Northern Gardening; Pat Thomas

Well we'll come to another live broadcast of Northern gardening It's Friday July 11th. And you're listening on the following Thursday this is actually a rebroadcast and. You're welcome to call in with your question certainly during the live program and if you've got another gardening question you're still welcome to give us a call we'll get back to you can we can be reached at 3 8 7 10 70 or 1 800 4 7 3 9 8 4 7. So bored more than gardening comes from books hardware offering a full selection of gardening supplies or Gana options and whether hardy annuals and perennials and support also comes from Edwin A Thorson incorporated contractors working to fill landscaping needs in the northland celebrating 60 years of serving. Cook County. 3 8 7 1 6 4 4. Well I'm your host Paula Sunda. And joining me on the phone is Pat Thomas. Pat is a wildlife gardener from Duluth and we're here. She's here to talk with us about butterfly gardening. Thanks so much for joining us this morning. You're welcome it's fun to be here.

And so butterfly gardening I you know when I think about her flies immediately and I don't know maybe everybody else does too but I think a monarch's. Yes. Is that something that obviously we like to have monarchs in our garden. But how do we lure them in. Well right now do you have monarchs up there right now. We have actually seen a few Yeah. OK. A good way to get them to stay near your yard or area is to plant milkweeds. And that's the only plant that their caterpillars can use to become butterflies. And so if you have. The space which would be used for a garden area that you can let go wild a little bit. Or if you have a field or an area that you can plant common milkweed That's a beautiful plant that when it's blooming snowflake lilac it's of it's sort of common in the Duluth area it's very common in the Duluth area. It's got really big leaves and those leaves are big enough where the caterpillars to get a

good meal. But it's a very aggressive plant. It spreads underground through rhizome and it can get to about five feet tall in certain conditions so even it's an important monarch plant but you have to have the right spot in your garden. And sometimes people will plant it and then see how it's invading. You know there are flower beds so if you have the space for that as a that's an excellent choice. And it likes average soil and it will even grow in the sandy areas. It won't do well in moist areas. But if you have an area that is a little bit more ways or very noisy or even average soil and you don't want the milk wheat bread you could plant a bomb no wheat and that remains unclear. It does spread but very very slowly and it has smaller leaves and so if you do plant that it's very likely that in a good monarch year

you will need to supplement your caterpillars diet with some branches of common milk weed because those caterpillars will really eat those leaves down right to the stubs of the stem. So that's another option. And then there's another milk weed that has become popular in many garden catalogs and garden centers and it's called Butterfly wee and that can get to be about one foot tall and it has those bright orange flowers. The two other milkweeds I mentioned will have a pink colored flower and the butterfly weed. Has even tinier flowers. And it's not always successful in our area overwintering. But you could try it and it's very beautiful and that like the Spano weed will will spread but not rapidly. So those are three plants that you could put in your garden to attract monarchs. And also getting back to the common milkweed if you know of a patch of that

sometimes you'll see that along the highways or along the road if you know that that milk weed. Sometimes people will cut or spray that because it is considered a weed. If you could protect that milk weed patch and keep it healthy and not cut or not sprayed that would be a great way to help monarch and people can cut that. But ask them to wait until mid to late September and that way all the butterfly activity has ceased and the monarchs are typically in our area heading south by that time. So if you could protect milkweed patches that would be a great thing to do with. Well I know others will stand of common milk weed that was planted in front of them. Cook County Community Center extension here in grammar A and if you want to see the monarchs in action you can go there. Oh dear. Yeah. There you've got it right. We are very exciting. It is exciting and you know it's the caterpillars are neat because

they're visible sometimes butterfly caterpillars want to remain hidden because they're very good food for birds and their babies. But with the monarch Caterpillar they're toxic to most creatures and so they can remain out in the open. And so it's a great opportunity for people to actually see that whole life cycle taking place. And that's fabulous that you have that there. Yeah that's a real we can think Diane booth berth for hinting that for us that's very very cool. Yeah yeah. It's also as you were talking about even this one milkweed or the Commonwealth mean having a big area also thinking about your not growing them so much for their flowers as for the butterflies and for the caterpillar. So it is certainly odd contrast you want those leaves munched Ackley. And that's the thing about butterfly gardening because a lot of times gardeners are very very neat and tidy and they want their garden to be beautiful because we.

