’t until October and even November that either variety of tomatoes (Amish Paste & Cherokee Purple) or sweet peppers (Red Snapper & Quadrato Giallo D'Asti) really started bearing significant amounts of fruit. I have a couple dozen green tomatoes on my kitchen counter right now that I’m trying to ripen. I know I wasn’t the only gardener in the area to have this problem-- it really was an unpleasant spring for warmth-loving veggies like the tomatoes. But in Grow It Eat It’s season wrap-up post I read a great suggestion for next year—stagger the plantings. I usually grow at least two plants each of each tomato variety. So rather than putting all my eggs in one basket, next year I’ll try putting half out on time, and half a couple weeks later. That would spread out the harvest, as well as protect against losing everything to a late cold snap.

The first really decent batch of tomatoes from my garden this year, harvested on November 11.

• I may also want to check the days-to-maturity on my chosen varieties, for that matter. If I’m choosing all tomatoes that have a long time to vearing the first ripe fruit, I may not be able to get much before August even with a staggered planting. I’ve been trying a lot of heirlooms the past few years, enjoying the connection with previous generations. But I’ve come to think maybe that shouldn’t be my top criterion for selection.  Rather, I need to focus on what’s both tasty and productive for me & my garden. 

3. Finally, I think the biggest mistake I made this summer was not mulching the garden at all. 

Look at all those weeds creeping through the fence on the right! Arrgh.

We were very tightly budgeted so I had to cut somewhere. The usual 13-17 bags of mulch were one big and easy thing to cross off the "to buy" list. However, that meant the garden suffered more than usual with drought, and worse, the weeds were rampant. When mid summer came and I tried working a few summer camp sessions to get extra hours, I just didn’t have the energy let alone time to keep on top of weeding. When I did get around to it, I would end up pulling huge armloads of grasses and other weeds. I have two composting areas—one to make compost for my veggie garden, one to make “weedy” compost for filling in other areas. I put weeds, especially ones gone to seed, in the latter area so I’m not reintroducing more pests and weeds seeds to the garden when I turn in compost. Anyway, that area is way overflowing now, in fact there are mini haystacks of dried grasses beside the compost bins. Our cat Caleb has actually decided they make quite a pleasant bed in the sunshine. Hooray for silver linings, I guess?

•  So next year I definitely need to find the money to buy mulch. If we’re still really hard up I should at least get a few trunkloads of the free stuff given out by the county—when I could afford it I’ve skipped that source, not knowing what’s in it. Would I make matters even worse by incorporating weed-ridden mulch in my veggie garden? But after the lessons of this year I think maybe it’s worth the risk.

• I had also hoped to try a cover crop this winter to help cut down on spring weeds. But I never got around to ordering the seeds so that fell by the wayside. I’d still like to try it next year though, so stay tuned.

What lessons did you learn from your garden this year? Share in the comments so we can all learn too.

Also, if you’ve ever tried community compost sources, what were your experiences? Am I right to fear weeds and other contamination, or overly cautious? Let me know what you think.

Handmade gift idea: Pretty Seed Packets from your Garden

Seed packets I made for my friend's birthday recently

If you garden, and you have gardening friends, you probably trade seeds from time to time. Wait, you don’t? You really should try it. I’m not just talking about leftover seeds from packets you bought, but also seeds you gathered from your own garden.

I’m only just getting into seed gathering and seed saving. I haven’t yet braved a big seed swap event like the Washington Gardener Seed Exchange, but I have started sharing seeds with my friends. In fact, seeds from your very own garden can make a pretty awesome present. My friends Jon and Hannah recently moved to a house with a great big sunny back yard, and have grand plans for gardening. So when Hannah asked for gardening supplies for her birthday, I knew exactly what I wanted to give her.

She’s really into rainbows, so I actually already had some pretty rainbow scrapbooking paper purchased for her. When I bought it I didn’t know how I’d use it, just that I wanted to make something for her birthday.

Rainbow!

