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| Adult ladybug and aphids |
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| Ladybug eggs on fava bean leaf |
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| Ladybug nymph |
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| Busy ladybugs |
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| Beautiful ladybug with heart spots |
Farmer Ladybug🐞
Showing posts with label Underwing moth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Underwing moth. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
We visited the school garden today and harvested lots of fava beans. The fava beans are covered with aphids. They are also covered with ladybugs. Ladybugs, ladybugs, everywhere ladybugs. Ladybug eggs, ladybug nymphs, ladybug chrysalis, and loads and loads of adults. Did you know that ladybugs have 4 life stages? They are like butterflies that way. Many insects do this, but butterflies get all the credit. Can you recognize the ladybug in all her forms? Mosquito took these photos for you.
When we came home we found that Cob-weaver's Underwing moth had hatched from its chrysalis. We had buried the chrysalis in soil in a jar. We let it go at dusk.
Farmer Ladybug🐞
Farmer Ladybug🐞
Thursday, May 7, 2020
When I water the flower bed this morning, I notice an underwing moth crawling away. It is big. It is bigger than a quarter and very helpless in the cool of the early morning. It must have just emerged from its underground cocoon. It finds a safer spot in the grass to warm up. Like all moths, it flies at night. I wonder what it eats? This is the second underwing in two days. The first we rescued from Bisbis. We put it in our insect cage for the day and let it go at dusk.
As we sit on our front porch for our morning snack, the two crows come and sit right above us on the roof. The peek at us over the roofline with their heads upside down. It looks very silly and makes us laugh. They are hoping for their share, I think.
It's a flower day, so we decide to plant the sunflower bed and record a video for Garden class 22. We learned on Cob-weaver's Daisy journey that sunflowers and geraniums clean the soil of lead (thanks to Girl Scout troop leader and mom of LUDA). I think we will grow more than usual this year. I've also started some under the grow lights for the school garden's sunflower patch.
In garden class at school, this is the time of year where the students tell the stories. They stand at the chalkboard and tell everyone what they have learned about their garden animal. They tell us their animal super powers and also, what the farmer learns from them. I have three stories from you to share on my video today. Thank you to Millipede (NAES), Scrub Jay (LUDA), and Rollie Pollie (EPMA) for your stories from the Garden class 20 assignment. What are those letter codes with the animal names you ask? Check out the Garden Animal Partner Puzzle here to find out who is telling these stories of their garden animals. I look forward to sharing more of your stories about garden animals. If you'd like me to read your story in my video, simply turn it on on Google classroom and give me your OK to read it.
As we sit on our front porch for our morning snack, the two crows come and sit right above us on the roof. The peek at us over the roofline with their heads upside down. It looks very silly and makes us laugh. They are hoping for their share, I think.
It's a flower day, so we decide to plant the sunflower bed and record a video for Garden class 22. We learned on Cob-weaver's Daisy journey that sunflowers and geraniums clean the soil of lead (thanks to Girl Scout troop leader and mom of LUDA). I think we will grow more than usual this year. I've also started some under the grow lights for the school garden's sunflower patch.
In garden class at school, this is the time of year where the students tell the stories. They stand at the chalkboard and tell everyone what they have learned about their garden animal. They tell us their animal super powers and also, what the farmer learns from them. I have three stories from you to share on my video today. Thank you to Millipede (NAES), Scrub Jay (LUDA), and Rollie Pollie (EPMA) for your stories from the Garden class 20 assignment. What are those letter codes with the animal names you ask? Check out the Garden Animal Partner Puzzle here to find out who is telling these stories of their garden animals. I look forward to sharing more of your stories about garden animals. If you'd like me to read your story in my video, simply turn it on on Google classroom and give me your OK to read it.
Farmer Ladybug 🐞
Friday, April 3, 2020
Coco is so loud! Every morning she comes out and bock bock bock bock bock bock bock. What is she talking about?
Cob-weaver and I made berry muffins again this morning. This time we used baking powder and baking soda. They were much yummier.
Mosquito and Cob-weaver raked the chicken yard.
For lunch we made spring greens soup. I love soup. It's on my menu for Thursday nights, but last night Mosquito and Cob-weaver groaned so much, I gave in and Ant made them hamburgers. They don't appreciate soup night. That's OK. They used to groan a lot about hiking, biking, gardening, and journaling too. But now they love these things as much as I do.
It helps if they make the soup. This one is especially fun because we gather all the spring "weeds" from the yard to eat and our spring garden leafy vegetables. Mosquito and Cob-weaver love to forage from the wild, so were eager to help. This soup is different each time because it depends on what is growing. Our early spring greens are mostly too old- I can tell because flower buds are forming, but there was plenty to cook with. We collected for our soup: nettles, chickweed, sourgrass, crane's bill, New Zealand spinach, fava bean shoots, asparagus, kale, parsley, arugula, and wild lettuce. It was delicious! Everyone said so. Miner's lettuce would also be a good addition to this soup, but we don't have it growing in our yard. If you decide to wild forage, make sure you know your plants well. As one of my teachers, Paul Stamets*, says, "Mushrooms can heal you and they can also kill you." This goes for plants too.
