Butterfly Gardening Seminar - May 11, 2019

Thank you guys for coming out.

I mean this is this is important to our company,

important to the community.

It's a passion that we all have here at Busy Bee.

You know

all of us enjoy working with the plants and mother nature and without you guys this really doesn't work.

So I'm happy to do classes especially when I get a turnout like this.

So this is great and

I thank you for sharing your time with us today.

I'm going to try and move through this seminar as quickly as possible because it is Mother's Day weekend.

Some of you guys have events, it's hot out and it's my day off.

So obviously we're going to do butterfly gardening but before we get started just kind of introduce myself and then some of the specials we got going on.

My name's Danny.

I've been with Busy Bee for 16 years.

I enjoy working for them.

They're great owners, great people.

We have an awesome staff.

Love every one of them and a wonderful clientele.

So I'm here to stay.

So if you guys ever have questions, have any issues in the garden, come in and see us.

We'll get you the answers if we don't have them right off the top of our heads and we want to make you successful.

So we're going to start getting into butterflies.

I just put in a butterfly garden in my own yard last year.

We played with them here in the yard

out back.

Usually I get to give you a tour through the butterfly garden but

we're not going to do it today because it's such a big crowd and it's really not open to the public.

It was more of the owners putting it back there for their own enjoyment and through the years the employees and some customers have also been able to sneak back there and take a little quick peek.

So if you're ever interested, you know sometimes I can steal your caterpillars out back of there, especially if you like the Dutchman's Pipevine Swallowtail.

We usually get loads of those.

So basically I'm going to run through the butterflies, a little bit of information about them, and then we're going to cycle through a bunch of plants that they love so you can build your garden.

So starting out your garden, we have to decide what's going to be the location of our garden.

Can everybody hear me okay? You guys? All right, perfect.

I hate speaking on a microphone.

The first thing we need to do is pick a location.

I like a location that's going to have plenty of sunlight, at least four hours, because most of these flowers you see here today are going to require four hours or more.

We also may want a little bit of shade and I'll tell you why in a little bit.

So we're going to find our spot in the garden.

It doesn't have to be big.

It can be small.

Mine's not very big.

I've even had people very successful with just container gardening.

I like to put stuff in the ground because it's a lot easier for me to maintain than to remember to water those pots every day, especially come this summer heat.

With that said, let's say we're going to plant this guy here. This is a Russian sage.

The whole idea is to get this planted and get it planted properly so you have the success in growing these plants.

If you do not plant them properly, you are going to fail.

You're going to dig your hole twice as wide.

So if this is a 10-inch pot, we're going to go twice as wide.

do you always have to go twice as wide? You got a 24-inch pot? We're not going to dig a four-foot hole.

As long as we can get our hands in there, get some fresh dirt in there, pack the soil down, get some water, that's usually enough room.

We don't want to plant it any deeper, so it has to be even with the existing soil when we plant it.

If you plant it too deep, you're going to kill them.

If you plant it too shallow and the root ball's sticking above the ground, that's okay.

Better high than too deep.

So we're going to dig our hole twice as wide, and we're going to amend our soil, whether we use mushroom compost, cow compost, organic peat.

That's usually our recommendation, and when you leave here today, you can ask for planting instructions up at the counter. They'll get them to you.

It'll tell you the whole process.

So we're going to make a 50-50 mixture with the existing soil.

That's going to help retain moisture and nutrient while the roots are getting established, and once they get established, then they don't have to rely on us.

So we've got our 50-50 mixture.

We're adding water into the hole.

We're packing the dirt down, making sure we have no air pockets.

We get it all covered up.

Now we're going to start watering on a normal basis.

They're used to getting water every day, so you're going to give them water every day the first week, and that's not an irrigation system.

Irrigation's set for two inches.

You need to get all the way to the bottom.

That would be like somebody spraying a mist bottle in front of your face.

Try and drink that.

It's not going to be enough, and that doesn't mean go out there and water them at three o'clock in the morning after they're already upset, wilting, and not happy, because guess what? Now they've got to lose weight.

That means leaves because they don't have enough moisture to support them.

So get out there first thing in the morning, soak them down.

They should last you all day.

In the afternoon, maybe you want to check on it.

If they're wilting, give them a little splash, and that's it.

Not a lot because they don't drink at night.

Me and you are not going to sleep in the bathtub all night, and if you do, you're probably not going to be happy the next morning, so don't do it to your plants.

Get them watered in in the morning.

The second week, you're going to go every other day.

Third week, every third day, every third day.

Fourth week, every fourth day.

After that, we should be somewhat established.

Keep an eye on them.

Hopefully, their roots are down into their own water supply, and they're not demanding you every day to go out there and say hi.

Okay, so hopefully, if anybody has any questions, get them started.

You're going to use either mushroom compost, cow compost, peat.

There's a lot of different soil amendments, but you want to add something to this sandy soil.