I had five kinds of seeds I wanted to share with her. All were easy to grow and I know they grow well in our area. This was important since she’s a relative beginner in terms of gardening. I always have tons of dill seed every year, plus I gathered marigold, basil, oregano, and echinacea seeds. These have all reseeded before so I know they'll grow true from seed. (Not all plants you may buy will.) 

I turned to a few of my favorite regional gardening books to research planting information. For each kind of seed I wanted to explain how and when to plant, what to expect in terms of size and spacing, and also benefits I know of from my experience. For example, letting basil go to flower attracts tons of butterflies and bees, as do the purple flowers of oregano. Dill of course feeds Black Swallowtail caterpillars, so I wanted to suggest she plant extra to share with the caterpillars.

This Black Swallowtail caterpillar is eating carrot greens, which are related to dill.

Originally I’d hoped to hand-write all the planting notes, but I had too much information for each seed. I typed them up instead, leaving plenty of room for hand-drawn illustrations. I experimented with different label sizes until deciding that about 4x4” was right.

Once I knew how big my labels would be I could make the packets. I wanted some of the paper to show around the label so I created a template for 5x5” packets. In order to make a tidy seal I also allowed for ¼” extra on either side of the first 5”, plus a ½” flap on top. So this meant I cut out rectangles that were 5½” x 10½”, then trimmed off some of the side, like this:

I folded and glued the packets shut, leaving open the top flap. While those dried I drew illustrations of each plant on the respective labels. I’m not a terribly good artist but that wasn’t the point, I just wanted to get something close enough to be recognizable and also colorful. Seed catalogs with pretty pictures are always more fun and inspiring to read, so I wanted to make sure my seed packets would convey the same sense of “Ooh, I want to plant that!” I made sure to illustrate a Black Swallowtail caterpillar on the dill packet too, so she knows what to look for.

Not the best drawing of a BST caterpillar, but probably recognizable!

Next I put generous amounts of seed in each packet and glued the labels on. I added little dessicant packets when I remembered to do so; again this wasn’t crucial since I expect the seed will be planted very soon.

I glued the top flaps shut and let them air dry. When we were ready to go I decorated the bundle with some gold starry tinsel and tucked it into a gift bag with a pair of colorful gardening gloves.

Hannah was very happy to receive the seeds. Jon is also excited to use the herbs in his cooking. I hope they grow well for her! I’ve offered to help break ground for the new bed or give other advice this summer. Since I work in the horticultural resource library at Brookside Gardens, if she has any questions I can’t answer from experience, I can certainly find plenty of answers at work!

I love to spread garden inspiration to my friends and neighbors. I especially have fond memories of helping my parents garden when I was small, so I hope my friends’ children enjoy helping in the garden too. I look forward to spending time in the gardens this summer on my own as well as with my friends.

A Garden Experiment: expanding my butterfly garden

I hope to see more butterflies like this Painted Lady in my yard this year!

This fall I decided I just didn’t have enough area in my yard devoted to butterfly beds. Some of this was inspired by the great gardens I observed on my Big Year excursions, especially the enormous field of zinnias at the Dismal Swamp welcome center in North Carolina. I didn’t have nearly as many butterflies in my yard as were at the zinnia field, nor did I have the diversity of insects that those zinnias attracted. So I decided to add a few beds devoted to flowers for my butterflies and other pollinators.

I spotted this assassin bug feasting on an unlucky honeybee at the Dismal Swamp rest stop's zinnia field. Cool!

I also decided to try an experiment in creating these new beds. Instead of laboriously digging up the existing sod (since these beds were going to replace some lawn in my front yard), I laid out a layer of flattened cardboard boxes on top of the existing grass, wetted them down, then covered them with a few inches of mulch. I had just enough mulch left over from earlier in the summer to cover both new beds, whew!  I left that there all winter to smother the lawn underneath. Mulching them kept them looking neat and tidy, important since they’re in my front yard. Next I’ll layer some dry leaves and mostly-finished compost on top. I’ll probably add some additional soil too, depending on how much compost I have available. Leaving the cardboard in place under these beds should help control weeds in my new flowerbeds, and it will eventually decompose completely.

Here are the new beds in the fall. Soon it will be time to add more layers of soil and compost, then add my plants!

