InsatiableGardener.com

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.

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