If you have hardpan soil, yes, everybody's soil is different.

Some of us have hardpan, which I have.

Digging that hole twice as wide is going to help with establishing the plant, but you may find that your neighbor's garden took off faster than yours.

I'd rather have sand than shelling morrow because, like Dean knows, you got to take a pickaxe, you got to water it down, scrape it, get down in there, and the roots really have a hard time getting moving.

So, expect a little bit longer for them to get established, you know, things like that.

Or, you better dig a big hole and then just replace all the soil or move, one of the two.

So, you know, if you ever need help with adjusting your soils and stuff like that, let me know.

Now, as far as plants go in a pot, you need potting soil.

Not topsoil, not compost, potting soil.

Something with good aeration, drainage, and just remember, if you are growing things in a pot, that your environment's going to change over time.

Don't let anybody ever tell you that plant needs it once a week, that plant needs it twice a week.

There is no way anybody can tell you how much water your plant's going to need.

They don't know how much wind you have.

They don't know how much sun you have.

They don't know how root bound that plant has gotten, and as it becomes root bound, you're going to be watering more and more and more.

These things do have a shelf life, so to speak.

All right, so I think we got you established.

Now, let's talk about maintaining the plants.

It's going to be pretty easy.

They like to eat just like me and you.

Usually, I recommend using Holly Tone, and this is going to be every 90 days or every three months after you're established.

So, no fertilizer for the first month, and then after that, it's every three months.

This is an acidic fertilizer.

This is going to help your flowering plants flower.

Everything that flowers likes more of an acidic soil.

You're on limestone here.

It's very alkalinic, so this is going to help with the sulfur in here, lower your pH while they're intaking the nutrients, which is important.

This is organic.

It's 100% readily available to the plant versus synthetic fertilizer, 20 to 30%.

Big bang for your buck.

Now, we're going to go to threats in your butterfly garden.

One rat.

Because you may want to plant some of these herbs or some of these nice leafy flowering plants, and they're going to want to eat them.

If they don't, you're lucky. I've got one, he just likes to eat my hibiscus and he touches nothing else.

Well, the hibiscus isn't that important to me, he can keep eating.

Now if he starts eating the other plants, he's stewed.

Next one, if you have a lot of wasps around in your area, and I'm not talking bees, bees are fine, it's the wasps.

Okay, get rid of them. Go in there at night when they're all at their nest and spray the nest down, get rid of them.

Or scrape them off, relocate them if you're brave enough, and get rid of them.

Because the mud wasp on the side of your house is going to pick up your caterpillars when they're young and take off.

I've seen it. The wasp will eat your caterpillars.

If it's too big to run off with, he's going to sit there on the bush and eat it right there.

I've got a video on my phone of one doing it.

Thankfully it was just an army worm like a customer had a picture of today.

And he chowed that whole thing down. It's amazing.

So get rid of the wasp around there. There are parasitic wasps, we'll go over that a little bit later.

This is rabbit scram. It's a rabbit repellent, all organic.

So if you need to get them away from the garden, train them for a little while, that's what you're going to use to deter them.

Guaranteed too. If it doesn't work, they'll give you your money back. Not your plant though.

Ladybugs! I've got aphids on my milkweed, I need to get rid of them.

What's a natural way that won't hurt my caterpillars? Ladybugs. Guess what ladybugs do? They eat your eggs. So not a good idea to release them.

Get out there with your cotton ball, your paintbrush, vacuum somebody's shed.

If you've got one of those dental ones that you can go out there, those work great.

Anybody a dentist here, I need one.

Hopefully if your plants are healthy, you know a lot of times your plants can fight off the aphids.

They can actually drown them by secreting sap when they're sucking.

Now when you've got 10,000 aphids attacking a plant all at once, it can't keep up.

So spray them off with a hose lightly. Look at your plants before you do that.

Make sure you're not spraying off the eggs. Protect your plants.

Because if there's aphids there, the ladybugs are going to come too.

So try and keep the aphids off your plants as best as possible.

That's why we have these wonderful little cages.

You get a bug on your plant, stick it in here, secure it.

Nobody can get to it. Start being successful.

But there's also problems with these too, which we'll get into.

So let's identify all our butterflies and their host plant.

Now some of you might ask, what's a host plant?

Well, that's the plant that they're going to lay their eggs on.

That's the plant the caterpillar's going to feed on.

That's the plant where it's going to do all its cycles.

And then it's going to run off, hang up somewhere, and turn into a chrysalis.

So this host plant is something that you have to understand is their food source, and you have to feed them.

You've just now become a parent.

Congratulations.

You'll have five babies on this thing, and they will devour this.

They will get quite large, and they will not stop eating until they're done.

That one was dill, yep.

So first one on the list, one of the most popular ones.

We have about 700 different types of butterflies here in the state.

United States, I should say.

This area has only got a handful.

Worldwide, there's over 20,000, and there's quite some interesting ones all around the world.