We love beautiful gardens. But as a butterfly gardener you really have to be tolerant of plant damage and a good thing to remember is that plants can lose one third of their leaves before they suffer any type of stress. And so plants and butterflies and plants and insects have evolved with each other. And if your plant is healthy it should survive that insect attack and the butterflies won't take more than their share. So if if that bothers you. One option too is when you have your larval plant and we can talk about those a bit later. Put your larva plants those would be the plants of the caterpillars will eat. You can tuck those in the back of your garden or you can put them behind a taller plant. And that way you don't need to see the damage and the caterpillars can do their thing and you can still have what seems to be a perfect garden. You know it's going to. Gaze into me an insect that has had such a focus on

a narrow plant. Yeah that sounds worrying to me. What else does something happen to common milk would we lose our moderates if if. Unless they changed their way of eating. We definitely would lose our monarch and even as a monarch butterfly alone that it is whole life cycle if it's really a butterfly that connects three countries Canada the United States and Mexico and so every part of that butterfly habitat needs to be protected because if it's in our area we didn't have a good reproductive year with our milk weed. It would mean that we would be sending fewer butterflies self into Mexico and at the same time in Mexico if they have a freeze which has been occurring in the past few years. That means that monarchs will die and we won't have as many to come north to repopulate and so

that butterfly life cycle is not an easy one in in today's world. I know and I see them if I'm driving my car down the road and I see a monarch and it swoops off in front of me. So everything I can do to either not swerve and endanger everybody. Yeah well that's a great point because a lot of times our cars. Those are things that a lot of creatures have not adapted well to. And butterflies are no different and some butterflies if you don't fly higher than others. But some really stay low to the ground. And so if you are driving it I mean it also we save gas by doing that too but it makes a lot of sense to go slow if you do see butterflies crossing the road or on the edges of the road. Yeah I do that to put a little sign careful I swear for butterflies I know. Well getting back to the milk wait is that something you know I'm sure we can find the seed in from seed companies but can we gather the milk.

Odds are you can gather the milkweed pod the German germination rate isn't great but every year we do have baby milkweed coming up from our common No. We and so I would gather pods from a few plants. There are a lot of seeds in there and scatter them in the fall. Let them overwinter outside in the ground and we don't cover ours with anything but if it were windy you might just take a little bit of soil and sprinkle it over them. Or maybe some shredded leaves or something but we've had success doing that so it's a good it's worth trying. And when do you gather the pods. In the fall you'll notice you'll notice that the pods because they have that beautiful silky white payor and when the at that point the pods they're usually opening up and they're starting to spread those seeds and when you see that happening that's a good time to collect the seeds because they're already dispersing.

Yeah seems like they're kind of a dark rusty orange. Yeah they're a nice dark color. And that would be a great time to collect them. Well what other kind of help can you do in the garden. Are there butterflies in general that you can plant good nectar source. And this is a little bit getting back to the monarch's to nectar sources all year round. Sorry all season long are important and in the fall in particular when those monarchs are migrating and when are our local butterflies who hibernate for the winter are still in our garden. That's a time when a lot of common plants have either stopped producing nectar or they're they're dying off. And so that's a good time to have some native plant like asters and different like mattresses that would be blooming different goldenrod that would provide nectar during the fall for butterflies. Is there a particular type. Like I think about hummingbirds liking a particular style flower. How

do you know you've got good nectar producers. One thing that you can think about is the flower shape. And if you think about it Daisy shaped flower that the single petal to flower and it has that platform just like a daisy. That's easy nectar access and that's the main thing for a butterfly that it's easy for that butterfly to land on a flower or get its tongue inside and get the nectar. And so flowers that look like daisies. We think of asters coneflowers sunflowers The E-type flowers those are in good shape. And then also if you have clusters of small flowers like if you look at a milkweed flower those are excellent nectar sources. All of the milkweed flowers for butterflies not only monarch also the alliums. Those are like chives and different bulbs that you get in that family. Yeah those are good nectar sources

goldenrod and seed and they all have tiny. Clusters of flowers. So year 0 2 because then they'd be either Jackley each on top of them so very different than what a hummingbird is looking for. Are those long tube type things. Great Exactly. And another type of flower that will be attractive to butterflies is a bike a cluster of flowers. And if you think of like a delphinium or a lie actress or even the anaesthetist that herb that smells like licorice they are wand like and that's another really need to ease the way for a butterfly to land and access the nectar. And then. The last one I would mention it for a shape would be large single flowers things like Hollyhock mallows day lilies and against single petal flowers not the fancy doubles or you know the hybrid but single petal flowers that are easy for the butterfly to land on and access the nectar.