I’ve started seeds for butterflyweed (asclepias tuberosa), pentas, and verbena bonariensis already. I also purchased zinnia seeds, which are direct-sow. I usually like to focus on native plants in my ornamental beds, but am willing to grow non-natives if they are particularly attractive to butterflies & other pollinators. I noticed verbena bonariensis was very popular with butterflies and hummingbird moths at Brookside Gardens, so thought I’d try it. The pentas are also quite popular with butterflies in the Wings of Fancy butterfly exhibit, so I thought I’d see if my wild butterflies like them too.

Southern Broken-dash enjoying Verbena bonariensis.

I’ve learned a lot more about butterfly gardening since I started here at this house. I’ve learned that butterflies are very nearsighted and really need big swaths of blooms to attract them, rather than one plant here & there. So I’m only planning a few kinds of flowers in those beds. Lots of bright attractive blossoms during the main part of the summer is my central goal here.

With the butterflyweed I hope also to attract egg-laying Monarch butterflies. It would be really fun to add Monarch caterpillars to my invertebrate menagerie in the summertime! Even if I don’t get caterpillars, the bright orange flowers should attract plenty of hungry bees and butterflies. I think this is my third or fourth time trying milkweed; all the previous times I direct-sowed in the fall and didn’t get any sprouts in the spring. So this time I’m raising the seedlings indoors where I can protect them better. If the first batch of seedlings fails I have more seeds and will try again. The tiny new sprouts look healthy so far, though, so I am feeling optimistic.

Baby butterflyweed with their first real leaves! Also marigold seedlings in the back.

What about you? Are you growing anything new this year, or trying a new technique? It’s fun to experiment in the garden. I’m trying a few new plants in my vegetable garden this year as well; I’ll write about that more in a future post.

Happy gardening! Spring is a mere week away.

My Garden's A Mess-- I Like It That Way

This "untidy" wildlife garden provides important habitat for lots of small wild creatures.

My garden's a mess! Here's why that's ok.

Lots of garden books and websites talk about tidying your garden at the end of fall: cleaning up, removing dead and spent plants and debris, and so forth. I always used to feel guilty when I read those articles because I never got around to much outdoor tidying. But I've learned since then that you want to help wildlife it's actually important to leave quite a bit of deliberate mess in your winter garden. Hooray!

My garden beds are only ever tidy looking before anything has been planted there,
like these two new beds I added this fall.  They'll never be this "tidy" again.

What To Keep... and What to Discard

Of course it matters what you keep and what you don't. I'm not advocating complete garden anarchy here. You definitely want to clean up and discard any diseased plants, and you probably want to remove the more persistent weeds that are likely to survive through the winter. Otherwise you'll still have the same disease around in the spring, and those weeds will only be stronger for having slowly grown enormous root systems during the winter. Little devils!

You should, however, keep plenty of seedheads from your flowers so that winter birds can munch on them. My goldfinches love echinacea, for example. Also important are hollow plant stems. Many insects survive the winter by sheltering inside them, and birds like Carolina Wrens and Downy Woodpeckers love snacking on those little nuggets when they find them!

Plenty of seeds in this goldenrod for the finches, and I'm sure lots of tiny insects and spiders for wrens as well!

Leaf debris is important for your garden's health as well as the wildlife's. Not only will the leaves slowly decay over the winter, returning important nutrients to your soil, but many small creatures will shelter in them. Many moth species form their cocoons in the leaf litter, so if you're too assiduous in removing fallen leaves you might actually be removing your gorgeous moths as well!

Over the years plenty of fallen leaves have built up in this bed. I add to them by raking in leaves from my driveway or the road gutters. The natural mulch definitely helps my plants; I hope there are unseen creatures benefiting too.

Additions To the Messy Fall Garden: Structures and Shelters

I often also leave up some of the trellis structures I built, since many birds like to perch on them during the winter. My feeders get pretty crowded at times, and it's fun to see whole squadrons of finches and doves lined up on the fences and tomato frames waiting their turn. If you're participating in FeederWatch this season, like I wrote about here, you get to count all the birds attracted to your yard, whether they're actually on the feeder or just waiting. Bonus! If you didn't have any trellises in your summer garden, you could easily add some structures for the fall & winter.

