Image by lewiselementary via Flickr

by Adam Fulford

Interested in making your own butterfly garden? Great! You and I, we’re already friends.

Stop and Watch the Butterflies

This is what you do. Step out, look around you. Look at the kinds of butterflies that visit your neighborhood. Slowly. Don’t rush these things.

What Flowers Do Butterflies Favor?

Note down the flowers that the butterflies frequent. Find out the names of the plants. Note the colors, the fragrances, the dimensions, how big are the clusters of the same type of flowers. (You’ll notice you won’t see just one individual plant or two). Note down the height of the plants, how they’re placed in relation to one another.

Butterflies Like Puddles

Do you see a little patch of moist mud, a little puddle of water that the butterflies drink water from or the flat rock or wall around it? Take a long look at how butterflies behave. You could supplement your findings by reading books about butterflies and their habitats, checking out internet sites, talking to butterfly experts or professionals (they’re called lepidopterists) or you might also find dedicated organizations in your county or province that are associated with butterfly watching and study.

Now you’re ready to begin.

Perhaps, it would be best if you plant the seeds in small pots or containers while you ready the soil in the patch of land you’ve earmarked for the butterfly garden. This way the seeds are protected from birds and simultaneously the soil is turned to make it ready for the sapling. (Be sure you have the right soil that fosters healthy growth of these plants).

Choose a Sunny Spot

Butterflies love to bask in the sun and are not tolerant to the cold. Give them a shelter away from the wind and rain. Make sure there’s a flat piece of rock or wall where butterflies can bask and obtain energy in their wings before they take flight. Place small, moist mud puddles within the garden so the butterflies can extract water and salts from them.

A Butterfly Garden Should Be Constantly Blooming

You should know the bloom times of different plants and try to plant in such a way that there are enough flowers in bloom throughout the butterfly season. Butterflies generally surface from early spring and are visible right through until autumn. Make sure you grow plants that provide nectar as well as ‘growth food’ for the caterpillars throughout this period so as to keep them coming to you. Annuals bloom throughout the season, providing an unending supply of nectar. Perennials too are great butterfly attracters.

Butterflies Favor Clusters of Fragrant Flowers

Butterflies do not have strong eyesight but they have a strong sense of smell. Rather than plant individual saplings that produce individual pinpoints of color, you should plant clusters of the same saplings so the butterflies see large splashes of color. Generally, butterflies prefer white, purple, red, orange and yellow. Some plants grow tall, some short. Plant the taller ones behind the shorter ones. Make sure that the flowers of the plants you plant are good sources of nectar. Avoid those large, bulbous showy flowers. They are poor nectar sources. Ideally, flowers with multiple florets produce a good quantity of nectar and butterflies are naturally attracted to them.

Butterfly Host Plants

In all this, do not forget that you also need to have ‘host’ plants in your garden. These are plants that the adult butterfly lays her eggs on and whose leaves the emerging caterpillar can chew on and grow before it forms a cocoon around itself and metamorphoses into a butterfly. Remember, butterflies are basically searching for these two very important types of plants: nectar producing plants and ‘host’ plants.

Enjoy!

And your objective is to watch them.

Image via Wikipedia

by Adam Fulford, InsatiableGardener.com

A Delightful Addition to Indoor Gardens

Native to tropical regions all over the Americas and the Caribbean, Oncidium orchids are also known as “Dancing Girls”, renowned for their bright and showy yellow flowers with ruffled edges that look like a troop of ballerinas in frilly yellow dresses. Some varieties may exhibit orange, red, pink, white, or blue flowers. Dancing Girls are known to feed pollen to hummingbirds.

Renowned Swedish botanist Olof Swartz, widely considered to be the world’s first orchid specialist, became enthralled with the Dancing Girls of the American tropics when he first beheld them in jungles of the Americas in 1783, and named them Oncidiums.

Also Known As…

Oncidiums are also known as “Dancing Dolls” for their distinctive appearance, but also referred to as “Spray Orchids” by some orchid aficionados due to a capability they possess to store water.  Oncidiums are also sometimes titled as “Butterfly Orchids,” named by people who found their looks to be reminiscent of butterflies.

Dancing Girls Are Sure to Satisfy a Range of Preferences

Some Dancing Girls — equitants — are are quite petite, and very pretty, and others are large, growing up to five meters high, with grand blooms. They come in all sorts of colors and sizes, sure to please a range of tastes.

Most “Dancing Girls” are epiphytic — they reside on trees, rather than on the ground, and get nourishment from the air. Dancing Girls bloom well and take on a lovely form, and so are choice flowers for anyone just starting to get involved with orchids.

Fertilizer for Oncidium Dancing Girls

Keep in mind that Dancing Girls’ preferences in growing culture is related to they’re from, so they can’t all be treated in the same way. They have been found to be partial to fish emulsion, manure teas, and other organic fertilizers.

Potting Needs of Dancing Girls

Bark based mixtures with perlite and charcoal added, are the standard potting soil for Oncidiums. Oncidiums should be repotted at least every couple years, maybe even every year.

Best Humidity Range of Oncidium Orchids

Humidity should run about 40% to 60%.