It's really fascinating.

I've gone to different places where they have these little pinups of some amazing butterflies.

I wish they were here, but hopefully when I get retired,

I can go travel and get to see some of this stuff.

So monarch, first one on the board.

One of the longest living butterflies.

It's a migratory butterfly, and one of the ones that is in trouble.

Mexico has very little laws and regulations on their spring, and that is an area where they migrate to.

So they are killing the numbers of the monarch, also the populations.

So a lot of people have been trying to do their best to help maintain this population, and it is actually working.

There's a lot of plants out there that are producing milkweed to use for a cotton substance and a lot of other things, so kind of cool.

There's a lot of different varieties of milkweed.

Unfortunately, I don't have any caterpillars right now to show you.

We've just been moving through milkweed so fast that I don't think they have a chance to stick around.

That and I've got a lot of enemies around here.

This is one of the milkweed.

I've got tons of them here today.

This plant is not going to be your most attractive plant, so don't base it off of that.

But we'll go through all these plants.

I just want to cover the butterflies, and then we'll run through these plants.

There's purple milkweed, giant white milkweed.

There's all different kinds today.

We just have the one variety.

So you'll see the first picture up here on the monarch.

There's two different ones.

One's male and one's female.

The way you can identify that is if you look on the back quarter of the wings, the lower quarter there, you'll see on the right side there's two black dots.

That's your male.

It's got the male glands there.

So that one's milkweed.

We'll talk about their favorites and stuff like that.

Then you're going to go down to the next one, viceroy.

This one will fool you sometimes.

I've even seen people put pictures in the newspaper and call it a monarch.

It's not a monarch.

It's a lookalike.

So the viceroy, you will see how to identify the difference.

Look up at the monarch.

You'll see a couple different rings on the band of black, two sets of white spots.

Okay? That's how you kind of identify them. Sometimes they're a little more orangey at times.

Then you've got the one that feeds on willows and cottonwoods.

Willows are going to be the ones they're really feeding on in there.

Do I have any for sale?

No, they're kind of hard to find.

So just enjoy them when you get to see them once in a while.

They're not a really heavy populated one in this area.

Then you've got the buckeye.

This one's kind of cool.

I like it.

It's one of my favorites.

You get to see these quite a bit.

You will see on there they've got a whole bunch of different host plants that they'll lay on.

I've never seen them on our firecracker fern here, but I'm waiting for that day.

They must not prefer it over all the other varieties.

The next one you're going to go down to is the sulfurs.

This is a big family.

You can get clouded sulfurs, white sulfurs, yellow sulfurs.

There's a lot of different types.

They mainly feed on the cassias, which today I've got Bahama cassia, and I've also got another Senna cassia.

These produce a yellow flower.

It's kind of interesting because as this caterpillar feeds on the different parts of the plants, you will find that as it eats the green leaves, the caterpillar's green.

As it eats the yellow flowers, it turns yellow.

So they hide very well.

Typically, you don't see them unless you really pay attention.

They like the larger leaf varieties of the cassia.

Unfortunately, I don't have any large leaf varieties.

It's been hard finding cassias over the last few years.

But there's popcorn cassia where the flower even smells like popcorn.

I've got seeds for it.

Hopefully, when I get time this summer, I'll get them in production.

We're going to flip to the next page.

Giant swallowtail.

This one goes on wild lime, Hercules club, or citrus.

You'll find them a lot of times on the citrus plants.

There's another name for it. It's called the orange dog.

It's a very unique caterpillar.

It looks like bird droppings.

Or if you know what lichen is, it looks like lichen on a bark.

They blend in very well, and they have a very nice defense mechanism.

If you're going out there to try it, make sure your stomach is empty.

Or you will not be happy.

When you tickle its back, it starts to pull out its head out of all this excessive skin that you thought was a head.

It wasn't.

It was just excessive skin.

It comes out, emerges, and puts two antennas up and it is the most putrid smell of anything.

It's terrible.

And if some of you customers experienced it years ago, I had one and we put it in a cage and everybody went by and we said, you've got to smell this thing.

Put a nice pretty flower in there.

That was the wrong flower to put in there too.

So kind of a unique butterfly.

Very pretty.

It's a large one.

And again, you'll find it on your citrus members.

If you like, really like them, I can get you the Spanish wild lime.

It has got thorns that hook backwards.

They are nasty.

But if you want to put it by your bedroom window, nobody's coming through that window without you knowing.

The next one, we got the tiger swallowtail.

You don't see these quite as often, but when you do, you won't miss them.

They're bright in color.

They're large and pretty.

You'll see sweet bay magnolia, which don't do as well here as they do in Orlando, further north.

Tulip tree, birch tree, cottonwood, and willows again. I wouldn't recommend planting a sweet bay magnolia just because they do survive here.

They're just not great trees for this area.

They typically struggle.

The other ones, birch and all that, would be possible.

Black swallowtail is your next one.

