Roll Out the Barrel

Now that we've finally tamed the backyard again, we decided it needed a little color. Since we just finished laying new landscape paper to block the weeds, we didn't want to cut through it and give the suckers a chance to grow again. Instead, we added some half-barrel planters to the yard.

The original plan was to buy wooden whiskey barrels, but I went to the store by myself to get them, and wow - those things are heavy! So, I found these lightweight resin ones instead. They may not last more than few years, but they were much easier to move. I drilled a few holes in the bottom for better drainage first, and then added some organic potting soil.

Then came the fun part - adding the plants! I had picked up a bunch of calibrachoa and petunias on the Lowe's clearance racks a few weeks ago and hand't yet decided what to do with them. I wound up mixing them with some Agastache rupestris, sometimes called Rose Mint Hyssop, making for containers full of butterfly attractants.

Agastache rupestris

Calibrachoa 'Coralberry Punch'

Petunia and Calibrachoa 'Coralberry Punch'

Plants in containers may require a little extra water, but fortunately we had some nice rains last weekend to fill up the rain barrel. This color and plant combination should be irresistible to butterflies now that our Florida weather has finally returned (what's up with 40-degree nights at the end of March, anyway?). These barrels give My Florida Backyard just the kick of color it needs to welcome spring!

Right Where I Belong

Last Tuesday, I teased you with some mystery flowers in my Home Depot shopping cart. I certainly didn't intend for it to take a week for me to get back to you with the answer, but isn't it funny how life just gets away from you? Work, errands, holiday planning, more work... well, anyway, I finally found time to plant my precious flowers and now I proudly present to you my very favorite Florida native wildflower: Tampa Mock Vervain (Glandularia tampensis)!

Not every town has a flower named after it, but Tampa does, and it's a lovely one at that. Endemic to just a handful of counties along the western coast of Florida, Tampa Mock Vervain is endangered mostly due to habitat loss. Fortunately, it's generally available at Bay area Home Depot stores this time of year, as well as at just about any local native plant nursery. It will bloom happily until the hot summer hits around June, so now is the time to plant it. (Learn more about Tampa Mock Vervain in this post from last year.)

It's been extraordinarily dry here for the last six weeks or so, with virtually no rain and none in the forecast either.  Although Tampa Vervain is drought-tolerant, it will flower best with regular water, so I decided to plant mine in containers this year. That way, I have more control over the watering and can effectively use what's left in our rain barrel before resorting to the hose. I found these little rock planters on clearance at the end of the summer and have been looking for a good chance to use them, so this is perfect timing!

So why do I love Tampa Vervain so much? Aside from the glorious purple flower clusters (I can never capture the color just right with my camera) and the fact that planting it helps support an endangered species named for the city where I live? Well, the answer to that is easy...

Butterflies love it! Really, there's no downside to this plant. It deserves a place in every cool-season butterfly garden in Central Florida... and My Florida Backyard is happy to have it once again!

In Bloom

We've finally replanted the butterfly garden, and although it still really needs a new layer of mulch, at least the plants are in and doing well.

The key to a good butterfly garden is including both host plants and nectar plants. For the nectar plants, using different colors and heights is also effective, and grouping plants together in clusters of colors gives a nice aesthetic and the bugs seem to like it too. To perk up the garden for the cooler months, here are the plants we added:

Salvia farinacea 

Pentas lanceolata in red...

and pink.

Agastache foeniculum

Lavendula pinnata

And of course, plenty of milkweed, both red and yellow flowering.

It's nice to have a backyard full of color again, and on warm afternoons the butterflies are definitely enjoying it. It's good to be getting My Florida Backyard back into the swing of things again!

Black and White

The rainy season officially started on June 1, and we ushered it in here in My Florida Backyard with almost three inches of rain. After watching almost of all TS Beryl's rain go north and east of us, it was wonderful to see our rain gauge fill at last. The plants in the garden seemed to perk up almost immediately, as often happens after a nice rain. We took a little stroll around the yard to check things out, and discovered this random passionvine that we don't remember planting...

...at least not in this exact spot. We do have some about 25 feet away, and passionvines are definitely known for spreading underground and popping up in new places. This one is Florida's native Maypop (Passiflora incarnata), which is so aggressive that many people consider it a pest in their gardens. We don't mind it, because it generally gets eaten so quickly by Gulf Fritillary caterpillars that it doesn't have time to cause problems. Interestingly, though, it wasn't Gulf Fritillary caterpillars we discovered on the Maypop...

... it was Zebra Longwing (Heliconius charithonia) caterpillars! This was pretty exciting, because this is the first time we've documented Zebra Longwing caterpillars in our yard. I raise them at work all the time, and I've written about them on My Florida Backyard before, but it's so fun to have them here naturally.