Best Temperatures For Our Dancing Dolls

70 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit (21°-29° Celsius) night time temperatures of between 55 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit (12.8° to 15.6° Celsius)

Special Qualities of Dancing Girls

Dancing Girls are tropical beauties. The oncidium genus encompasses over three hundred species of orchids found in tropical zones of the Americas.

Like many orchids, parts of the Dancing Girls’ stems are round and puff out in bulblike forms, known as a “pseudobulbs.” Each Dancing Girl pseudobulb has a single segment in the stem, known as the internode which is enclosed in a sheath or covered in some other way. The internode joins the nodes, small swellings on the orchids stem out of which the leaves emerge.

The much loved Dancing Dolls are typically yellow shades, but some are pink, purple, red, or white. They range in size from rather tiny to quite large.

While most Dancing Girls are epiphytes living in trees, some varieties are lithophytes residing on rocks or stones, getting nourishment from the atmosphere, or terrestrials and grow in the ground.

Orchids sizes range from those of miniature varieties with blooms that are less than an inch (2.5) in length to enormous varieties that reach heights of over five meters, with leaves or around twelve inches (30 cm) in length and flowers around 4 inches or five inches(10-12.5 cm).

Oncidiums are certainly complex and not fully understood, and classifying them has proven to be a challenge for botanists. While we may not fully understand the ways of Dancing Girls, we can always enjoy the mystery and allure of these beauties.

A Fabulous Indoor Plant

Dancing girls add grace, elegance, drama, and beauty to home decor.

Like this post? Publish It On Your Own Blog

Image via Wikipedia

by Adam Fulford, InsatiableGardener.com

Olof Swartz was a renowned Swedish botanist of the late 1700s, widely regarded as the world’s first orchid expert. After studying sciences in his native land of Sweden, Olaf Swartz, at the age of 23, sailed across the seas in 1783 to the Caribbean and the Americas, and ventured into forests and tropical jungles, making diligent collections and notes of native flora.

In returning to Europe, Olaf went to England in 1786 to further his botanical studies in the Banksian Herbarium, then back to the world of academia in Sweden, studying a wide range of plants including those he brought with him from his travels. He was particularly enthralled by orchids, organizing them into new genera. He published renowned works with detailed descriptions and illustrations of flowers and their parts. He met his wife in Sweden, and they had a son and daughter.

In 1800, three years after tragically becoming a widower with a son and daughter, Dr. Olaf Swartz published a ground-breaking series of articles on orchids. He is considered to be first person (first European at any rate) to become an orchid expert. He single-handedly discovered and identified thirteen genera of orchids and twenty-seven different species. His most famous work is on the Orchidearum species of the West Indies and the Americas.

It was renowned this Swedish Botanist who first beheld the “Dancing Girls” in 1773, in the jungles of the Americas and immediately became infatuated with them. Circa 1800, he named them “Oncidiums” derived from “onkos,” the Greek word for “swelling.” The name was in reference to formations of the stem and a protuberance of the orchids’ lip.

Like this post? Publish It On Your Own Blog

Image by tanja.guettersberger via Flickr

by Adam Fulford, InsatiableGardener.com

In the Victorian era, and in the epoch immediately preceding it, Orchid hunters took dangerous adventures and repeatedly risked their lives in remote jungles and woodland forests with the single-minded mission of finding the delicate and highly prized orchid blooms, maybe even discovering new genera and species of the plant. In the 1830s two British orchid hunters died when their boat capsized on a treacherous river. Some Orchid hunters were sent to the tropical jungles of Burma to find highly valued orchids for which aficionados were willing to spend a fortune.

Orchid hunting continues to this day, so much so, sadly, that many species of orchids and their native habitats have been reduced and harmed. That said, there are orchid hunters who just seek orchids in their native jungle or woodland habitats, not to snatch them away from their homes, likely harming or killing them, but to simply take photographs of the beautiful and delicate wild orchid blooms.

Image via Wikipedia

www.InsatiableGardener.com

There is no better way to spruce up a new home, or an old one for that matter, than to use a landscaping tree or two. These trees can add so much to your home, in fact they can even add to the value of your home for when it comes time to sell. There are many different kinds of tree for you to use when you are in need of a landscaping tree and the choice is all yours.

The best place for you to find out what kind of landscaping tree you should be using is the internet. Online you will be able to find out everything that you need to know about every kind of landscaping tree that there is on the market. Everyone will have a different taste in landscaping tree and that is why it is so important for you to find out what yours actually is. If you do not take a look at all the landscaping trees that are out there, who will you know which one is the right landscaping tree for you?

The kind of landscaping tree that you will choose will have something to do with where it is that you live. Some trees do not do well in certain places and certain climates. You will have to make sure that the landscaping tree that you choose can grow and flourish where you live. There is no point in spending money on a few landscaping trees only to find out that it is going to die in just a couple of months. So ask the seller and do some of your own research to find out just what you should be getting for your yard.

Trees matter to the look of your home. It is with trees that you will be able to give your home a pretty garden feel and lets fact it, trees are much easier to deal with than flowers and other plants. There is practically no maintenance for most trees. It will not be hard for you to find a great landscaping tree that will require very little work.

The Mimosa tree makes for a wonderful landscaping tree because it is so gorgeous and lovely. The foliage on this gorgeous tree is like fern in its delicacy. It will make any home instantly more beautiful with its addition and they are deciduous. This is a perfect landscaping tree for any home including yours