13 Sep
Our Wings, Worms, and Wonder Book Review is on the front page of EcoEtsy today!
Be sure to check it out and comment on this great Florida gardening tool for children!
Wings, Worms, and Wonder: A guide for creatively integrating gardening and outdoor learning into children’s lives
Thank you, Bee
11 Sep
We were blessed this summer to witness the Monarch Butterfly life cycle. Our East Central Florida backyard filled with milkweed lured in dozens of Monarchs. They drank nectar and laid eggs. The eggs hatched and caterpillars devoured the milkweed…several times!
Monarch Egg, under side of leaf
First they are very small and like to eat the milkweed blooms.
Then they start eating…
and eating…until all the milkweed leaves were gone.
After getting about two inches in length they crawl away and build a chrysalis.
Monarchs never build them on their host plants, and the chrysalis changes colors as the butterfly matures inside.
We watched wasp eat a lot of our monarch caterpillars.
We moved many caterpillars away from the vegetable garden to the other side of the house. For whatever reason the wasps never bothered the caterpillars eating milkweed on the northside of our home. On the south of the house, near the established garden, the wasp ruled.
We watched monarchs die from starvation as well. My six milkweed plants couldn’t sustain the demand.
When they do make it…it is such a beautiful sight to see a butterfly emerge in the early morning hours with wet wings! They would hang around and drink some nectar before flying away.
Our summer butterfly experiences taught us that the Monarchs butterflies are in trouble. They don’t have enough food! Milkweed is the ONLY food the larvae will eat. Humans have destroyed the milkweeds populations for their mass production agriculture, roadways, etc. For years milkweed has been sprayed as if it was a weed.
If you live in the Monarchs migration path, you should plant some milkweed!
Please check out MonarchWatch.Org!
Happy (Wildlife) Gardening!
~Bee
22 Jul
Hello! July is always our slowest vegetable gardening month. If the humidity and heat won’t keep you out of the garden, the mosquitos and thunderstorms will. Other than my herbs, fennel, sweet potatoes, and a few peppers, we don’t have much in the garden foodwise.
However, we have flowers! It seems like everything is in bloom right now.
Even our Elephant Ear Taro is blooming…
At my oldest daughter’s request, we have been gardening for insects this summer. This month we turned our largest garden box into a flower garden. The little gardeners have been watching butterflies lay eggs, wasps eat caterpillars and lady beetles eat aphids. Here’s what one wasp left of a Monarch caterpillar…
Our little robin nest is no more. After Mama robin feverishly built her nest, sat on her eggs, and starting feeding her three little babies… they disappeared. It happened one night. The nest was undisturbed. The babies were barely old enough to hold their heads up, so we know they didn’t fly away. My best guess would be a snake. She had built the nest in an old tire I was using as a hanging garden, and it was only a few feet off the ground. We have seen several large snakes in the area this month. We have since moved the hanging tire garden to higher ground, and are hoping she tries again next year. On the left below is Mama sitting on her eggs. On the right below is the babies.
The most exciting thing in garden this month is the Monarch butterflies & caterpillars. The Monarch caterpillars, who only eat milkweed are starving! With milkweed populations depleted across the states, Monarch butterflies swarm milkweed plants to lay their eggs. We started milkweed seeds back in the spring and have six plants. They have been eaten to the ground twice. There isn’t enough food for all the eggs that are laid on our plants. The positive note, the little gardeners have had a fabulous nature lesson the Monarchs and their life cycle this summer. We have seen eggs hatch before our eyes, caterpillars grow to two inches in size, and then disappear to make their chrysalis. We have found some of the chrysalis and are now patiently waiting to see Monarch butterflies emerge. I will write a detailed post on our Monarch adventures soon!
We were also published on EcoEtsy this month discussing Gardening for Insects. Check it out for helpful info on growing gardens for bees and butterflies!
At the beginning of the summer we added solar lights in the front yard. I can’t believe we waited so long. We always come home to a light on! I want more for the backyard now.
Keep cool and enjoy the rest of your July!
Bee
22 Jun
These are my current Top 10 Florida Gardening Websites. Sites that I have found useful and informative, no other promotion or relationship is involved in these suggestions. Most are Florida specific but their information can be applied to much of the southern United States, and much of it applies to all of our backyard gardens.
1. University of Florida IFAS Extension: EDIS is my FAVORITE site!!! EDIS is the Electronic Data Information Source of UF/IFAS Extension, and contains a large collection of information on topics relevant to all Florida living!
2. Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants. Great way to research.
3. Florida Association of Native Nurseries. Love the design of this site.
4. Florida Trees. Check this site out before purchasing any trees.
5. Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council. The council supports the management of invasive exotic plants by providing an online forum for scientific, educational and technical information.
6. PickYourOwn.org I’m not crazy about this website’s layout and ads, but is one of the best places to collectively research u-pick farms and farmers markets in your area.
7. Waterwise Landscaping by St John’s Water Management District. This site is full of data on how to use water carefully, the quality of our surface water, our aquifer and much more.
8. Florida Wildflower Foundation. You may think of the license plate, but this a great resource. We love the “What’s in Bloom” section of the site, where you can discover what is currently blooming around the state.
9. Wildlife Foundation of Florida. This is a great website for young gardeners.
10. Pinterest – really? yes. It has great collections of gardening ideas by some experienced gardeners. Check out some of these boards for ideas on sustainable garden design, container gardening ideas, and more outdoor living spaces:
Authentic Haven Natural Brew is a soil guru that has great rustic taste.