Now I notice that some some flowers are NON NON nectar producing some. Those hybrids is that something I watch out for. I would think that I wouldn't get those and I would say that if a person were thinking of buying a plant their first choice should be in need of plant and we have so many beautiful natives that are meant and made for our butterflies in the area as well as other insects and creatures. And so the first choice should always be a native especially if you're going to be buying new plants. That's what I would go with. What are some of your reasons for that. I mean I guess it's somewhat obvious but it's nice to hear them. Well when when you think about butterflies in the garden some butterflies actually over winter they hibernate and on sunny days when we usually have a snow thaw you know you can go out into the woods and you will see some of those butterflies like mourning cloaks are

some that you might see there. They're fairly big with brown wings and a yellow rim around them. Also some of the commas and tortoise shells might be out. Those butterflies are out when it's snowy on the ground. And yet if we have native trees that have that sucker holes like birches or maple those butterflies will be nectarine whenever there's SAP coming out of that tree. And so. Native plants will be emerging in producing for butterflies when our hybrids are still in the greenhouses under protection. And again you know they will extend they'll be blooming the whole season up into the fall. When butterflies desperately sometime need nectar and moisture and the other plants. If it's a dry year they might not be producing. And that's not to say that our native plants won't suffer if we're in a terrible drought because we've seen some of our trees. We know that. But those are those are plants

that are suited for this region and they're genetically programmed for our soil and weather. And again they have evolved with our insects and so they're a perfect choice for them. A butterfly is also regarded as pollinators. They are there or not as is up there on the scale as they bumble bees or other types of insects. The butterflies are pollinators too. And so they do help us in that sense. What is the life cycle of a butterfly is particular spars. How long are they actually living once they've. Hatched out of their normal stage. Some butterflies and I guess on average you could say a butterfly with an adult butterfly would live for maybe two to three weeks. But we also have butterflies that hibernate in the winter. Like I mentioned before and so those butterflies could live for several months and even thinking about the monarch butterfly Italy merge here in say August

and go all the way to Mexico over winter in Mexico and then start heading south again in in March. And so those butterflies are also very long lived up to six seven months or so. But in general a butterfly will hatch as an egg. You know the egg will be laid and then they become caterpillars and people who are gardening will be able to spot the eggs. Sometimes they're very very tiny They're like a pinhead size. But if you if you have the right host plant and you see the female butterfly you can go out afterwards and check for eggs. And then the caterpillar will emerge after anywhere from four to. The seven or eight days and that Caterpillar will mole that the skin is such that it's not flexible enough. And so as the caterpillar grows the caterpillar will actually shed its skin. And so you can see it growing from

a tiny little first in Star that's what they're called Between mole all the way up until a bigger Caterpillar and that's when it will be eating your plants or some of the flowers. And at that point when the caterpillar is mature it can sometimes wander the several yards away from your plant. So you have a monarch on milkweed. Well that Monarch caterpillar can wander. And what it's looking for is a dirty place on which to pupate. And so if it wants to find a place where it can do its transformation into the chrysalis stage. And so if you have host plants and you have some trees or some fences that you try to have some structure there. For them shrubs or anything garages fences the butterfly can crawl to that and those are areas too in your garden where you might find Crystal. And then the chrysalis

will be there for anywhere up to two weeks or so and that's when the butterfly will emerge. The adult butterfly and so even though when we think of butterfly gardening most of us think of the adult beautiful butterfly that creature is an insect and it goes through four distinct developmental stages all of which can occur in your garden. We're talking about gardening and your plants and in particular looking for structure. If it's crawling off or moving off of your your host plants so to speak. How about like if you have your flower garden next to your vegetable garden. Talk a little bit about that. Well you know that's a good question and it's difficult to see the crystal that and it's difficult to see the caterpillars because most Caterpillar's really are food for birds. And so you might have a big infestation of caterpillars. But you're you're going to have very

few by the time the birds are done feeding. And so it's not easy to see the caterpillars or the crystal because those creatures want to be invisible to birds and other insects or creatures that will eat them. And so if you have a vegetable garden and your caterpillars have wandered into there and just trying to think of the scenario usually things will be OK unless you're happening to harvest something and you're pulling down the whole plant. So you know what I'm saying. You know like if it happened to climb up onto a tomato plant or a Being stock or even a sunflower that might be in your garden as long as you're not pulling that plant out of the ground. I think it should be OK. But that's a good point too because in mid-summer which is right about now. You want to be extremely careful when you're weeding or pruning in your garden because you could be you could be destroying caterpillars