These are one of my all-time favorite Florida native caterpillars. The stark black-and-white coloration, the crazy long (but completely harmless) spikes, the reddish color on their legs and prolegs - they're just really fascinating. These caterpillars are just about full-grown, and soon will pupate into chrysalis - also some of my favorites, as they look like tiny upside-down bats.

Zebra Longwing butterflies are actually pretty rare sightings in our yard; we don't remember seeing one here in several years. They're obviously around though. They have a great affinity for firebush as nectar plants, and this passionvine just happens to be climbing up one, so this is a perfect corner of our garden for them. We'll know now to keep our eye out for them, both as caterpillars and adult butterflies.

Take a Picture

I strolled outside this afternoon to water a few plants, and found some Polydamas Swallowtail caterpillars on the pipevine, apparently just waiting for a photo shoot. I was only too happy to oblige.

I call this one "Walkin' on Air"...

"Along Came a Spider"

And my personal favorite, "Polydamas in Paradise"

Incidentally, this is by far the earliest we've had Polydamas ST larva in My Florida Backyard. Last year, we were almost into summer before they appeared. 2012 has been an unusual year, to say the least.

Rose Tint My World

It's no secret that we love salvia in the My Florida Backyard butterfly garden, and native Salvia coccinea is our favorite. It reseeds freely, grows in pretty much all conditions, and draws butterflies like a magnet. In recent years, new cultivars of this species have become available, as growers work to provide us with a wider range of colors than the original (and still beloved) red. 'Snow Nymph' offers white flowers, while cultivars like 'Coral Nymph' and 'Summer Jewel Pink' come in different shades of pink.

All this mixing and hybridizing means that some interesting in-between shades sometimes pop up, like this pretty deep rose color we found a few weeks ago at Wilcox Nursery in Largo.

This shade is different than the other S. coccinea varieties that we've found, and it's hard to know if it will set seed or continue to flower in this deep pink hue. But another salvia never goes unappreciated in the butterfly garden, no matter what the color, and we're always glad to have more in My Florida Backyard!

Two Little Flowers

The spring rehabilitation of My Florida Backyard has begun at last! We started small, with our favorite cool season wildflower - it's Tampa Vervain time! Each year, we wait eagerly for Tampa Mock Vervain (Glandularia tampensis) to start showing up at nurseries. Butterflies love it, and it flowers non-stop from now until the hot and humid summer days set in.

We mixed it with another tiny flower that butterflies adore, gold lantana (Lantana camara 'New Gold'). We like this lantana because even though some varieties of L. camara are found on the invasive lists, 'New Gold' is considered sterile and doesn't spread beyond where you plant it.

Purple and yellow is one of our favorite color combinations - together the two just look so happy and spring-like. And this will make a nice little corner for butterflies to visit while we work on the rest of the yard and gardens.

There's plenty more planting ahead this weekend in My Florida Backyard, so drop by in a few days to see the changes!

Natural Blues

As you may know, we can't really get enough salvia in My Florida Backyard. We love discovering a new species to add to the collection, so when we found Bi-color Sage (Salvia sinaloensis) a few months ago, we knew we needed it. We bought two and planted them, but before we could get any pictures, they stopped blooming. Last week's rain seems to have brought them back, though, and flower spikes have started to appear again.

This salvia is native to Mexico, as indicated by the botanical name - sinaloensis refers to the Sinaloa district of Mexico where the plant was first identified. The common name refers to the two colors of the blooms, blue with white centers.

The blooms spikes are gorgeous, but the foliage has a lot going for it too. It forms a nice low-growing mat of green and bronze leaves, making great ground-cover. Bicolor sage can be grown in full sun to part shade, and is said to be hardy all the way down to zero degrees, so we expect it to do quite well here even if we have a frost or two.

Nearly all salvias are wonderful in the butterfly garden as nectar plants (with Salvia splendens being a notable exception), so we can never have too much. Easy to grow, easy to love... those are the kinds of plants we love in My Florida Backyard!

Mexico Came Here

Fall in Florida is the season of purples. Asters, muhly, beautyberry - so many of fall's fantastic showstoppers here are purple. Another great example is Mexican Sage (Salvia leucantha), which begins blooming in early fall and lasts until first frost.

Though not native to Florida (it hails from Central American and Mexico), Mexican Sage is well-suited to our climate and shows no invasive tendencies. It has silvery green foliage that grows into almost shrub-like proportions by the end of summer (3 feet high and tall), when the flower stalks emerge and add another foot or so to the height. (Ours are still small - we planted them only a month or so ago when we got a great deal on the clearance rack at Lowe's.)

