My Florida Tropical Garden

Sorry for the lack of updates! I've been busy maintaining the garden with the lack of rain, controlling a wild rat problem, and my grandparents came to visit Florida for a couple weeks. I've also been doing some bass and catfishing, see my fishing blog at http://average-fisherman.blogspot.com

Milkweed Bugs, I wrote about these bugs a couple months ago. The tropical milkweed planted next to the bird bath was infested with these suckers for awhile. The plant was showing alot of damage, so much the butterflies wouldn't even touch it. Using insecticidal soap did little to nothing, there were just too many milkweed bugs ranging from baby nymphs to adults. Fortunately milkweed is a resilient plant and grows back very fast. So I just chopped off all the stems and bagged them in a ziploc bag. The milkweed bugs tend to cluster around the very tops of the stems where new growth would occur. Once all the stems were cut and bagged, there were no more milkweed bugs on the plant. Within weeks, the milkweed bounced back and now it looks great.

Gulf Fritillary butterflies are very popular here and almost always sighted when I walk outside in the garden. They love the Candy Cane Zinnias, Yellow Lantana, Marigolds, and of course the Passiflora (gulf frit host plant). I only have one potted passiflora, and it's loaded with caterpillars and eggs. In fact, as I'm looking outside now I can see two Gulf Frit butterflies flirting with each other in the air. The Monarchs are still hanging around, about 1 or 2 a day seems to be the average. There was a Giant Swallowtail visiting a Yellow Lantana for awhile but I haven't seen any swallowtails in the last couple of weeks. I even planted some dill and parsley to attract Black Swallowtail caterpillars but no luck so far.

Yesterday while doing some outdoor chores, we found a Florida Mockingbird nest inside a Robellini palm tree in our front yard. There are 4 baby mockingbirds inside the nest, still very young with their eyes shut.

Here's some info about the Mockingbird nesting habits. The nest is constructed by both the male and female, though the male does most of the work while the female perches close-by watching out for predators. Three to five eggs are laid by the female and then she incubates the eggs for about 11 to 13 days. Once the eggs are hatched, both parents are responsible for feeding the baby chicks for about 12 days. So the entire timeframe from incubation to fledging is 23 to 25 days.

The parents will aggressively protect their nest and surrounding area against other birds and animals. When a predator is persistent, mockingbirds from neighboring territories, summoned by a distinct call, may join the attack. Other birds may gather to watch as the mockingbirds harass the intruder. In addition, it is not unheard of for mockingbirds to target humans. They are absolutely unafraid and will attack much larger birds too, even hawks. I've actually witnessed this a few days ago as two mockingbirds chased away a hawk from a tree.

I found these red/orange and black colored insects gathered on some milkweed plants. In fact, they have established a large population on one plant to the point where some leaves are growing deformed and some leaves have been sucked dry of plant tissue. These insects are called the Milkweed Bug, and are more of a nuisance than a threat to the milkweed plant. They are commonly found in small groups on stems, leaves, and seed pods sucking the juices from plant tissue. Controlling these bugs can be tricky because you don't want to spray the Monarch larvae with harmful chemicals. So you can either live with the damage, squish the bugs, or spray with a low dose of insecticidal soap.

Pictured below is the Milkweed Bug life cycle.

A pair of cardinals have recently made a nest at my sisters new house. The nest is easily visible outside a dining room window where a small tree grows. Here's a few pictures of the female cardinal nesting in her new home..

In about two more weeks, spring officially begins. And for a majority of February this year, we've had a nice warm trend of weather. I've pruned all the Hibiscus down and wacked the Crape Myrtles back. New growth can be seen on all plants already, so there's little to no casualties from the winter freezes this year.