This fence at the edge of my property is often full of sparrows waiting their turn at the feeder, or surveying the area before deciding it's safe enough to forage on the ground. You could provide similar benefits with something as simple as a twiggy branch or two stuck in the ground.

Some butterflies that overwinter as adults, like Commas and Question Marks, will shelter under loose bark to survive the cold. If your trellis was built from natural logs or branches, you might host a few butterflies too! Some wildlife gardeners also like to keep a loose brush pile to provide shelter in the wintertime. One of the most important things about building a brush pile for shelter is to make sure there are plenty of holes and access points for small creatures to enter. Chipmunks, shrews, insects, songbirds, and more might use your brush pile to escape cold, rain, and snow, as well as hide from their predators. In my wildlife garden beds I just leave lots of fallen leaves and debris for small creatures to use as shelter.

The tangles of sprawling wood aster provide plenty of cover for small sparrows, and also keep blooming quite late in the season, providing food for many honey bees and other insects.

So whether you're a lazy gardener, a newbie gardener running out of time, or even an experienced gardener just starting to get into this whole gardening for wildlife thing, relax! The stuff you don't have time to clean up from your garden this fall is probably better off left in place. You can even build new structures to add to your garden's habitat, like creating special log piles to give wrens a cozy place to hide from predators, or adding stumps with loose bark to shelter butterflies and other bugs.

I hope you enjoy sharing your garden with wildlife this fall and winter. What else do you do in the cold weather to make a welcoming home for birds, bugs, and other beasties? Leave me a note in the comments so I can try it too!

Be a better gardener next year: how keeping a garden journal will improve your garden skills and results

I like to keep a garden journal. I note what I've planted, how it's doing, how long it took until seeds germinated and later bore fruit, and all kinds of other information. I also write about what I've been doing in the garden or what I've been thinking about the garden. It's a fun pasttime, but even more it's a great resource for me each year since I can look back on what worked and what didn't the previous year.

To get started, all you really need are a notebook, a pen, and of course your beverage of choice.

When should you start a garden journal?

If you've been thinking about starting your own garden journal,  fall is actually a great time to start. Of course you could begin a new garden journal any time of the year, but the reflection and contemplation I feel in fall is great for getting a journal (and a garden) going. You'll muse about what worked in the garden this year, or what you hope to have in a future garden, and lots of things in between.

You can also talk to other gardening friends (and bloggers like me!)  to find out what worked and didn't work for them. Was bacterial wilt a common problem in your area this summer? Did almost everybody's tomatoes take forever to start producing due to a long cold spring? These are good things to know for future planning, but also for what I like to call "CSI: garden edition." Why did my cucumber vines disintegrate in a matter of days when they should have kept producing for several more weeks? Was it something I did? Could I have prevented it?

I track anything that might become a problem, so I'll know when it started.

What to include in your garden journal

But I digress. My garden journal is somewhat random. I buy a pretty blank notebook at the bookstore, and write in it whenever the mood strikes me. You can be more or less haphazard than I am, but there are a few crucial pieces of information you must include in your journal to make it a resource that will help improve your garden:

• What you planted and when.
• How well the seeds germinated, and how long it took.
• Where you purchased the seeds/seedlings, and how much they cost.
• Any special care they needed (that you did or didn't give them), e.g. you had to constantly water them during a dry spell. This will help you decide if a specific plant might be worth growing again.
• How much supplies you bought this year. Tracking how many bags/ cubic feet/etc. of mulch, compost, etc. I bought last year is really helpful for me each spring when I have to figure out what's needed, and also helps with my budgeting.
• Any difficulties you encountered over the season, and of course anything you tried to overcome them, successfully or not.
• How well each crop did-- how long until you got the first harvest, and how well you feel the plants performed over the entire summer. Did you get enough beans? Were the tomatoes really late compared to what you expected? Did one variety of peppers resist whatever wiped out the other variety?

I  include sketches of my garden layout each year, to help with planning crop rotation.

