Gardening Flowers & Foliage

Try neem oil.

 

Yellow swallowtail enjoys the Rose of Sharon.

 

This black butterfly prefers the Stargazer lily

 

If you live closer to civilization than you did before, then a local farm and garden (Agway, Blue Seal, Fleet & Farm etc) will have insecticidal soap. You can Google "insecticidal soap for houseplant" for popular ones, or even home made recipes.

 

The wild joe pye weed is out in full force right now. I’ll be collecting seeds in a few weeks for my own native wildflower garden.

 

I should go out to my shade garden to see if my Joe Pye is blooming.

 

I'm woefully ignorant when it comes to flowering plants and I have no idea what these are, but I've never seen more bees and pollinators before (figures this is the year I don't have a garden). I've also enjoyed watching many hummingbirds amongst the blooms.

 

Thanks! Now that I know what it is, I looked it up and am glad to know it's a native wildflower (and wouldn't you know, it specifically states the blooms attract bees and hummingbirds). Also learned that crushed stems/leaves are used to treat skin irritation from things like poison ivy.

 

In my yard I find the two growing together everywhere (jewelweed and poison ivy) The intelligence behind nature providing both the problem and the solution to it amazes me. The only downside about jewelweed that I noticed is that it tends to take over entire areas. In the couple patches that I left alone, that’s pretty much all that is growing there; a monoculture. But like you said, it’s both native and valuable. Wherever there’s an area thick with it, that’s one spot where invasive stuff will have a hard time getting established.

 

I haven't found any poison ivy (thankfully) but the jewelweed has definitely taken over that location (and somehow migrated into some of my stock tank raised beds that I'm not using this year). As long as they don't spread too much farther, I'm going to let them go as they are close to my fruit trees, and they are sure bringing in some pollinators.

 

Jewel weed. I have it in my yard/gardens. It can spread quite readily but is very shallow rooted so easy to pull out if it goes where you don't want it. Also, can be an indicator of moist areas or when gardens dry out (when it droops badly, you know it is dry). Since it is native, I allow it to be a natural weed suppressor in the shady areas of my shrub garden.

Pollinators and hummingbirds enjoy it this time of year and the orange blooms are quite cheerful.

Its said to help with poison ivy. IDK, haven't used it but did allow a local resident to come get some to treat their case of PI.

 

I just did a considerable expansion on my wildflower bed in preparation for next year. I still have to bring in more soil, but today was a good start. I’m hoping to have a couple different native grasses here and a lot more flowers by this time next year. For now it’s just some small first year coneflowers that haven’t bloomed yet, first year butterfly weed, black eyed Susan, and young asters. The small twisted shrub along my rock wall is a two year old elderberry bush.

 

That will be nice

 

I dug up a bucket-o-bulbs this morning


They were in the danger zone for when excavators started digging as part of the road construction.

There's two other groupings, but should be back out of harms way.

They are daffodil bulbs. Multiple types to stretch blooming days out from the same area.