This is the one that gets in your herb garden every time.

And it either aggravates you, or you eat them, or you enjoy them.

We get them like crazy here, and I'm going to give away several plants today that either have eggs or caterpillars already on them.

Okay? Now some of you probably have boughten dill before, and it tasted kind of awkward, smelled awkward.

It wasn't dill.

It was fennel.

And the way to tell is when you're shopping, make sure you're not squishing any eggs, pinch off a little piece.

I don't mind.

It's the only way to tell sometimes.

And smell it.

It's either going to smell like dill, or it's going to smell like licorice.

If it smells like licorice, you got fennel.

Now that caterpillar hosts onto parsley, fennel, and dill.

And we've got caterpillars on each today.

So if you're out there shopping in my herbs, look closely.

There's a lot more out there.

Our herbs are organic, done by a grower.

So he doesn't spray them with anything.

They're safe.

Always make sure when you're buying your food source that it is safe.

Those in Home Depot are not safe.

They are sprayed.

I don't care if it's Bonnie's.

Bonnie's sprays.

If it's, unless they have the organic pot, then you can find out whether or not it's been treated with Bt.

Lowe's, same thing.

Any of your chain stores are buying for prettiness, not for the host plant.

So that nice pretty milkweed with tons of flowers and leaves, and it looks so pretty, you want to put it in your garden, you plant it.

You're not planting it for the monarch.

Don't realize it.

It's sprayed, looks pretty, and then it doesn't after a while.

Well, the growers spray it so it stays pretty.

It's not a pretty plant in the landscape.

You're going to find that out if you want to do monarchs.

So tuck it in behind a bush.

All right, next line.

Let's see.

The zebra, wait, wait, wait.

Too fast.

Polydamus, pipevine.

This one's a little bit, was behind the, it's not the prettiest vine.

Okay, this is part of one of the flowers.

The reason why these don't look as nice here in the nursery is because we irrigate them.

I don't get to choose whether this one gets a gallon or five gallons.

Everybody's going to get five gallons, and hopefully he survives.

Once you get them out of irrigation, they thrive.

I've got one out back.

It's been going for eight years when we built the garden, and it's very prolific.

It will get very thick, very full.

They'll do a lot of trimming.

You'll have a lot of caterpillars, a lot of butterflies.

Very active plant in the garden.

It is drought tolerant, absolutely.

It should be put on lattice for easier display, trimming, but we have it as a ground cover in our garden. It can be done either way.

Rather it up higher, but it still works either way.

That's your polydamus.

There is other different types of swallowtails and different types of pipevines that support different types of them.

I'm going to tell you they're not as successful here.

Sherry is not here today, but she is planting multiple varieties, and they just do not thrive in our climate as well.

I'm only going over the stuff that it does well here, so you're successful.

Next one is going to be your zebra swallowtail.

Another one that you're going to find around here, but going to have a hard time growing the host plant.

It's a pawpaw tree.

They're hard to get started.

Once you've got them going though, they're somewhat easy, but getting them to go is very slow to go and very hard to find.

I think Lucas Nursery in Orlando carries them, but they're not cheap and they have to be just right.

Your next one is your spicebush swallowtail.

Bay tree family, you've got those out in the wild not as much as we used to.

Years ago, a beetle came through and wiped out a lot of them.

Your spicebush and then the camphor.

We've got plenty of camphor around.

As a matter of fact, I've got a tree on the other side of the property.

Love the tree.

Then we're going to go on to the next page, julia.

Usually this is not a popular one.

We have had an influx of them this year.

I've had tons of them in the area this year.

Passionvine corky stem.

I've got passionvine here today.

They were good caterpillars.

They moved.

They had another plant, but it had fire ants in it.

We saved them really quickly.

I've got a couple of caterpillars on here.

This is not the corky stem passionvine.

I've been having a hard time finding that one lately, but that's the one that the julia likes to lay on.

Golf fertility, that's what we have here today.

They'll lay on every passionvine that they can when they're desperate.

They'll even lay them on the red, which does not support the caterpillar.

You need to have the blues, the purples, or even the really, really tiny little flowering variety that has no color really to it at all. Golf fertility, probably the one you're going to see the most.

They're highly active, very fast flying butterfly.

Very popular here.

Your next one, you guys should know this if you're living in Florida.

Usually I have one always flying around here during the seminar, but they've been a little slow this year.

Zebra longwing, very neat caterpillar.

It's usually white with some black spikes coming off of it.

Very pretty, floats around.

That is your state butterfly.

That one goes into the maypop, which we got a bunch of here today.

If you want to try and attract that one, remember how I told you you need a little bit of shade sometimes in your garden?

This is one that likes to lay its eggs in the shade, fly in the shade.

Maypop or the maypop, this one here.

I've got several of them in our vine section.

They've got a smaller flower on them, and you'll notice that.