How often to write in your garden journal

Honestly, you don't have to have a specific schedule for writing in a garden journal, just whenever you have something to contribute. In the spring I tend to write frequently, then not so much in the hot summer (saving most of my energy for weeding and/or harvesting!), for example.  I also like to use my garden journal in the wintertime for planning and dreaming. I brainstorm what veggies I want to grow, start thinking about what new ones I might try this year (since I like to always have an experimental crop or two), and so forth.

This was the year I let the dill take over my garden. Whoops!

Extras to include in your garden journal

Other things you might like to put in your garden journal include photographs, sketches of the layout or even of individual vegetables, empty seed packets, and so forth. You could have a garden journal that's really half scrapbook, half journal, if that's what you enjoy. I don't do much scrapbooking but I do include lots of hand-drawn sketches each year of my garden layout. I like to make sure I'm rotating crops properly so I need to remember where the tomatoes have been from year to year. For that matter, I often need help remembering what kind of sprout I'm looking for in each row in the spring! I know some folks put markers in their garden, but I don't bother. Instead I just consult my map.

This year's garden map. It went through several changes between planning and planting.

You might also like to track weather in your garden journal, especially if you can take the soil temperature. This might help later when you see that none of a certain seed germinated and you're trying to determine why-- maybe the soil was too cold or hot, or you'd had too much rain lately. You can also watch for any changes to weather averages over many years, and start to consider those when you're planning the next season. Are first frosts averaging sooner? Have several years in a row been much dryer than usual? I don't usually write frequently enough to make regular weather observations in my garden journal, but it does seem like a good idea to try.

Some gardeners like to track phenology in their garden journal, especially if they garden for wildlife instead of or in addition to growing crops for their own consumption. When did the monarch butterflies return? How late did they stick around in the fall? Did your redbud trees bloom earlier or later this year than last year? Phenology is a fun science of when events happen in nature. Don't overwhelm yourself, though-- if you're already super busy, you might find that sticking to just a few main questions is easier and more useful in your journal.

In the late winter and early spring I also use my journal to do price comparisons between different seed catalogs, so I can stick to my budget. Sometimes the same variety is in multiple catalogs but for different prices and/or different packet sizes. Other times I can compare different varieties: I can make lists of each one's touted benefits, both from the catalog description and any gardener reviews I can find online. This fall, on the other hand, I was able to jump on a last-minute seed sale that offered both free shipping and reduced-price seeds, because I knew I was unlikely to find better prices elsewhere. Yippee! I'm pretty sure the grower was offering those seeds at a discount only because they're remnants of 2015 seeds, but I also know from doing my own germination tests of four-year-old seeds that these should be fine for growing next year.

Some of my favorite seed catalogs.

Other ways to make your journal a helpful tool

I don't know about you, but I have a really hard time remembering from one summer to the next how well something did, or exactly when I started my tomato seeds inside. Keeping a garden journal means I don't have to do the same calculations every winter, and also means I don't miss the start date because I waited too long to even think about it. For that matter, if for several years I ended up not being able to plant outside for a few weeks longer than I'd intended, but the crops grew just fine, that's great knowledge to have! So would be knowing that even a couple weeks' tardiness means the lettuce won't grow big enough before it gets too hot outside.

Organizing your garden journal

Since I use a blank book for my garden journal, I always leave room at the top of each entry to go back and write quick bullet lists of essential information. That way I can skim through previous entries to find certain information without having to read every single one. It's also essential to date each entry, by the way. I tried making my own index at the back of a journal one year, so I could quickly look up when I wrote about the peas sprouting, for example. The problem with the back index was that I quickly ran out of space. Maybe next time I start a new volume I'll make an index for just keywords and page numbers (or dates), so all the times I wrote about the peas can be grouped together, as will all the times I wrote about any seed sprouting. That might work better.

If you enjoy using "to-do" lists, your garden journal would be a great place to copy your lists of garden tasks each day/week/month/season. This could be a helpful reminder from year to year what's been done and what still needs to be done. If you're anything like me and often don't get to the bottom of a to-do list, it can also help you remember the following day/week/whatever that you should add that back to your list.  Most of my daily to-do lists are made on the back of scrap paper or junk mail envelopes, which makes it easy to carry around with me during the day but also makes it easy to misplace.