or a Right now even or crystal it. And so in midsummer. Take a break and really enjoy your garden but don't be in there clearing things out because then you could be taking away the the future butterflies. Interesting I think about that. I don't because the bad butterflies but sit around the broccoli crabs. Yeah right how do you know the difference between the good and the best. Well that's a great question because insects are insects and if you have broccoli and cabbage if you have a garden where you really want to harvest things. A good thing to do would be getting what's called a row cover and it's a it looks like white it's usually white colored and it's like a gauzy material and you can put that over those crops that you know are going to attract that

cabbage or white butterfly. And then the butterfly can't land on your planet but rain can still get in there. And so then when you see the butterfly isn't flying anymore then you can take off that broke cover and that way you can enjoy your plants and the butterflies can't get in there. And if you do have that little white butterfly and you want to provide for it you could plant the sturgeon and that's another flower that that butterfly will use in particular. And it will laid eggs on the assertion plant and you'll have nectar for butterflies. And then you can provide for the white little butterfly but you can save your your cabbage and your broccoli and things like that. And I didn't like. I've had success with that. So if you're going to try. Yeah that sounds great when the Nestors grow so fast and he leaves there munching it's no big deal. Exactly and that's a pretty plant to the head. Yeah that's pretty fascinating. What about you know people are actually instead of using the

roll covers I think Remey is another name for that. What if people choose to use BT instead is that a risk for the rest of your butterflies don't. I would say if you are a butterfly garden or BT kills caterpillars and so like you were saying WHAT'S A GOOD IN A BAD insect pesticides do not distinguish between a good and a bad insect and so it will kill butterflies and their caterpillars. So what I would say is be as pesticide free as you can. And if if if your garden is in balance and not all of our gardens are birds will help you a lot in your with and with caterpillars. So if you have a lot of birds if you provide for birds they're going to be a big help in getting rid of some of your past. But another option

might be to put your larval plant far enough away from the vegetable garden area that you don't have the caterpillars that you want to turn into butterflies wandering that far into the garden. Yeah that makes sense. Yeah sometimes two is the lifecycle of each of these just slightly different softwares like if you know you're putting the you know in specifically it's on say your broccoli plants. Is that minimizing the risk. My guess I'm not trying to say it's OK to do all this but just to be ready like you said be really careful but are there distinctive life cycles for each of these butterflies. Well the the point there would be if if you are using BP Typically you would be using it on a crop like you're saying broccoli. The only butterflies to my knowledge right now that that would use that would be those little white butterflies you know like the cabbage white and that and so other butterflies would not be trying to lay their eggs there. And so you would be reducing

You would be reducing the risk to other butterflies by only putting it on those plants. Yeah. So you wouldn't be you wouldn't be putting all butterflies at risk for that though your point of separating that those particular plants from your butterfly garden is still probably a good idea probably because if they do a lot of butterflies will wander and I have found you know the crystals on such odd places and some of them have been on other plants so it wouldn't be unusual for them to end up in your vegetable garden. If it were close enough. Yeah it's pretty interesting. So how. How else as far as the honor no. Well I guess I'm trying to say as far as their life cycle. So how do you know I mean if you haven't seen something hatching How do you know what that particular larval stage is can you identify a butterfly if you haven't yet haven't seen the female laying eggs and all the sudden you're discovering this how do you know what it is.

You can if you see an adult butterfly. You can go to a field guide and one field guide if you haven't been out among butterflies a lot and you want a field guide for just our area your listener area. Larry Webber's second edition not the first but the second edition of The Purple Book. It's called butterflies of the North Woods. And that covers Minnesota Wisconsin and Michigan. And that's a nice book to have it isn't huge. You can keep that with you and peek in there even before the butterfly season because once the butterflies are here sometimes you're so excited and you're looking through the book in the butterfly might be gone but look around. And that would be a good book to have with you when you're out in your garden. Can I mention some other books. Oh what a fight. There's another one by Douglas and Douglas called butterflies of the

Great Lakes region and that is an excellent resource on butterflies throughout the greatly. And again he has pictures of adult butterflies in there and range maps which are very very valuable because you get to see if the butterfly is in our area. And then there's another one from Minnesota State extension service by Nielsen called Michigan butterflies and skippers. And again it's a wonderful resource with range maps pictures of the adult butterflies that that's a very good resource for butterfly gardeners. And there is one last field guide that I really like when I'm out and about. It's the talisman focus guides. And he has one on butterflies of North America and this one I like in particular because when you're looking at a butterfly say you've identified it as the Fritillary. You can go to this book and look at that look at the page and he'll have a lot of pretty liveries on the same page so that when you're