They're kind of a bluish rather than that big beautiful purple one that I have sitting over there with fire ants in it. Make sure you stick to the blues, not the reds.

The reds are just, they're pretty.

My mother-in-law has them, grow prolific, attracts a ton of butterflies.

If you don't like having your stuff eaten up and you just want to see the butterflies come and go, that's a good one.

Next one is your queen.

This one feeds on your milkweed.

Don't let it confuse you.

The way you're going to tell between the monarch and the queen when they're caterpillars is that they're going to have an extra antenna.

They're going to have three instead of two on their head.

They look the same, and I'm going to tell you a couple of little interesting things between the monarch, the queen, and one of the swallowtails that get on their head. on the parsley and fennel.

I already told you the mechanism of one of the swallowtails, putting out the antennas.

Smell. Your monarch eats this milkweed because it has latex in it.

It's poisonous.

So if it gets eaten by something, that bird more than likely, like the mockingbird that's in my tree driving me crazy right now, they eat that so that they're poisonous.

Now the swallowtail that gets on your herbs looks kind of like the monarch caterpillar.

So that way it kind of disguises itself so it doesn't want to get eaten.

And the queen obviously has the poison in her as well.

Next one.

This one has become kind of an interest to most people.

And I've got a little extra insight on it by a family member last year.

The Atala butterfly, which is the Coontie palm.

A very slow growing native cycad to Florida.

Back in the 1950s when the wars were going on, the Indians decided they were going to show the white man how to make a starch out of this.

While all the soldiers getting gassed in the wars, eating something easy to eat on their stomach, eating something cheap and easy, this was free.

It was grown out in the woods, native.

They decided to start harvesting it.

They overharvested it.

Almost killed off the population of the Atala.

Back in the 1950s it was thought to be extinct.

There have been sightings as far as Melbourne

now. Maybe even further that I don't know of.

But my cousin in downtown Melbourne has

several pictures of these.

We've sighted them here in Vero.

I mean I could tell you stories

all day, but one of their favorite flowers for nectar is this sweet almond.

So that's always a good one to put in there.

It's got a wonderful smell.

Then I put the malachite in here.

I've never seen one.

They're more further south.

Someday I hope to see one,

but I had a friend that's just in love with butterflies and thought maybe he'd make it here one day, so I threw it on there just to make him happy.

So I have to take a picture of it and send it to him I guess.

But green shrimp plant, if you got it, you probably

won't get rid of it because it's a little invasive sometimes.

Now back on here I could go all day about talking about different parasites and different things.

This is why it is important to still have some kind of sense of either urgency, cleanliness, different things like that.

So your first one on here, if you're raising butterflies it can be very frustrating and a lot of times we get fingers pointed at us.

You killed my butterflies.

You killed my caterpillars because you gave me tainted milkweed.

Has there been situations? Yes.

Do I know when it happens? Oh yes.

I get to see it happen here.

I get 100 customers calling me.

What in the world? Don't do it again.

The growers that we get them from are friends and family.

Have I had to outsource to new customers, to new vendors? Yes.

I do it anymore? No.

If I don't know the people, I'm not going to listen to that salesman

because that salesman is just trying to make money.

So we try and make sure that we get it from reputable companies.

If you're not sure and you're curious and want to know, ask the guys.

They'll either say yes or we don't know.

So you've got these flies that attack your monarchs.

So watch for those.

They look like regular old flies.

Sometimes it's very hard to tell the difference.

You can read up on this article but I'm not really going to go into too much detail with this stuff because I've got to get onto the plants and move through here.

But you can read up on it.

I am however going to touch up on the next one.

This was great.

I had a customer come in today with a box with a monarch sitting in it and the wings are folded over and she can't get them all the way open.

It's called

O.E. I'm not going to try and pronounce that whole name because I'll never get it out.

So as you read it'll tell you it's a parasite.

What has happened is that caterpillar has ingested a parasite.

So it is important if you're really into it and want to keep the numbers as high as possible that you wash those leaves off, clean them off.

I can't control everything in this environment.

I wish I could.

That's why you guys got to do a little extra work.

And it's not like we do it on purpose.

It's going to happen.

It's mother nature.

There's no 100 percent, no dummy proof systems.

But basically it gets

an infection, gets weak and can't open the wings all the way.

Now what do we do? We can feed it, have a pet in the house for a week or however long she decides she can live.

Some people will feed them Gatorade, sugar water or just go out there and get some nice flowers for them that preferably are not sprayed.

I don't do any spraying on the property anymore as of last year.

I've got beehives here.

They're good bees and I plan to keep them.

So if I

got bugs on my plants, I'm sorry.

I can help you control them in any way that you need to but we're going organic here.

Nuclear polyhidrosis virus, another one of my favorite

viruses. They're just like us.

We can get sick.

We got cancers.

We got parasites.

you got bacterial diseases.

Remember when I told you you got to be careful just because you put them in a cage doesn't mean now you don't have to worry about them anymore.

