The Pollinator garden has brought me (and presumably a bunch of pollinators) so much joy this year! Bumblebees, honeybees, butterflies and hummingbirds have been here in abundance. I have been especially happy top have monarch butterflies - as many as 5 at a time a time - on the milkweed plants, but tonight I finally found the first monarch caterpillar, still pretty small. I hope there are more but I have just not discovered them yet.
I have milkweed growing all over the farm and what we do find on the plants are lots of these,
milkweed tussock moths. So far I have let them be, but I am wondering if they are detering the monarchs.
Daddy-Long-Legs--I am fond of these spiders.
But here is the really bad news: Japanese beetles! They pretty much devoured my rose bushes in a couple days! This is the only place I have seen them and I wonder if it is because the chickens and guineas are fenced out of this garden.
Good News: No sign of them yet in the veggie garden...
but bad news, something is eating all our almost -ripe large tomatoes! And I think it must be the chickens, who may be keeping the Japanese Beetles at bay. What to do?
Rog fenced the tomatoes tonight; we can't afford to lose them all to the chickens. I wish I would have taken a before photo but here is an after shot of the cherry tomato row just after i harvested a huge bowl of ripe ones for tomato tarts for the Farmers market. So many more coming.
A few more garden photos and then I must go make those tomato tarts.