looking at the butterfly and you're trying to find the distinguishing marks on a butterfly you can look at that book and say OK this is what it is. So those are great field guides for adult butterflies. When was the last one that you gave I didn't quite catch the first. Can Houseman K A U S M A N. And he's actually in a famous burger. And he has a focus Guide series for his birds butterflies mammals and he has an insect one too that's very good. So that's one that will have all of the North American butterflies and the first three were specific to our area which makes them very special. Yeah it does indeed. Well as we're talking about butterflies here it was Pat Thomas of Duluth. She's a well if gardener. And we're going to take a quick little musical break actually. The theme is butterflies so we're going to hear from the bothy band with a tune called the butterfly so you can just picture this

butterfly flitting around here. We'll be right back you're listening to Northern gardening here on North Shore radio. If you've got a gardening question in particular about butterfly gardens give us a ring 3 8 7 10 70 or 1 800 4 7 3 9 8 4 7. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks.

Thanks. Thanks. For listening to Northern gardening here on North Shore radio supporting our then gardening comes from Evergreen originals greenhouse located at 16th sky port lane in grand Marie evergreen originals greenhouse specializes in emulous and perennials for our northern climate also offering veggies herbs and a wide selection of hanging baskets tubs and planters. Information and bailable in person are at 3 8 7 2 8 6 2 and support a northern gardening also comes from superior lumber and sports a full sized lumber and hardware store located one mile east of Grand Moray superior lumber and sports is locally owned and offers a wide range of garden supplies patio furniture and outdoor cooking grills. More information available at 3 8 7 1 7 7 1. And again the whole tune was the butterfly by

the bothy band. Kind of a fun you can just compact can't you just picture butterflies flitting around. I would love to picture those right now so cold that it is cold. Speaking with Pat Thomas he is a wild life gardener from Duluth we're talking about butterfly gardening here on Northern gardening. Yeah it is cold and does that affect how does that affect the butterflies. Well butterflies are cold blooded insects. They're cold blooded. And that means that for them to be able to get their flight muscle moving they have to be warm and some butterflies can actually shiver to do that. And monarchs are one of those. They can shiver in that warmth up their muscles. But other butterflies need to find a warm spot early in the morning where the sun is hitting them. And so you might see them on rock you could see them on trees like arborvitae you that are facing that early morning sun and they'll just be sitting there with their wings spread open. Sometimes they'll

close their wings and tilt to the side and what they're doing is they're they're getting the solar energy to warm up their muscles and then they can fly. So right now we've got fog here and there are no butterflies. Now there's not very many people out either. No. But so that makes me think too that as far as doing about it like garden you should also be thinking about protection. Exactly exactly. You know what are your recommendations. Well a good thing is especially if you're near the lake in your garden know which way the wind is blowing and try to put your plant in an area where you either have a fence to protect that wind or make a fence with Shrub. Put up a fence. The can. It doesn't have to be fancy fence and put some vines on that so that that's the wind protector. But you want to put it in a spot that's fairly sheltered from the wind. And that will still be sunny because you most of the flowers that are going to give

nectar will require sunshine to produce the nectar. So yeah you do want to sheltered spot. What about overwintering. I mean some of the butterflies and monarchs are taken off but are there some that are hanging around. There are some Exactly that we have that over winter in our area and in fact we have unless the butterfly leaves like the monarch we have some part of the butterfly life cycle here throughout the year. We don't always think about that but in the winter we'll either have a caterpillars chrysalis or adult butterflies in some in some form or another in our area. And so adult butterflies that over winter would be butterflies like the morning cloak. Some of the tortoise shells and what they will do is they will seek shelter in different places. You might find them in unheated garage is you could find them in cars that are abandoned. You can find them

in your woodpile. You'll find them under the leaf litter even under bark. That's loose on trees or down below an old tree where the roots have areas that something could climb under there. That's where those butterflies will will be protected for the winter. And so those are great things to provide if you have old trees near your yard or in your yard with bark on them. Those will be excellent places for butterflies to to use for overwintering. And what about others. There's one that looks like the monarch of a kind you mentioned earlier that monarchs have a kind of a nasty flavor. And this this is one that's actually tasty to other records isn't it I can't remember the name of it I think it's of if you're talking about the Viceroy. Yes. And they're out in Duluth right now we saw some on Sunday. And if you have willows you might look for those butterflies there and they're a little bit smaller than the monarch I mean if you see the two of them together. And if you see the flight pattern

it doesn't seem as strong to me as the monarch you know. Yeah but at first glance you think oh wow there's a monarch and those are really neat butterfly too. Yeah. Today over winter up here I will go over winter in some form but they don't overwinter as an adult. Let me just check Larry Weber's book. Quickly they overwinter and see His book is so great because he tells you all these things. They overwinter as caterpillars and I did. Know this if you they overwinter in the leaf the they kind of it'll look like a leaf hanging on the tree that's dead. But if it's really a little face or a caterpillar and there have to be careful but not get rid of those little dead leaves. I know it's so important. Oh important if when you become a butterfly gardener you don't want to kill anything you don't want to remove anything because you know what could happen. But what about some of the swallow tails or another absolutely stunning butterfly.