If you don't clean that cage on a normal basis and you got a lot of frats sitting in there which is the droppings, frats, they'll get sick too.

So cleanliness is important.

a 50-50 bleach and water mix when the caterpillars aren't in there.

Take them out, put them on a plant and get it cleaned up.

Let it dry.

Get them back out there.

Tainted milkweed.

Kind of covered that already.

Don't spray it.

There's no spray you can use to keep the aphids off.

It's not going to happen.

Wasps. Here we go again.

There's different types of wasps.

You'll see there's more than one on the list.

There's one that will lay its eggs on the outside of the caterpillar.

I've seen it happen.

Thankfully it was an army worm and not one that we prefer.

I mean I could have probably taken the eggs off but

does a wasp have a duty to do here too? Yes, he's a pollinator of something.

So I'll let

him be on that caterpillar. He gets to eat that day. So make sure you keep that together.

The anal prolapse.

Yeah, it's kind of doomsday on that one.

No cure.

No really nothing you

can do about that one.

Dehydration. If you've got them sitting in here eating leaves, most

of their hydration is going to come from that.

We should be okay.

But if you set that caterpillar down by the A.C.

return of your house and you dry the plant out, dry the caterpillar out, they're going to die.

Once in a while, we should have enough humidity here but if you need to and you've really got the A.C.

cut down low and it's a dry place, you might want to just mist it once in a while.

Don't keep excessive water in there because that's no good too.

Visible predators, spiders, lizards, fire ants, wasps.

There's a lot of predators

so keep an eye for those.

And then there's B.T., caterpillar spray.

That's a spray a

lot of these growers use, especially on their herbs and different things to keep the caterpillars at bay or any chewing insect because it is cheap and very successful for them to control.

So you have to watch for that.

Just because it's organic doesn't mean it's safe.

Does anybody have any questions about the caterpillars that I need to go over?

I saw the Atari at West Palm Beach and they have loads of coon teeth.

Yeah, nice.

And the other place you can get the malachite, there's a butterfly center.

In fact, in the air, it's informant.

But you can call and find out when they would be there. Alright, alright. Well, there's a butterfly place out in Okeechobee is what she said.

saying that you can actually go out and see the malachite and a lot of other things.

I'm sure you can Google them.

The Atala, West Palm, but we've also got a lot of Atalas here locally.

If you go to the ELC here or even Sea Oaks, they have had major hatch outs because they have so many Coonties.

The Atala back two years ago when Rule was still alive came in for poison for his Coonties and I went, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, no, no.

We had an article in the paper, I sent it off to a lot of different people, and then it finally made its way north.

So we're getting a good population.

Everybody talks about how to keep the cages clean, growing in cages.

When you're growing in your yard, how do you?

If you're growing in your yard, I mean, there's really not much you can do.

I mean, you don't have a sterile environment, so you're going to have the luck of the draw

basically.

One out of a hundred caterpillars probably makes it through its adult stage.

So even though you're saving a lot, as soon as you let it go, who knows if it's going to get hit by a car, a bird snatching it.

So you try to do the best you can, keep the plants as healthy as possible.

The plants will fight off their own fungus and in turn help with the caterpillars being as healthy and nutritional as possible.

Okay? Okay.

And the next one is talking to the native plant people, the OE is being a big problem with the tropical milkweed as opposed to the natives.

Right.

Tropical milkweed, native milkweed, the OE disease is more popular in some of them.

Yes.

The reason being the growers.

The growers grow this stuff.

If there's any, any kind of disease going around, it multiplies.

It splashes on the ground, splashes back up at the plants.

You know, that's, it's mother nature.

We can't control a hundred percent as much as we'd love to.

I'm going to go through these plants real quick, give you some ideas of their favorites, and then I'll let you guys get out of here.

We'll do some prizes.

Firebush.

These are kind of a must.

You got them in all different flavors from three feet all the way up to 12 feet.

Your firefly being the smallest, that's your true dwarf.

They say keep it around three feet.

I've seen it upwards to six.

Then your dwarf variety is going to get upwards to six to eight.

Not really a dwarf.

Your regular is going to go upwards to 12.

They also like hummingbirds.

Works as a great hedge.

Firebush.

Salt tolerance, I can do my best.

Not every day am I planting on beach side, but yeah.

The firebush is going to be all kinds.

It's going to be all kinds.

Very high nectar, a lot of volume of flowers, a lot of different butterflies are going to feed off of it.

It is a very, it's one of the ones you should have in there.

It's a recommended to have.

Yes.

Someone said there was a net.

It really, no, it doesn't really matter.

I've seen them all.

It's a familiar flower.

Yes.

Yes.

The firebush is salt tolerant.

It can handle the beach.

I'm just going to, just, we'll go through them and I'll try and tell you from what I've observed and then, you know, if there's questions at the end, we'll definitely handle them. None of these plants require you to water them on a daily basis, okay?

