Butterflies!

We grew some plants for the monarch butterflies this year. We got quite a few at the end of February and March. Winnie of course got lots of great shots, but I took a few pictures of my own.

Snail Hotels

Okay I have a confession to make. I like these little alien creatures. I mean what's not to love about that face!

But unfortunately my veggie garden and these little guys can't coexist together.  And I also have a really hard time squashing them too.
I have fed them dishes of beer, which they love very much and I imagine them dying happy and well inebriated, but it's hard to keep the dishes topped up and rather horrible having to scoop out the drowned snails and slugs in the morning.
So I have come up with a better solution; Snail hotels!
1) Snails like to hide under things, so if you over turn a pot in the garden and leave it, there is a good chance that snails will make it their home.
2) I also worry about how snail bait affects my worm population. And once it gets wet, it deteriorates fairly quickly.
So what I did was simply to put snail bait in a dish and over turn a pot over it.

You leave the snail enough room to get in under the pot and place these in areas that you know snails hide out. For added weather protection you can use a bit of twig or stick to block the hole in the pot. The snail bait stays dry and when the sails find this new home they have a last meal waiting.
About the only thing you have to remember with these is to top them up and also watch out for those pesky spiders, they like moving into these as well.
I also use an environmentally friendly snail bait, one that does not harm birds, dogs and cats. and I still sprinkle it around new seedlings, just till they are large enough to survive a hungry snail who is after a snack on his way to the hotel.
 So there you have it. I still don't like killing them but I do want my veggies. At least this way I can keep them under control.

Worm Stations

Okay this is another one of those ideas that you find on the internet, as you do.
Worm stations; The idea is simple, you bury a pipe of bottomless container, with a lid, in the ground and use this as a worm farm/compost type system.
Now I do have my bathtub worm farm, but I very rarely take material from the top, because the worms are always still munching away on it, even though I change the sides I feed them on. I mainly use the liquid that comes from the bottom of the tub. So I thought that this was a great idea to get my worms out there into my garden.
The worms I have are tiger worms, they like compost and won't just live happily in soil, they need lots of decaying goodness to munch on, hence making them these feeding station.
So I took some old pots that I have and knocked the bottoms out of some, others already didn't have a bottom. and set up my stations, using terracotta pot bases as lids.

These were set up over winter and I am happy to say that the worms are still there munching away and they seem to be working will so far.
The big test will be over the warmer months. I am interested to see if they have a big effect on plant growth.

Blue banded bee

Yet another shot of a blue banded bee. Caught this little one having a rest while foraging in my borage. They are also very attracted to the lemon mint.

Bees that make me go SQUEEEE!

Okay, yes. I am getting excited over bugs again, but yesterday I saw some native bees that I have not seen in a while. And I even got a picture, although not a very good one.
While watering my borage yesterday, I spotted a blue banded bee.

The are another solitary bee and the females dig burrows to live in, while the males hang out in plants at night. They are really had to photograph because they are very fast moving. They apparently do have a sting (Didn't know that we had native bees that did.) but they are non aggressive and probably would only sting if you tried to catch one.
If you want to read up on these little guys, you can find more info here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amegilla_cingulata

http://scienceillustrated.com.au/blog/nature/backyard-bugs-meet-the-blue-banded-bee/

I am now planing to plant more blue flowers in my garden, as they seem more attracted to blue. I am so happy to see these little guys making a home in my garden.

Wasps

The other day I had a small insect drop on to the floor of our laundry, I think I had shaken it off my clothes, as I had been working in the garden most of time that day. At first I thought it was a native bee. It was very similar in shape to the little solitary burrowing bees we have here. I managed to scoop it up in a cloth and show it to Winnie before it flew off. To day I have been trying to identify it and found that is was not a bee, but a wasp, a cuckoo wasp, from the (Chrysalidae) family. A very interesting little creature indeed.

http://australianmuseum.net.au/image/Cuckoo-wasp/

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Cuckoo-wasps/

I hope I see more of them as they are incredibly bight in color and very pretty, in my opinion.

Another wasp that has come to our garden over the years, is the sand wasp.

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Sand-wasps/

They came one year when we had a lot of extreme heat and made their burrows across the road in the one of the garden beds of the little park. Now you may think, ew, wasps, but these little guys were cute and fascinating. Winnie and I had a great time photographing them and unlike honey bees they showed no agitation at us getting too close. Their attention was more on the flowers in our garden and on each other. It was very funny to watch them become rather frenzied with mating and mistaking the honey bees for their intended mates, needless to say the poor old honey bees were not impressed.
I am going to have to see if I can dig out the pictures we have of them.

On of the favorite visitors to our garden is a wasp, commonly referred to as a Blue Ant.

http://australianmuseum.net.au/Blue-Ant/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_ant

We have only identified the females, as they are the easiest to spot. I will often see a flash of blue in the grass and fine one hunting around the grown for victims for her nest, we have occasionally found them in flowers as well. We also have pictures of them and I will see if I can dig them out too.
Found a couple of the pictures I took of this little creature.

The last on my list of wasps is the aphid wasp. I could not find info on the one that we have here but they all feed the same and this will give you an idea of what they are about.

http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/WATER/U/parasite.html

Between these little guys, the ladybugs and hover flies, we have very few aphids around, they are tiny, only about 2mm in size and very hard to photograph, as they are very busy and fast moving.

We are seeing more and more diversity in our garden all the time and the fact that I do not like using chemicals is playing a big part in that diversity growing and becoming stronger. I don't panic when I see pest insects in my garden, in fact I get rather exited at times, it means our little warrior aliens will arrive soon and the battle will begin.
Who needs TV? I have real aliens living in my own back yard.

WORMS!!!

If you have been reading this blog, you may have seen me refer to worm juice. Well I thought I would post the production center, where it is made. This is one of my favorite places in the garden.

My worm farm is made out of an old fiberglass bath tub, located under two very shady trees.
There are small air holes drilled about half way up, for ventilation and to stop things going stagnant. The tub itself is half filled with gravel, that is topped with shade cloth. The worms live on top of this and are insulated with fibered carpet underlay and a couple of tubs for extra weather protection.
I have a container under the tub to collect the liquid which is produced when it rains or I water the worms in warmer weather. The white container you can see on the left is where I store it when not using it.

Insulation from rain and heat is one of the most important things.

We feed them all kitchen scraps, except citrus or any of the onion family, they don't much like those. They do get some of the garden scraps and also the leaves off the trees in autumn, that fall in the tub.
I love my wormies and am hoping to never have to buy any artificial fertilizer again, with these little guys in production.

Some macro shots from Winnie

Grape moth caterpillars and praying mantis.

Little creatures photo shoot.

I mentioned the little cricket I found before. Well now there are two on the currants and also five baby praying mantis on the blackberries. I used one of Winnie's cameras and tried my hand at getting some shots.

This last shot is Winnie's

Which proves who it the photographer in the family.

All these little guys are about five millimeters in size.

Little cricket

Found this strange looking little cricket on the currant bush today. Thought he looked rather amazing so I took a pick.