Follow BGgardeing.com’s boards. Bren does a fabulous job with #gardenchat and has collected an array of ideas.
Follow anyone of Karen Sloan’s gardening boards for some beautiful ideas!
Organically Grown by Upcyclers is a fun collection of ways to upcycle things into your garden.
And here’s our collection on Pinterest: Backyard FL Gardening.
Happy Gardening!
Thanks, Bee
14 Jun
We are so proud of our little mama robin! She has been busy all month making her nest in our upcycled tire garden, and now she is sitting on her eggs. I sure hope my girls get to see the babies. Can you see her hiding in there? 
Florida’s afternoon thunderstorms have become regular again, so we have been perfecting our terrarium making skills. After a few failures and a lot of experimenting I feel comfortable enough to post a how-to. Look for it coming soon!
We were also published on the front page of EcoEtsy today, under their {Food & Gardening} section! Check out our article for some great ideas to get your kids outside and loving nature this summer!
Happy Summer!
15 May
We released five beautiful Painted Lady butterflies last weekend. My little gardeners (six and two years) were SO excited! Two of the five butterflies stayed around our Lantana after they were released. The others flew right off, but the two that stayed for about 15 minutes sipping on the nectar made this year’s experience really neat.
14 Apr
For my daughter’s sixth birthday we had a little party, and one of the presents was Pink Spotted Ladybug larvae (coleomegilla maculata)! Our oldest LOVES raising and releasing insects! After a week or two of observing their life cycle, we released our ladybugs on Easter Sunday.
Ten little ladybugs arrived in their larva state. They turned yellow in their pupa stage, and then went still as they became adults. One didn’t make it and one was released a few days after the others. My oldest enjoyed giving them water and soaked raisins as they molted and became adults.
They really aren’t ladybugs, they are called ladybird beetles.
They will eat aphids, mites, and small caterpillars.
They can be found on the map from South Canada to South America.
They can be white, yellow, pink, orange, red and black.
And some species can have no spots!
It was better to release our ladybugs in the morning time, so after observing and feeding them for a week, we released them in the garden. My oldest decided to share the experience with her two year old sister, and together they released the ladybugs in my two year’s old garden box.
The girls ran back and forth to the garden all day and would find one or two ladybugs still crawling all around. Our Ladybug Land is all washed and cleaned and ready to raise some more.
Happy Gardening!
Bee
1 Apr
All my Amaryllis lilies are blooming in the garden right now. Every year, during the week of my daughter’s birthday they show us their beautiful red color.
Other blooms in the garden:
I am happy to report, our salvaged pineapple is doing great! What I mean by salvaged is, the unwanted pineapple tops from the dissolving Daytona Beach community garden, that have been recovering in my backyard.
Lots of sweet pea and radish sprouts are popping up all through the garden!
New tomato sprouts as well:
Our avocado tree is recovering nicely from a fungus.
We saw this idea on Pinterest, and decided to start our own teepee from the summer. Our’s will be made out of sweet potatoes vines instead of green beans.
Caterpillars and grasshoppers have been easy to find in our backyard. Here one of them seems to have eaten my entire spearmint plant…
Funny, it didn’t eat the pineapple mint plant right next to it though!
We have lots of gardening plans in April. Seems we may have spent more of March on the boat than in the garden. The weather has been so nice (and no bugs)!
10 Mar
My health hasn’t been the best and it was wonderful to put the doctors and worry aside for an afternoon and get out on the water. There is something so peaceful about having my family together in nature. This spot on Strickland Creek, in the Tomoka River basin, is one of our favorite spots.
It was a beautiful day!
Even the dog came along.
I had to chuckled at the above image. Seems I am a referee a lot lately with two girls ages 2 and 5 in the house. They were even fighting over a fish.
We are always on the look out for manatees!
Today we found one old manatee hanging out in the creek!
Rejoice with your family in the beautiful land of life! ~Albert Einstein
17 Feb
We took a break from our backyard gardening, and spent a weekend on the Gulf of Mexico. My father retired some time ago, and decided to take up commercial fishing to pass the time. We were able to join my dad and mom one Sunday on the water. It was a first for myself and the kids. And boy, were the little gardeners excited when he started pulling up crab traps.
blue crab
On this day they were trying to catch blue crabs, but my parents mostly harvest stone crab claws. The children saw, and handled, so many different species of crabs! It was amazing. We were a couple of miles offshore, but the Gulf of Mexico was smooth as a lake that afternoon!
Crab Species Discovered: Blue, Stone, Spider, and Hermit
Other Species Discovered: lightning whelk (sea snail), remora suckerfish, osprey, dolphins
Osprey on old piling
Below, my five year old is handed a stone crab. A stone claw crab’s pinch is so hard it will sever a finger. This crab’s claws had already been harvested by other fishermen, but the crab still had crawled into the trap to eat. Stone crabs will regenerate their claws within a year. Most crabs have one or two claws, but since this one had none, he was safe for handling. She released him back into the water.
Both girls also released other kind of “safe” creatures, but blue crabs and adult stone claw crabs were off-limits.
My favorite part was when they released two tiny, and I mean TINY, crabs! They weren’t any bigger than a dime. I don’t know how the kids even spotted them in the traps. We think one is a baby stone crab.
I am blessed to have spent a day on the water with my family. We couldn’t have asked for nicer weather.
Horseshoe Beach, FL