While cleaning the arugula, I found a caterpillar. It's our first caterpillar of the year. It looked like a cabbage white butterfly caterpillar to me, but Cob-weaver (who is a caterpillar and butterfly expert) says that it had an extra stripe down its side. We are going to raise and find out what it turns into. We do this with all of the caterpillars we find and have figured out how to identify everything in our yard that way. There are no good field guides to caterpillars that I've found, and even when we do find the caterpillar in a guide, its hard to compare a caterpillar picture with real life. So we raise them. We put the caterpillar in a glass mason jar with the plant we found it on and poke holes in the metal lid. We have found that all our caterpillars eat comfrey, so we always put comfrey in it too. It's best if you can find a fat caterpillar because they quickly will make their chrysalis or cocoon and you don't have to feed or clean up their poop daily anymore. We find underwing moth crysalis' in the soil, so we put them in a jar and bury them in soil. We've raised cabbage-whites, painted ladies, underwing moths, and looper moths. The chrysalis of a painted lady is so beautiful, trimmed with gold. Did you know that moths make a cocoon and butterflies make a chrysalis?
Cob-weaver found aphids on the fava beans today. Then I spotted them on the kale. I wonder if they are at the school garden too?
1 tablespoon cooking oil
3 cups bone or vegetable broth
Salt
3 medium potatoes, quartered ( I used 1 a huge sweet potato because I didn't have potatoes)
3 cups sliced fresh mushrooms (optional) (I didn't have any)
2 tablespoons butter
10 cups fresh spring greens (spinach, parsley, arugula, kale, chard and anything wild you can find), cleaned with stems removed.
Garnish:
Fresh arugula
Yogurt
Lemon
Green onions or wild onions
Cob-weaver and I made berry muffins again this morning. This time we used baking powder and baking soda. They were much yummier.
Mosquito and Cob-weaver raked the chicken yard.
For lunch we made spring greens soup. I love soup. It's on my menu for Thursday nights, but last night Mosquito and Cob-weaver groaned so much, I gave in and Ant made them hamburgers. They don't appreciate soup night. That's OK. They used to groan a lot about hiking, biking, gardening, and journaling too. But now they love these things as much as I do.
It helps if they make the soup. This one is especially fun because we gather all the spring "weeds" from the yard to eat and our spring garden leafy vegetables. Mosquito and Cob-weaver love to forage from the wild, so were eager to help. This soup is different each time because it depends on what is growing. Our early spring greens are mostly too old- I can tell because flower buds are forming, but there was plenty to cook with. We collected for our soup: nettles, chickweed, sourgrass, crane's bill, New Zealand spinach, fava bean shoots, asparagus, kale, parsley, arugula, and wild lettuce. It was delicious! Everyone said so. Miner's lettuce would also be a good addition to this soup, but we don't have it growing in our yard. If you decide to wild forage, make sure you know your plants well. As one of my teachers, Paul Stamets*, says, "Mushrooms can heal you and they can also kill you." This goes for plants too.
While cleaning the arugula, I found a caterpillar. It's our first caterpillar of the year. It looked like a cabbage white butterfly caterpillar to me, but Cob-weaver (who is a caterpillar and butterfly expert) says that it had an extra stripe down its side. We are going to raise and find out what it turns into. We do this with all of the caterpillars we find and have figured out how to identify everything in our yard that way. There are no good field guides to caterpillars that I've found, and even when we do find the caterpillar in a guide, its hard to compare a caterpillar picture with real life. So we raise them. We put the caterpillar in a glass mason jar with the plant we found it on and poke holes in the metal lid. We have found that all our caterpillars eat comfrey, so we always put comfrey in it too. It's best if you can find a fat caterpillar because they quickly will make their chrysalis or cocoon and you don't have to feed or clean up their poop daily anymore. We find underwing moth crysalis' in the soil, so we put them in a jar and bury them in soil. We've raised cabbage-whites, painted ladies, underwing moths, and looper moths. The chrysalis of a painted lady is so beautiful, trimmed with gold. Did you know that moths make a cocoon and butterflies make a chrysalis?
Cob-weaver found aphids on the fava beans today. Then I spotted them on the kale. I wonder if they are at the school garden too?
Spring Greens Soup
1 medium onion, halved and sliced1 tablespoon cooking oil
3 cups bone or vegetable broth
Salt
3 medium potatoes, quartered ( I used 1 a huge sweet potato because I didn't have potatoes)
3 cups sliced fresh mushrooms (optional) (I didn't have any)
2 tablespoons butter
10 cups fresh spring greens (spinach, parsley, arugula, kale, chard and anything wild you can find), cleaned with stems removed.
Garnish:
Fresh arugula
Yogurt
Lemon
Green onions or wild onions
- Cook onion in oil over medium heat for 5 minutes.