The stalks and calyxes are purple and fuzzy, while the blooms themselves are a soft white color. This late-bloomer is a favorite of pollinators like bees and butterflies, and is very easy to maintain. After the first flush of blooms has finished, cut back to the base (you'll see the new growth beneath) for continued blooming as long as the season permits.

Mexican Sage will likely die back to the ground if we have a hard frost, but will re-grow quickly once warmer weather arrives. We always love adding new salvia species to the butterfly garden in My Florida Backyard - especially those that add to the purple pageant of autumn!

Mellow Yellow

Fall is the time of purple and gold in My Florida Backyard, and one of the brightest patches of yellow comes from the Winter Cassia (Cassia bicapsularis syn. Senna bicapsularis). This shrub provides a bright burst of color from now through the first frost with its unusual flowers, but that's not the only way it provides gold in the garden. You see, cassia species are host plants for sulphur caterpillars of several varieties. Normally, these caterpillars are the same green shade as the leaves they eat. But when the flowering season arrives, the caterpillars immediately begin to dine on this delicacy, and as a result - they turn bright yellow.

The species above is an Orange-Barred Sulphur caterpillar, but Cloudless Sulphur butterflies (shown below) will lay on cassia as well, along with the smaller Sleepy Orange. They generally lay far more eggs than will ever hatch - Winter Cassia is extremely attractive to ants, and while harvesting nectar the ants will also gobble up any sulphur eggs along the way. Fortunately, sulphur butterflies seem to haunt these bushes, laying eggs from spring to first frost, so their continued success is pretty well-assured.

It should be noted that some organizations place Cassia bicapsularis on invasive species lists, but other groups, like the University of Florida Extension, are not concerned and in fact continue to recommend this bush for planting. To add to the mess, C. bicapsularis is sometimes confused with Senna pendula, a similar and possibly more invasive species. You can use your own judgment on whether to include this non-native in your own landscape, but in My Florida Backyard, we feel comfortable enough with this plant to enjoy the incredible benefits it brings to the butterfly garden, including the bright yellow caterpillars of fall.

P.S. Nov. 7: A quick update - here's a good article from FloridaGardener.com with more info about the differences between C. bicapsularis and S. pendula.

'Tis Autumn

At last, fall weather has arrived. The days are still plenty warm, but the nights are generally cooler, and good breezes have made working outdoors pleasant again. We spent the weekend cleaning up the backyard and putting in a few new plants. We love to hit the markdown rack at the Lowe's garden center, where perfectly good plants that just need some love are often available at a bargain. This week, we found some Mexican Sage that just needed to be cut back and watered well (more on that in another post) along with some wonderful Anise Hyssop plants.

Anise Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) isn't a true hyssop but, like the Agastache rupestris we planted last spring, it's a member of the mint family (Lamiaceae). The tiny flowers attract bees and butterflies by the dozens, and humans enjoy the licorice scent of the foliage.

Anise Hyssop is native to the northern part of the U.S. and Canada. That makes it perfect for growing in Florida in the cooler months. If we cover it from hard freezes, we should have it right through spring. It likes sunny spots for best flowering, and will need a little supplemental watering during the driest spells. Cutting back the flower stalks after they bloom will help encourage further flowers. Northern growers note that this plant re-seeds prolifically, but I don't expect that to be too much of a problem here, as it is unlikely to survive the hot wet summers.

At the butterfly garden where I work, Anise Hyssop is one of the biggest draws for butterflies. Here in My Florida Backyard, we were especially pleased to get these plants because they were marked down to half-price ($5 each for plants in 2.25 gallon pots) even though they seemed to be in perfect condition. They were a fantastic bargain and are helping to replenish the butterfly garden as we head into the wonderful months ahead.

Hidden Away

We know we've been a little remiss with the blog posts here on My Florida Backyard lately. It seems we're in the doldrums of late summer, with not much happening. We've started clearing out some of the overgrowth lately, though, getting ready for some fresh fall plantings whenever that cooler fall weather arrives. Recent rains and winds had beaten our amazing forest of Partridge Pea down, so we removed nearly all of it, leaving just a few plants to provide seed for next year. The butterfly garden is very bare without it.

On the plus side it gave us a chance to rediscover some of the plants tucked away underneath it all. The dotted horsemint (Monarda punctata) is even more prolific than we had realized.

Some 'Coral Nymph' Salvia coccinea is doing pretty well under there as well, along with some purple Lantana montevidensis.

Nearby, after pulling some overgrown grass and other weeds, we found some brilliant pink Pentas lanceolata, along with an orange zinnia that must have popped up from seed.

So, we found some hidden treasure in the garden, which was nice. Oh, and don't worry about the sulphur butterflies who were using the Partridge Pea as host plants - they've got plenty of room on the nearby Cassia bicapsularis for their caterpillars!