Or weekly basis.

It's getting them started.

Once you've got them started, there's no water required after if you've done it properly.

I have no irrigation in my yard and I have a pretty butterfly garden.

I've got a lot of other plants.

So get them established properly and feed them when they need it.

All right, I'm going to try and keep going through this because I know other people got things to do today.

I've got a blue butterfly clairdendron.

This attracts, this is another one that is just a nectar plant.

It's a little bit different color.

You're going to see that there's going to be a lot of reds and oranges in the garden.

So if you want to soften up the reds and oranges, you got blue butterfly clairdendron.

This will grow upwards six, eight feet.

If you let it, most people will keep it around the four foot range.

Flowers year round.

All these plants I'm showing you are going to be year round plants, year round flowering.

I'm going to give you another purple one or lavender or blue.

This one produces a lot of flower.

You can find this in tree form, bush form.

This is Duranta sapphire shower, also known as golden dew drop.

It'll produce a lot of little yellow berries.

Cut the yellow berries off.

It'll re-flower a lot faster for you.

This is a fast grower.

Your fire bush is a fast grower.

Duranta sapphire shower.

If you say sapphire shower, they're going to know what you're talking about.

You got Cape honeysuckle.

This is another good one, especially for the butterflies that have a long spout.

They like to get their nose way down in there.

Your butterflies will do a lot of tasting by their feet.

That's where their senses are.

That's Cape honeysuckle.

As far as the salt tolerance on that one, that's a good one.

You can handle the salt on that one.

The blue butterfly, I would not recommend over by the beach.

This firecracker fern, this was one of the hosts.

That was for the buckeye.

This one can grow upwards four foot or so.

You can cut it right back down to the ground when it gets too big.

Also comes in yellow.

Highly drought tolerant, so if you're looking for a potted plant, they're real pretty in pots.

They'll get tall and they'll also cascade. Also another hummingbird lover.

If you want to incorporate that, you can.

This one here is the sweet almond.

If you guys like a little fragrance in the garden, something sweet to smell, maybe you like to just crack the flower off and throw it in the vacuum or something to help cover up that dust smell, this is a good one.

It's not as potent as a gardenia, but it is very sweet smelling and it's one of the Atala's favorite to feed on.

So far from what my cousin says and a few others, the Atala's prefer a white flower, which is kind of unusual for butterflies because they see reds and oranges a lot better and further away. That one's going to get upwards four foot, six foot.

It's not always the prettiest bush, but it does smell great.

As far as salt tolerance, I'm sorry I can't tell you that on that one.

Cassias, it's a big range of family.

These can grow anywhere from four foot upwards to 15, 20 feet.

They can be used as a tree or a bush or maybe a multi-trunk bush standard, however you want to do it.

Again, there's a lot of varieties out there.

Popcorn is one of them.

There's candlestick, which is your native cassia.

Then you've got Bahama cassia, Mexican.

This is a Mexican variety, even though they call it Bahama, I don't know why.

I still got to do research.

I just finally got this for the first time.

You've got the Cinnacassia, again, that's your host plant for the sulfurs.

I told you about the milkweed.

Those are semi, so if you're not oceanfront, you would be okay with your cassia.

Milkweed, there's a lot of different varieties of this.

The lady mentioned that the non-native varieties sometimes create more issues, but they're the ones that we can find the most and they are laying and eating and being successful on it, but you may want to go in there, clean your leaves off, especially

if they're an older crop.

The newer they are, usually the cleaner they are, the healthier they are.

Once the fertilizer starts lacking from the growers, then we get into troubles, usually.

That is not your focal point.

They will get leggy, go in there. trim them down when they get too tall or let them go until they seed and you will find that there is a ton of seed in there or start replanting your own.

You might save some money.

One plant is never enough.

Now you may find on your milkweed you also get this pesky little black bug with red or orange striping on it.

Squish them.

Get rid of them.

They're not good for your plant.

They sting the plant.

They ruin the plant.

They discourage your butterflies.

I don't want to land and lay my babies on a plant that's full of bugs that I'm not too interested in them being around.

Those are strangers.

It is poisonous.

It's poisonous to anybody and everybody that's allergic to latex.

It contains latex.

say if my dog eats oleander it's going to die or eats milkweed.

Not necessarily.

I had a dachshund bagel.

It doesn't matter what he ate.

Nothing killed that dog.

Now did he throw up all over my house? Oh yes.

Teach them not to eat the leaves.

It's better.

Not that I know of.

They're typically the more sun the better on them.

Again guys, please if I can just have you hold your questions and then you can come up to me all after.

If anything I miss, please.

I don't mind.

This one here is Russian sage.

This is probably one of the hardest plants for me to find, but I do enjoy it for its looks and its uniqueness.

I do have a bunch of these in stock at the moment.

They're best kept around two to three feet.

Pretty easy grower.

Drought tolerant for sure.