This year I made a set of to-do lists so I wouldn't forget anything. It really helped, even when I missed my goal date by a few weeks.

Essentials to remember for garden journaling

• Writing in your garden journal should be enjoyable. Remember to write about triumphs as well as failures!
• Your garden journal will be potentially useful as a whole, but each individual entry doesn't need to seem useful at first. Just write about what's been happening in the garden when you feel like it.
• Reread your previous entries each year (or more often) to see how you might grow as a gardener. Maybe after the pain has subsided from all your tomatoes dying prematurely, you'll be able to see what you could have done better.
• Let your garden journal grow with you-- you can add or omit sections from year to year as needed. Keep reading about garden techniques and try new things. Talk to other gardeners too, whether online or in your own neighborhood. Soon I'll post some ideas for helpful resources for both planning and evaluating your garden, so stay tuned for that.

Do you keep a garden journal? What are the most useful aspects of a journal for your garden? Let me know in the comments if I missed anything you find essential.

9 Plants That Will Add Fireworks To Your Fall Butterfly Garden

An American Lady enjoying the nectar of a Liatris flower.

Fall can sometimes be a disheartening season. The days are growing shorter, evenings darker, and the summer's bounty is drying up. But there are still a whole lot of insects busy at work out there, Monarch butterflies and honeybees being two of the most charismatic and well-known. If you're gardening specifically to support pollinators like these, you should think about adding fall-blooming plants to your garden. Here are nine of my favorite plants and plant groups for fall blooms in the butterfly garden:

1. Joe Pye Weed  (Eupatorium species). A very tall plant stretching 5 to 7 feet high, the reddish-pink fuzzy blooms are often covered with Tiger Swallowtails and other butterflies.

I also grow native Boneset (Eupatorium perfoliatum) in my garden, but find that its white flowers are not as popular with butterflies as the pink flowers are. Many kinds of bees do love the Boneset flowers, though. Be warned, Boneset is a pretty aggressive reseeder in my experience. I pull seedlings out of the driveway, the lawn, and my vegetable garden every year. My Joe Pye Weed isn't very good at reseeding, on the other hand.

Joe Pye Weed at Brookside Gardens, with several skippers and a bumble bee

2. Ironweed  (Vernonia species). I love the vibrant purple of Ironweed flowers! Like Eupatorium, they look like fuzzy little clusters. I'd say they are less popular with my pollinators on a pure total insects basis, but probably on a ratio of pollinators per square inch they're pretty close.

To be honest, I'm not sure whether I'm growing New York Ironweed (Vernonia novaboracensis) or Tall Ironweed (Vernonia gigantea), or even another species, since I got them at a plant swap a few years ago, where they were labeled simply "Ironweed."

Vernonia, like Eupatorium, is very tall, so I grow both against a fence between my yard and my neighbor's yard. The contrast of the purple with a butter-yellow Eastern Tiger Swallowtail or orange Monarch Butterfly is really something. For that matter, they'd look pretty sharp in a bouquet with the next two flowers.

Ironweed with a Peck's Skipper, a Tawny-Edged Skipper, and a honeybee

3. Goldenrod-- Solidago genus. There are tons of different goldenrod species. Some have flat-topped clusters of flowers, while others are like wands or fans. Some grow very tall while others stay fairly short. All of course have the classic tiny yellow individual flowers that are so popular with bees and butterflies. This is another plant that has been a vigorous spreader in my garden.

Different species of goldenrod seem to have very different bloom times; some varieties I see at Brookside Gardens are already in bloom, while my plants are still budding up. So the earlier varieties could help to feed the last local generation of Monarch butterflies in my area, while the later ones can help migrators as they pass through the area in a couple weeks or so.

Bees also love goldenrod, as evidenced by the bulging pollen basket of this bumblebee!