Yeah we've got those. If you're a gardener you might already have playing it for the black swallowtail. And they should be out now although we don't have any in our yard right now. The black solid tail is if you've got parsley Dill fennel even that beautiful tall Herb Angelica. That butterfly will lay its eggs on those types of plants for you. And again if you are harvesting your parsley be careful of that and in some garden catalogs I see people talking about the parsley worm and actually that worm is the black swallowtail caterpillar. So if you destroy that parsley you're destroying that Caterpillar again be very careful when you're harvesting your partly or if you want to protect them for you to harvest cover it with that cover with that remains.

Can you know that I mean you can find a you know worm crawling around in your purse like could you just move it over to say some copper snapper to a different plant. That's the you need to be careful because you need to know that that Caterpillar will use that new plant not all caterpillars will do that. And so you can't just move it to another plant. You could move that to another parsley plant and you could try if you had dill or fennel or Anjelica you could put that little caterpillar on those plants but you'd need to want to make sure that the caterpillar was eating ok because you just can't move it to any plant. It would have to be one of it. They call them whole plants or larval plants. Yeah that Caterpillar will use. And what about the yellow swallowtail so they have favorite plants. They they use a lot of our trees that we probably have in our in in our neighborhood like Aspen and birches and willows and cherry trees. We have a Tiger

Swallowtail on our little cherry tree last summer. And if you if you do see that butterfly near any of those trees and they're low enough for you to go to that Caterpillar starts out looking like a little bird dropping. And so you see a brown caterpillar with a white line in the middle. And then by the time it's a mature Caterpillar it's actually a green caterpillar with two eye spots on it. And if you were a bird looking at that you would think it was a little green snake. Funny. And that's a really neat caterpillar to try to find on those trees. Really. Goodness. What about like for instance a lot of times I see the yellow swell tails remember some of the others puddling. What what is happening there. What is that mean. Puzzling means that you see like you're saying a lot of butterflies and they're generally in a little group and you see them on the ground typically in wet areas and you can see that on the shores of Lake Superior on some beaches you

can see it when you're walking through the woods on a path that more ways what they're doing is we think usually there are male butterflies and they're sipping minerals and salt from the soil. And if you think about the caterpillars diet most of our caterpillars there's just one that's called the Harvester. Most of our caterpillars eat that's plant material. And so when it's time to reproduce the male butterflies get minerals and any other thing nutrients that they need from the soil and they pass those onto the female when it's time for her to lay her eggs. And so what they're getting from that wet soil or from animal dung if you see Wolf GAD or coyote scat I think even Fox scat probably those butterflies are shipping out nutrients necessary for the eggs for reproduction.

Wow that's interesting I was fun to come across them when they're in like a puddle of water. The last minutes of scat. But yeah exactly. It's beautiful the CM and they all raise up and they go back down. Exactly. So neat to see. Yeah. What about they're talking a little bit about resources and be nice you know you mentioned. You know there are some online resources for monarchs. There are. You can follow the Monarch migration obviously right now with air here but you can go to a website called journey north. And that website follows the migration of monarchs and hummingbirds and many other creatures. And so they show you the fall migration down to Mexico during the winter they have reports on the activities of the butterflies and the forests down in Mexico and then when the butterflies start to come

north they follow them and they track them. And they also do hummingbirds. So by going on that website you have a really clear idea of when to get the hummingbird feeders out. And you kind of know one or more of us when to expect the monarch. And then is there if you want to be a butterfly garden is there any any kind of process you go through aspires. Matter of recognition is the right word but user certification process. There are there are and you can. Your garden can be certified as a monarch waste station and to get information on that you could again go to the computer and look up monarch way station in the University of Kansas. I think it might be called Monarch Watch. But if you googled in Monarch University of Kansas that way station I think it would come up and another organization that certifies backyard habitat is the National Wildlife Federation. And if you go on their Web site they

have a tremendous amount of information to help you get started with wildlife gardening and butterfly gardening. What will the requirements of being a way station for monarchs. You've got to have a certain amount of milkweed and you have to provide nectar plants for especially fall but throughout the summer and I can't remember other requirements for that. But those are the two main ones I think as far as planting that you would need to do. It's not difficult. It really isn't. And it's kind of nice because you you do. You can purchase the fine if you want. And I think they might have you in a database so that if anyone were interested in learning about monarchs and the way stations they might be able to contact you. And it I think it's a nice way to make people aware of the fact that monarchs do need our help these days.