Nice purple flower with kind of

a softer silvery foliage.

Salt tolerance I would think is more moderate.

Again, these

are at least four hours or more is recommended.

Fennel. Fennel is probably going to be your

longest lasting for as far as the herbs go feeding your caterpillars.

You can cut it

back. It'll get very bulbous.

It'll get large over the years and continue to re-giving and giving and giving.

When dill goes to bolt or seed, it's done.

You got to get a new plant.

So feeding dill can get a little expensive, whereas fennel can rejuvenate.

Same thing with parsley.

They get tired.

You're usually out of luck.

Buddleia, probably one of my favorites, but one that you do have to replace after so long.

I was educated by a customer here that is in the, his family's in the business.

And hopefully maybe someday I can have him join the team.

But Buddleia, one of our favorites in the garden.

Wonderful scent to it.

also known as butterfly bush and there's a lot of different varieties.

So ask us according to what variety you want.

This light purple one's a dwarf variety.

Doesn't get as large.

Maybe three, four feet.

This variety here with the dark purple, very prolific.

The butterflies love it.

If you smell it, you know why the butterflies like it.

I don't have to tell you.

It is heavenly.

Buddleia or butterfly bush.

Semi-salt tolerance.

The catch with

this one is the nematodes like it.

So you're only going to get maybe three years or so out of it, according to the guy, Brett.

So, you know, I don't know.

I just put in my garden

so far.

Mine's thriving.

If it is susceptible to nematodes, I'm not going to expect it to live long, but you better bet my, you better bet that I'm going to replant it again because

I got to have it in there.

Very high activity in the nursery.

I was watching it right before the class.

You know, I've got some skippers skipping on there, feeding off the nectar.

I've got the gulf artillery out there and then comes by a sulfur, you know, so lots, lots of activity on these guys.

Lots of nectar.

Salvia. This one here.

There's a huge variety

of salvia.

It comes in all different colors, flavors.

Make sure you ask the local guys if it's a year round or not because there's a lot of annual versions.

This is Mystic Spires, one of my favorites.

Will grow year in and year out.

Flowers all year.

Gets up around two to three feet.

You can cut it back.

Very easy grower.

It'll suck up some water too.

That one I believe will be damaged by salt.

Passion vine.

I've got a couple of them.

I think we went over that one pretty extensively.

Grows fast.

It is a very productive one as

far as caterpillars.

So if you've got kids or you always want to see something moving going on, passion vine is going to bring you a lot of activity.

Whether it's just for nectar or actually hosts.

My next door neighbor growing up as a kid grew this through his clumping bamboo which sat right on top of his septic tank.

Obviously, what? The septic tank worked

perfect. They had slat house too so the boards ran horizontally and man the cocoons, the crystallites would just load up on that thing.

Perfect scenario.

Porterweed, probably another must.

Very prolific.

There are native varieties here.

There's a door variety that's red.

a little harder to grow.

Can handle some salt.

These grow upwards to five feet, some of these

varieties. Don't be scared to cut them back.

The more you cut them back, the bushier, the thicker they get.

They will get really thick and full.

Porterweed. Here's your red door

variety. You smell that and I'm going to start talking about it.

See what you smell.

I grab the wrong variety? It just wasn't right.

You picked the wrong flower.

Do you smell it? Smells familiar.

These are all Gomphrenia.

They're smelling it and not sure what it is. You go up there.

It's called Gomphrenia.

There's a lot of different varieties but this one here, if you go up on the benches, there's some really tall wild ones.

It smells like celery.

No? Soup.

Celery stalk or something.

Now I have you all smelling flowers up there.

The guys are going to be going, eh.

People are weird.

These are really wild.

They can get upwards to three feet.

They're kind of neat sticking behind other shorter things because they pop up, get kind of wild.

Lots of flowers.

The butterflies like it because it's a lot of quick nectar.

Gomphrenia. G-O-M-P-H.

I'm going to leave it at that.

comes in a lot of flavors.

Really fun.

Very easy to grow.

The guy that we buy it from,

I mean he's just ecstatic at how well it grows in his garden. Very pretty plant. Galardia.

If you guys like natives, you're out of luck because I can't get the native variety of this.

They did it for a reason so when you're asking for natives, just because it says it's a native on my sign, no.

There's just guidelines on my sign.

Once in a while I come across the native but the native is not as pretty as the ones they've hybridized.

They hybridize them for two reasons.

One, to make them look pretty.

Two, the reason why they hybridize this one is so it doesn't grow everywhere in your yard.

That one's going to be a low growing one.

Oh, about a foot, two feet tall.

Salt tolerant for sure.

You can go up to the

Titusville Wildlife Refuge. Go out there on your way to Haulover Canal to go fishing.

Certain times of the year you can see it's just a blanket of flowers and that's it's other name.

Blanket flower.

And they do, they load up.

This one here, this is one of

your musts in the garden. Oh, they did pick me the right color.