4. The state flower of Maryland, Black-Eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta), is another great flower for your late summer and early fall pollinators. There are actually several different varieties of Rudbeckia, and it seems like more are developed each year by plant breeders. I would use any one in order to add a cheerful pop of yellow to the butterfly bed, and do in fact grow at least two or three varieties.  Goldfinches love the seeds of these if you allow the flowers to ripen, so you'll also have the bright yellow flashes darting through your garden to add to the flowers' own beauty in that case.

Black-eyed Susan with a hungry Pearl Crescent

5. Several native Asters are good additions to a late-season pollinator garden. New England Asters (Aster novae-angliae) are covered with purple daisy-like flowers. New York Asters (Aster novi-belgii) has flowers that range from purple to pink to white. Both of these asters are very popular with bees and butterflies.

New England Aster with bee

6. I used to think that Liatris were native only to the Midwest, but it turns out there are several species that are native to the midAtlantic. Dense Blazingstar (Liatris spicata) and Rough Blazingstar (Liatris aspera) both bloom in late August through at least September. During my recent visit to Meadowside Nature Center in Rockville, MD, Liatris flowers were highly popular with skippers as well as bees of many types. Both species grow medium-tall stalks of pinkish to purplish flowers. They're nowhere near as tall as the Joe Pye Weed or Ironweed, though, so they might be a nice counterpoint in your pollinator garden. (I did not note the exact species of the Liatris I used for this post's lead photo, but clearly it was satisfactory to the American Lady butterfly!)

Dense Blazingstar with skipper

7. Woodland Sunflower (Helianthus strumosis) is just as popular with songbirds as it is with pollinators. It's another fairly tall plant, holding clusters of bright yellow flowers up to six feet off the ground. Sunflowers are one of my all-time favorite flower groups: the cheery yellow always puts a smile on my face. Plus it turns out they are particularly important for many of our native bee species and other pollinators, according to the Xerxes Society.

I couldn't find a Woodland Sunflower to photograph, but this Syrphid Fly sure thinks this similar looking flower is a great source of nectar anyway!

8. Cardinal Flower (Lobelia cardinalis) Until now, you might have wondered at my purple and yellow color theme so far. Cardinal Flower, however, is a vivid scarlet and is beloved by hummingbirds as well as many bees and butterflies. I often see Spicebush Swallowtail nectaring on the Cardinal Flowers at Brookside Gardens, like the one below. Unfortunately, Cardinal Flower seems to be not as vigorous a plant as some of the others on my list. The Prairie Nursery seed catalog warns, "Short-lived, it may require replanting every few years, but is well worth the effort." I did indeed experience this: the Cardinal Flower I planted lasted maybe two or three years before disappearing. If you don't have any red blooms in your late-summer garden it might be worth adding this to your garden, to help support migrating hummingbirds as they pass through your yard, as well as to round out your color scheme.

Spicebush Swallowtail on Cardinal Flower

9. Asclepias or Milkweed species are nearly mandatory for any pollinator garden plant list, in my opinion. There are so many to choose from, regardless of where in the US you live. Although their flowers are probably going to wind down near the end of August, I think they still merit a mention here as they will certainly attract Monarch butterflies, a fireworks-like species if there ever was one! You may still have breeding Monarchs in your area in August and September, as I often do, so if you hope to attract them for the food you might as well get them to stay for their larval host plant. Then when their offspring are ready to migrate, or when the migrating monarchs from further north come through your area, they will certainly be glad of the late-season buffet you are providing with the above list of plants.

This Monarch caterpillar is so plump, I think it must surely be close to pupation! This late in the season, it might be destined to be a migrating butterfly and will soon be on its way to Mexico.

Did I leave out any of your favorite fall flowers? Let me know in the comments.

Catalogs I consulted for this entry:

• Wildseed Farms Sells most if not all of the plants listed here. Their FAQ also has lots of good information about planting and maintaining wildflower gardens.
• Prairie Nursery's American Natives This is a wholesale site, but it does have a lot of good plants and information. You could probably use this as a reference and then look for individual or local retailers who carry their plants and seeds. 

Locations I visited for this entry's photographs:

• Brookside Gardens, in Wheaton, MD.
• Meadowside Nature Center, in Rockville, MD.