Another new friend

Another black swallowtail butterfly was born, on 8-9-2010. My daughter chcecked when she woke up and saw no activity. I never thought to check that morning, and while doing house work later in the day, i went into the laundry room (where the tank was located) and got a big surprise!

Our butterflly was out and was ready to fly away! We only got to spend about 3 mintues with him before he flew off into the trees. He was amazing to look at!

This one was a male, see the very small amount of blue on his back?

Raising SwallowTail Butterflys

For the past few weeks I have been raising some Black Sallowtail butterflys in my home.

 I had heard that fennel attracted butterflys and I was planting a butterfly gardren, so I decided to get some!

Little did I know how much it would attract the Black Swallowtail butterfly!

First you get a egg (or in my case, tons of eggs)

They are usually yellow in color and are very tiny

Here they are pretty soon after hatching, maybe right before the 2nd instar. they are only about 1 cm long. Before this they are so small its hard to get a picture without a  macro

The caterpillars have 5 different instars (or stages)

This is at a 2rd or 3rd instar, still not the green/orange color but not as tiny anymore.

Here you can see that the color has changed! This can really happen over night! So far all these pictures happened outside. This was the stage when Mr. Cardinal in my backyard would start stealing my caterpillars! I added a ceramic cardinal out to the garden and that helped a bit.
4th Instar (still has spikes on  head)

In this photo you can see the shedded skin, he has entered the 5th instar and will keep eating until he is ready to from a chrysalis. This was taken in the house.

Green Chrysalis (in the home)

Can you see the small piece of silk he used to attach (this one is attached to a piece of fennel, hence his color)

Brown Chrysalis (in the home)

Please check back soon to see our beautiful butterfly!

Planting potatoes in barrels

Last year and this year, we have planted Yukon Gold potatoes in barrels. Last year we used 2 full size 55 gallon drums. They are white plastic, we drilled holes in the bottom and around the bottom edge... put in dirt, buried potatoes and waited.....we ended up running out of dirt to keep them covered up with dirt...55 gallons is alot. We had a hard time getting the poatoes out as well.

Here is what we did this year, we took those 2 same barrels, and cut the bottoms off

After we got the bottom's cut off, we then cut them in half (so now they are about 27.5 gallons each)... you don't need to drill any more holes, since the potatoes will be planted in the ground.

We wiggled the barrels into the dirt just a bit (after tilling and preparing soil, its best to rotate the location of the plants each year)

The potatoes went into the ground on March 24th. The best time is within a few weeks of Saint. Patricks Day.  They take about 2-3 weeks to emerge from the groud, so planting them before the last frost is ok.

Potatoes are not planted from a "seed" but a seed potato. It is best to buy them as a seed potatoes, and not use your supermarket bought potatoes you eat for supper (they can be treated with chemials to stop sprouts from growing)

When you first buy them, check to see if they have good spouts growing...After I see that they have some nice eyes, I cut them into pieces (with 2 or 3 eyes per piece) and let them sit for a day or two, cut side up.

When planting, I dug down about 4 -5 in. and planted with the eyes up ^ covered them, and gave them a good watering......and waited...and waited...like I said, it can take 2-3 weeks to emerge. Just keeping watering and waiting.

This was taken 17 days after planting

This picture was taken on 4-29-2010, about 36 days after planting. As the potatoes grow, you have to keep the stems covered with dirt, if you don't, you wont get potatoes, just a pretty green plant!

When your plants are about 8 in. tall or so you want to cover the bottom half up with dirt (be careful not to break the stem). continue doing this as they grow.

Continue to water and cover your stems up as they grow. Watering is important during flowering time! Continue to water until the plant starts to turn yellow and dies back

I harvest mine about a week or two after the plant starts to die back, but you can also do it 2 weeks or so after the plant flowers, you will get small sized potatoes!

It's important to keep soil on top so you dont get green potatoes, which happen if they get sun on them.

This picture was taken on 5-24-2010.. As of now I just continue to water and watch for bugs...