New Garden + A Question or Two

[N F C]

for the butterflies, we had many attracted to our Dill plant (swallowtail, maybe?). Then a friend was getting monarch (?) eggs and caterpillars from a neighbor's milkweed plant to raise inside for her kid's experience. So, these might work for you if interested.

I had a pretty large herb garden when we lived in FL. The swallowtail loved the dill!

 

[Fishkeeper]

There's a kind of dill called mammoth dill. It gets something like 5 feet tall, and as such, is great for swallowtail caterpillars because it has more to eat. I highly suggest planting some. It grows pretty readily from seed. I got a potted one that I thought was fennel, and my goodness was it a surprise when it grew as tall as I am. When it flowers, it can nearly hit 7 feet. Just about every year, we get black swallowtail caterpillars. They grow as big as your finger, and have a snake-tongue-scented stink gland that they can stick out to ward off predators. It's a concentrated dill-smell on the gland, and the cats sure hate it, so I'm guessing it works well. They aren't toxic, just stinky. You'll probably never see the chrysalises, they tend to hide them pretty well. In fact, they also tend to disperse out from the plant to make chrysalises. If you see all your caterpillars abandoning ship when they get big, that's why.

 

[N F C]

There's a kind of dill called mammoth dill. It gets something like 5 feet tall, and as such, is great for swallowtail caterpillars because it has more to eat. I highly suggest planting some. It grows pretty readily from seed. I got a potted one that I thought was fennel, and my goodness was it a surprise when it grew as tall as I am. When it flowers, it can nearly hit 7 feet. Just about every year, we get black swallowtail caterpillars. They grow as big as your finger, and have a snake-tongue-scented stink gland that they can stick out to ward off predators. It's a concentrated dill-smell on the gland, and the cats sure hate it, so I'm guessing it works well. They aren't toxic, just stinky. You'll probably never see the chrysalises, they tend to hide them pretty well. In fact, they also tend to disperse out from the plant to make chrysalises. If you see all your caterpillars abandoning ship when they get big, that's why.

That dill sounds awesome...do you by chance of a picture?

 

[AdaliaStark]

That dill sounds awesome...do you by chance of a picture?

I would also like to see a picture! I will have to look and see of those plants grow in zone 5, I will pick some up if they do!

 

[AdaliaStark]

Me and my mom are going to check out a local nursery after work, just wander and see what we can find; which likely won't be much given that it is going to about 40 today but we can still look! I did look up the milkweed and the mammoth dill, they both seem to grow in zone 5 so we will be looking at getting them at somepoint! We might also try asking the nursery about the apple trees.