If you haven’t already, now’s the time to get those seeds in the ground which need cold-stratification.  Here’s a list of the seeds I have in the ground. Notice that the echinacea in the picture above is from seeds I planted a year ago in the ground.

• False Nettle
• Dianthus
• Echinacea
• Blazing Star
• Rue
• Coreopsis
• Hop Tree
• Verbena hastata
• Silene
• Maltese Cross
• Aster patens
• Joe Pye Weed
• Milkweed – perennial

Twenty kids had a great time tagging Monarchs and eating ice cream.

(pictures)

If you’re keeping Monarchs and need a nectar source they seem to like honeydew melon. What also works are watermelon, orange slices and Gatorade.

One of the few butterflies I can count on every year are skippers. I’ve had a dearth of American Snouts, Spicebush and even Black Swallowtails, but the skippers always come through toward the end of the butterfly season in September.

Just yesterday I went out and counted 162 skippers and I’m hoping for more. What’s interesting is that in a email conversation with a friend, they mentioned that in a whole day of counting at Busch Conservation Nature Area, they only counted five skippers.  The difference is probably the Bermuda grass in my yard plus all the nectar plants I have right now.

Almost all butterflies love verbenas. This is a new variety I bought at my local Bowood Farms store. Verbena bonareinsis – Little One. It’s a dwarf variety which looks like it has lots of promise. I’ve read that it appears to be sterile, so you won’t be finding lots of seedlings from it. I’ll probably keep mine in the pot this year and try to overwinter it in the garage.

Identifying butterflies, especially skippers can be a challenge and I guarantee you’ll need some help. This little guy  is a Sachem skipper – male.  I only found that out with help from Jeff Pippen who not only identified it, but also gave me a link to all of his great pictures. (link) Please visit his site and I guarantee it will hep you in identifying butterflies in general and skippers in particular.

P.S. – See the black square patch at the end of the wing – that’s the identifying mark.

Another great site I just found is Butterflies of America. While the website is fairly plain, the pictures it contains are not. I’m impressed. It should really help a novice in identifying butterflies.

If you’d like to learn how to attract and keep butterflies in your garden come to my next Butterfly Gardening class. It’s at Bowood Farms, Saturday – Aug. 22nd, 2pm.

Here are directions.

It’s FREE!

If you want to either start a new garden or enhance the one you have, you’ll usually end up buying bags of dirt, compost and mulch at your local big box store. I’ve got another option – at least for my St. Louis friends.

St. Louis Compost has a gigantic composting facility which has five types of compost , five types of soil, and 11 types of mulch. From my calculations, the prices are 50% of what you’d pay at the big box store, but you do need a truck or trailer to actually pick up the materials.

They can deliver for approximately $50.

My favorite mulch is the Black Forest. It is very fine and melts into the soil.

I didn’t realize so many Monarch butterflies are infected with the parasite Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE), until I read this article about this phenomenon. There doesn’t seem much one can do about this problem. In the past some monarch breeding groups have stopped selling monarchs because of problems with sending out infected butterflies. You really need a good microscope to even see the spores. I noticed that Monarch Watch is again selling monarch larvae and I believe they are testing these larvae before they are sent out. If you’d like to learn more about this parasite checkout the MonarchParasites.org website.

Nut grass in the garden or yard is a pain. You pull it out and it comes back. Most ordinary weed killers don’t work. So what do you do?

I’ve found a product called “Sedge Hammer” which really does work. It’s not cheap, but it’s better than spending hours in the garden trying to dig it out.