- Add potatoes and saute 2 more minutes turning them to brown
- Add broth, pepper, and salt to taste. Bring to boiling, then reduce to simmer, covered, for 10 minutes.
- If using mushrooms, saute in a separate skillet with butter for 6 to 8 minutes or until tender and liquid has evaporated; then set aside.
- Remove soup from heat. Use an immersion blender to blend onion-potato mixture until almost smooth.
- Add greens. Return to heat. Bring to boiling; remove from heat.
- Using blender (I have to do this step with my Vitamix blender because my immersion blender can't handle it), puree soup again until nearly smooth and flecks of green remain.
- Season to taste with salt. Serve immediately topped with sautéed mushrooms, fresh arugula, lemon, green onions and yogurt.
Farmer Ladybug 🐞
*My mentor and teacher, Paul Stamets (his work is the reason I studied mycology in graduate school) is featured in the newly released documentary, Fantastic Fungi. This one didn't make it to my recommendations list because it contains content about hallucinogenic mushrooms. I do recommend it highly for adults and for kids whose parents have pre-screened it and are comfortable with this topic, or are prepared to fast forward the part not appropriate for kids. I have watched it with Cob-weaver and Mosquito.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
I made 4, 5 gallon buckets of yard waste, clearing and cleaning my flower beds. I barely made a dent in all the volunteers in my flower garden. I put those four buckets in the chicken yard to let the chickens spread around and cover up their poop. I think it may take 6, 5-gallon buckets of yard waste to cover the whole chicken yard. I gave the bunnies a big bunch of grass too.
I saw a lot of garden animals while I was digging and pulling out volunteers: a chrysalis of an underwing moth buried in the soil, 3 Jerusalem crickets clinging to plant roots, ladybugs, rollie pollies, cabbage white butterflies, hummingbirds, earthworms and orb-weaver spiders.
I planted my medicine and food plants that I'd collected from the hike yesterday.
As I was working a Red-shouldered Hawk flew over carrying a small rodent. It was getting dive-bombed by crows. Because of this it flew really, really low and I could see it well. They wanted it to drop its food. It kept flying southeast. It flew in the direction that I saw a pair of Red-shouldered Hawks the other day feeding each other. Maybe it was one of the pair?
I also saw 2 Red-tailed Hawks fly over. They are very unusual for my yard. What are they doing here?
When I went to close up the rabbits they had dug a big hole and escaped again. This is the first hole that they have dug since they escaped that first day. I wonder why they dug another hole today? Was it something to do with the weather? This time, we were ready. We had a plan to corral them and it worked! I noticed that their digging was great in turning and fluffing up the soil in the chicken yard deeply. Also, they succeeded in burying 1/3rd of the yard with their digging, meaning I didn't have to rake the chicken poop. Thank you, bunnies! I wonder if I can use the bunnies to clean the chicken yard every day?
The chickens only ate 3 cups of food again today, so adding yard waste and kitchen scraps to the chicken yard seems as if it will save me from needing to buy so much chicken food.
Tonight I put Sara on the roost to sleep. Now Popcorn is on the floor. Why are they not going to roost with the other chickens? Are they getting pecked?
🐞Farmer Ladybug
I saw a lot of garden animals while I was digging and pulling out volunteers: a chrysalis of an underwing moth buried in the soil, 3 Jerusalem crickets clinging to plant roots, ladybugs, rollie pollies, cabbage white butterflies, hummingbirds, earthworms and orb-weaver spiders.
I planted my medicine and food plants that I'd collected from the hike yesterday.
As I was working a Red-shouldered Hawk flew over carrying a small rodent. It was getting dive-bombed by crows. Because of this it flew really, really low and I could see it well. They wanted it to drop its food. It kept flying southeast. It flew in the direction that I saw a pair of Red-shouldered Hawks the other day feeding each other. Maybe it was one of the pair?
I also saw 2 Red-tailed Hawks fly over. They are very unusual for my yard. What are they doing here?
When I went to close up the rabbits they had dug a big hole and escaped again. This is the first hole that they have dug since they escaped that first day. I wonder why they dug another hole today? Was it something to do with the weather? This time, we were ready. We had a plan to corral them and it worked! I noticed that their digging was great in turning and fluffing up the soil in the chicken yard deeply. Also, they succeeded in burying 1/3rd of the yard with their digging, meaning I didn't have to rake the chicken poop. Thank you, bunnies! I wonder if I can use the bunnies to clean the chicken yard every day?
The chickens only ate 3 cups of food again today, so adding yard waste and kitchen scraps to the chicken yard seems as if it will save me from needing to buy so much chicken food.
Tonight I put Sara on the roost to sleep. Now Popcorn is on the floor. Why are they not going to roost with the other chickens? Are they getting pecked?
Garden Math: If yard waste could be measured in gallons, and today I put 4, 5-gallon buckets of yard waste in the chicken yard, solve how many total gallons of yard waste I put on the chicken yard today. If I need to do 6, 5-gallon buckets a day to cover the whole yard, how many total gallons is that?
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