On February 18th, I started some annual flower seeds in the Burpee Ultimate Growing tray. I sowed 12 cells of Sweet Alyssum "Snow Crystals", 12 cells of Zinnia "Candy Cane Mix", 10 cells of Milkweed, 12 cells of Petunia and 18 cells of Impatiens.
So two weeks later, most have sprouted by now. The Petunia seed must be old based on poor germination rates. The Impatiens has just started to germinate. And the Zinnia and Milkweed have been transplanted into larger 3.5" pots for maturing.

I have 11 pots of Zinnia "Candy Cane Mix" ; 10 pots of Milkweed ; and 12 cells of Alyssum to be transplanted into pots next.

It has been a slow month in the garden, not much going on. With some hard freezes in December and January, I managed to safely protect my container plants such as Hibiscus, Ornamental Peppers, and Plumeria. It looks like they will be fine. In fact, alot of them still have green leaves. As for outdoor plants in the ground, we'll see how well they recover when I prune them down in March. Sometime in February, I'll be starting some annual flowers from seed so I'll have more content to blog about, but until then, I'm just waiting for the warmer weather.

Here's another winter migration bird, the Ruby-crowned Kinglet, one of the smallest songbirds in North America. Found this one while I was outside refilling the bird feeders. This one is a female because it lacks the ruby crown. Their breeding habitat is in the forests across Canada, Alaska, and western United States. They then migrate to the southern United States and Mexico. While observing this bird I was hearing this unusual wing flicking sound during flight, and apparently this is common with Kinglets. It was attracted to our American Beautyberry plants which now have gorgeous bright purple berry clusters all over them.

The winter migration is on and we have some company. No it's not my family visiting for the holidays, I'm talking about a small "tournament" of Chipping Sparrows making a buffet out of our fresh bird seed. There's probably about 6 or 7 sparrows in this group I've been seeing almost everyday. Along with the chipping sparrows, we still have the titmice and cardinals.

Florida is experiencing an unusual hard freeze this early in December, which could mean a very cold and damaging winter in the near future. Last night the temps dropped down to 27-29 degrees for a couple hours here. Factor in the wind chill, and they say it feels like 20 degrees outside. BRRRRR! Several plants are still covered with blankets and my container plants are temporarily sitting in the garage. We're suppose to have another hard freeze tonight! That will make 3 freezing nights so far this season and it's only December 14th. I'm hoping we won't have too many garden casualties due to freeze kill. Though I'm sure the garden shops will be very busy in the spring when floridians will have to replace their landscape.

It's been awhile since I've added a photo so here's one I took today of the chipping sparrows. Enjoy! :)

Happy Halloween to everyone! =)

Not much going on in the garden for me so I haven't been posting much. The weather has been extremely dry though, been several weeks since our last good rain. On the positive side, it's been a nice 60 degrees in the evenings so being outdoors at night has been pleasant.

I am starting to notice ALOT of seed pods on flowering plants. I'm collecting seeds from my zinnia's, Asclepias curassavica (tropical milkweed), and Datura metel (double purple devil's trumpet). Interested to check the seed viability next spring when I get ready to plant these varieties again.

This will probably my final post this year on Monarchs as well. I've successfully released 60 Monarch butterflies this year, 35 females and 25 males. I'm most likely done with Monarch raising for the year since it's getting cooler outside, so I'll just start again next spring.

Today marks a milestone in my personal monarch butterfly release. I set free a female and male monarch this afternoon and watched them fly gracefully into some tree cover. The male monarch emerged today and was the 30th successful monarch I've raised this year from caterpillar to butterfly. It's been alot of work, but I'm happy with this accomplishment so far. Proud that I can help the Monarch species, especially if they continue to visit our butterfly garden this year.

The local Monarchs are still laying eggs on the milkweed. The weather is still hot and humid, with a few spotty showers in the late afternoons. There's no shortage of milkweed in our yard either, with about 10 healthy plants providing enough food for the amount of caterpillars I'm rearing.

On another non-gardening note, last night I caught a 3 lb. channel catfish off the St. Johns river bank. It's my personal best so far. =)