I think more than even in the past. And so it's a way to really provide for them here while they're reproducing so that we can get a strong group of butterflies to head back to Mexico. Yeah it does seem like that is somebody actually come out to certify you or is that a sort of a self-certification self-certification. Yeah and I think you can send in pictures if you want to I didn't send any pictures when we did ours although I have the thought to do that but I just haven't gotten around to it. We're speaking with Pat Thomas lives in Duluth a wildlife gardener which actually. So what does that mean. Wildlife gardeners they do focus on more than just butterflies. I do I try to make our yard kind of I don't like to use the word a sanctuary but I try to make it a home for other creatures and not just. And so in our yard what that means is that it's not always as tidy as most gardens would be. And like we were talking about before in midsummer

I try not to we eat a lot. I try to let things just be. And it also means that in the fall I don't do the traditional fall cleanup where you're pulling everything out and clearing vegetation because that's where a lot of a lot of creatures will be hibernating. And I guess that means too that when you when you're thinking about planting something I always think about how will that plant serve. A bird or a butterfly. Another insect or a chipmunk or a growl. And that's how I try to make my selections when I'm planting in the garden so it isn't mostly for it isn't really about beauty at all for me it's about a native plant typically or an herb being functional for wildlife. So the concern that people have about things overwintering as far as disease in their vegetable garden you can happily clean up in there but don't touch that. Oh right you did.

And you know when you think about some of the plants that you have some of them might be producing seeds like the purple coneflowers for example. They're some of the sunflowers and leaving those types of things up even the Angelika that I'm staring at now. That's a very tall plant. And some insects will lay their eggs in stocks of plants like you might see golden rod gall and woodpeckers will use that during the winter and and little insects might be hibernating on the flower areas and so on and so when the warblers migrate through you have great insects for birds to eat on their migration. It creates some real nice visual interest. Just the plant structure itself after and we have long winters. So with me it is perfect to have it for that reason. Yeah absolutely. Exactly as we're talking about plants in Angelica in particular is difficult to start from seed.

Where are some good places to obtain these particular native plants or what I would do like in it in your list in their area. Is it take to locate a native nursery closest to them perhaps go online look up the Minnesota Wisconsin Michigan Native Plant Society and contact them to see if they can recommend a good native nurseries. And also wild ones is an organization that like native plant. But in our area in Cloquet we have a native nursery called Boreal native and they are very good for native plants. They can be found on line at Prairie resto dot com and there's another nursery in Wisconsin in South Range called leaning pine. There are three native and they're also very very good for the south shore of Lake Superior.

In prairie restoration is the mother company for Boreal native. So there are there are there are some good nurseries and I think there are going to be more good nurseries. But it's important to if you can to buy your plants from one that's closest to you. And also very important to know that that nursery does not take plants from the wild because some of these stores specially like discount stores that have native plants. You really need to be careful that that they're not digging those from the wild. And sometimes you can tell by looking at how it is in the pot. But oftentimes you can't. So I would recommend that that the listener go ask the Native Plant societies or work or contact the wildland organization or contact Boreal native and I can give you more contact info if you'd like for that and they can really help.

You know one local resources actually are local extension. Agencies like can call Diane booth no matter what that is 3 8 7 3 0 1 5. She's located at the community center in grammarian and know she has a lot of resources about native plants. Perfect that's perfect. It seems to me that there are some cool K1 is great that's very close for us and it has a possibility of some that are closer yet. But Diane would have that information and I don't have the names right in front of me so but she does. And again she's 3 8 7 3 0 1 5 and we should also thank her too because she helps get our hosts here on Northern gardening and she's the one who connected us up with Pat Thomas who's speaking with us today so you mentioned that there's another on line as far as natives. Yeah if you if you go to prairie restoration I think that the company it's a little bit further south in Minnesota

and they have opened up. Nurseries in other parts of the state in order to serve the local needs of the plant people. So folks who are willing to even dabble around a little bit a zone differences economically. It really. Yeah exactly. It's kind of fun. What are some butterflies that you've been seeing lately in your garden you mentioned black swallow tails but what else is there to be seen. We have finally seen the white admiral and some of the Northern Crescent. We have seen Canadian Tiger Swallowtail the one yellow one we've not seen a lot of butterflies this year I hate to say that we've had monarchs but very few. And we've had a little cabbage white and some of the yellow sulfur but we've had very few butterflies in our yard this year and we've not had caterpillars like we normally have. We've had very

very few caterpillars in our yard this year. Why do you think. Well I think partly it could be because of the coldly spring we had. And so those butterflies just didn't get their eggs laid. But again you know I'm I'm hoping and thinking that in other areas people have had these butterflies. So you know the populations are always going to fluctuate and bury. But in fact in the one year you might have none or very few in the next year you might have a have a lot more. So hopefully next summer will be more normal than some of the other as a chrysalis can that actually over winter even or you know whole summer. I mean if you lose a whole lot because of this cold weather or not you mention that the strong next Yeah. Does that happen. Well that's a good question because I recently read that and I think it was with the black swallowtail that some of their crystal it will not

emerge the following year if the conditions are right. Well some of them will and some of them and like your question maybe sometimes the butterfly continues to remain in the chrysalis for following year with different conditions or just to ensure that there would be a butterfly the following year. Yeah you would. An entire right and I'm not exactly certain of what I just said but I recently read that and it could be for that reason and I hadn't known that before. Yeah I thought that they all emerged that you know that when when they would all emerge at the same time the same year rather interesting. But it's nice to think that that can be dispersed a little bit more. Just in case. Exactly exactly. Yeah. How about any other words if you just have a couple minutes left to get any other last minute encouragement to folks who want to do butterfly gardening. I would say whatever you do is important to butterfly no

matter how small the effort. It's important to do something and even if you have a pot of parsley on your porch it will attract hopefully a black swallowtail caterpillar. If you have plants like stinging nettle and you know that's kind of considered a weed let them be because they provide for our caterpillars and butterflies and I guess I would say don't feel you have to always be so neat and tidy in the garden because butterflies are wild creatures and I think you need to be a little bit of a wild gardener too to live with them sometimes and be gentle and you don't have to be perfect and the garden can help. Roughness around the edges. Exactly that's exactly true. Yeah. Perfect. Yeah it helps a lot for the folks a lot of folks up here are actually gardening just right on the edge of the wood cell. That transition is a little easier than say maybe in a more suburban

setting and I've noticed even grammarian with some of the different gardens the the dividing line between some of the different lots are sometimes actually quite a swath right of like woodland right. So that helps that the butterflies in the transition area and you know combining yards is a great idea with you just saying you can see the neighbors and hear something because a lot of times you can't provide all the variety that's needed in your one yard. And by combining efforts with neighbors you can learn so much together and you can spread that variety of plants you can also purchase bulk plants and share them throughout the neighborhood. That's a great way to garden for butterflies. I like that. That's fun idea. And it encourages to get you out there. Yeah I mention again that the me that prairie resto dot com as far as the Boreal natives in Cloquet great. That's one good resource and then just to recap to run some of those books that are

available Larry Weber second edition butterflies in the north woods and the butterflies of the Great Lakes region by Douglas and Douglas. And so you had two others the Nielsens Michigan butterflies and skippers. Yes but are sick and butterflies and skippers or skippers skippers are little. Usually they're like an orange color. Sometimes people didn't think they will. That's why they're called skippers because they're kind of different from butterfly so very small there their bodies look more like a little furry Moss body there. They're tiny and they're they're fat and they a lot of them will use grasses for their age and so they're they're kind of just separated from butterflies but they're considered they are of a butterfly but they're just a little bit different Nielsen's Michigan butterflies and skippers will help us out. And that in your last one can Kaufman can tell when yeah you know the focus guides for butterflies in north of North America.

Thank you I mentioned one book more here. It's called the life cycles of butterflies and it's by Judy Burgess and wean Richard and that is an excellent book because it shows you common garden butterflies and it shows you the way the Caterpillar the chrysalis and the adult butterfly and it gives you a little bit of resources on what they eat. It's an excellent book and it's beautiful. Perfect. Yeah well that. Concludes our reading gardening here. Thank you very very much. To Pat Thomas of Duluth appreciate you joining us to talk about butterflies here in northern gardening. Thanks for spreading the word about butter. Why did they have it and be rebroadcast on Thursday and have your gardening gloves on here again if you've got gardening questions you can call us at 3 8 7 10 70 or 1 800 4 7 3 9 8 4 7. I've been your host Paula send it. Glad to be with you here on Earth and gardening.