Small Visitors to my Garden in Early May

Visiting Insects in May

Although we schedule our visits on a calendar, it's not so neat in the insect world. They appear by season rather than by date. So although I can say that these insects were all garden visitors during the first two weeks of May, some had been hanging around since April, and some, like the bees,  visit me during the entire year. Let's look at them. My most welcome guests this month have been the ladybugs, who flew in to clean up my aphid problem.

Ladybugs Busy Mating and Eating Aphids, © B. Radisavljevic

They have been a great help to me. In the photo above you can see the one on top eating one of the aphids. The two on the bottom of the flower are mating. You can see how the unwelcome aphids are sucking the life out of the calendula plants. In the middle of April I had four heavily infested calendula flowers and one infested wormwood plant. It took the ladybug air force a month to finish the job, but as of yesterday there are no more aphids and most of the ladybugs have moved on. Below is another calendula plant they cleaned up. Do you see all the ladybugs visible on just this one plant? I counted nine.  How many can you count?

Ladybird Aphid Eating Crew on Calendula Plant, © B. Radisavljevic

There are still a few ladybugs lurking in the rosemary and on other plants. I found the one below in the crotch of this clary sage plant. I'm hoping it's not about to be a meal for the spider that lives there. We will see it later.

Ladybird Hiding on Clary Sage Plant, © B. Radisavljevic

 

Another insect currently in my garden is the spittlebug. Spittlebugs are small insects who cover their motionless nymphs, who hang out on the foliage of perennials, shrubs, annuals, and herbs, with this unsightly foam as they suck juices from the stems. According to Sunset, they do little damage and leave after about three weeks. If they really bother you, you can wash the foam off with a hose. They do make the plant look a bit ugly. Here they are "decorating" my rosemary.

Spittlebugs on Rosemary, © B. Radisavljevic

The last insect, the one who visits almost every day, is the hard-working bee. Below you see it on fruity teucrium, a ground cover, which is blooming now. The bees love it. I couldn't fit them all into this one photo, and they kept flitting off to new blossoms while I was focusing.

Bees on Fruity Teucrium, © B. Radisavljevic

Before we leave the insects, here's one more photo of a bee. This one is working on a lamb's ears flower. The lamb's ears started to bloom just a few days ago. This photo is just the right size to pin if you'd like to share it.

Busy Bee on Lamb's Ears, © B. Radisavljevic

The Inconspicuous Crab Spider in Early May

This spider has visited many of my plants. I have seen her (and what I assume is her mate) on the calendula plants with the ladybugs and aphids, on the juniper bushes, and on the rosemary.  It is very hard to see on this rosemary plant, even when I blow it up. It's not a large spider to start with, and it can take on the coloring of the plant it's on to blend in. Can you see it in the lower right corner below? I had to get into a very awkward position to get this photo at all.

Inconspicuous Crab Spider in Rosemary, © B. Radisavljevic

One of these spiders seems to be living on my clary sage. It's much easier to see and photograph there. It usually scrunches up like this while waiting for prey to appear. I do have a video of two of these spiders interacting on a calendula plant, and once they start moving, they are fast. I think one may have been chasing the other. The one below is a female. The male is smaller. I saw a male on this plant a couple of days earlier. I don't see it now. I wonder if the female had him for dinner. To see how this spider mates, check the last photo on this blog post.

Inconspicuous Crab Spider on Clary Sage Leaf, © B. Radisavljevic

 Spiders & Other Arachnids
I love being able to understand which insects and spiders are visiting me. Here are some books which have been a great help in identifying and understanding them. The two books on the bottom right will appeal to children and are small enough to carry into the backyard for field use. The books on the bottom left have a format designed for teens and adults. All are illustrated and will help you identify garden visitors with six or eight legs. The short video at left above shows you some common spiders in action up close. Prime members can watch it for free. Try Amazon Prime 30-Day Free Trial

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 A Field Guide to Insects: America North of Mexico National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Insects and Spiders (National Audubon Society Field Guides (Paperback)) Fandex Family Field Guides: Bugs Peterson First Guide to Insects of North America

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• Top 10 Bizarre Insect Predators
• Sages Add Color and Attract Beneficial Insects to Your Garden
• Happy Bees Enjoying March Flowers
• I Saw My First Butterfly This Year Today
• In photos: Busy summertime bees - part 1

Plant Pests and their Predators: Aphids and Ladybugs

Most Plant Pests Have Natural Predators

Plant insect pests begin to appear in our gardens as the weather warms up. I'm an organic gardener who doesn't use pesticides, so I looked to nature to help me keep aphids under control when I spotted them on my calendula flowers last week. The infestation was severe. I knew nature's cure was the hungry ladybug. Ladybugs are one of the aphid's major predators to help get rid of these plant pests. 

That's why I was so happy to discover one on this infested plant. After I took the picture, I saw there were actually two of them. I did a little happy dance. Can you see them both? I told them to go invite their friends to the aphid feast. I apologize for the the bit of blur in these photos. It was windy and very hard to shoot from a squatting position.

The Pests: Aphids

I first noticed my aphid infestation on April 11. I've never had an aphid problem here before. So when I went out to pick a calendula flower to put in my salad, I wasn't happy to see most of my plants covered with aphids like this.

On that day I did not see any ladybugs. I began to pray they would arrive. In droves! Knowing, though, that it might take a few days before they discovered my aphid feast, I pulled out some of the most heavily infested plants and threw them away. Then I waited and watched.

The Predators: Ladybugs

Finally my watching was rewarded with a sighting. I might mention that ladybugs can be hard to see. Do you see the one in the photo below, hiding under that yellow calendula on the left side? You can also see the aphids. One adult ladybug can eat up to 50 or 60 aphids a day. The larvae are said to eat them even more voraciously.

Although I was able to use this diagram to identify my ladybugs, it took repeated trips to the garden to get it right. It's hard to count spots when they are moving, and the ladybugs seem to keep their heads down most of the time when they are eating. I didn't want to frighten them away during dinner, so I had to be very gentle when turning the leaves for a better look. I have finally concluded that they are seven-spotted ladybugs (or, technically ladybird beetles), scientifically named Coccinella septempunctata. 

Below is a photo of the seven-spotted ladybug larva on a catmint plant next to the infested calendula.

Below is the adult seven-spotted ladybug or Coccinella septempunctata.

I went back to the garden to try to better identify the ladybug I had captured earlier with my camera (below) and couldn't find it. But I did another happy dance when I saw at least four seven-spotted ladybugs in these same flowers. I thought maybe I had misidentified this one below, but I see now that its head shows more clearly in the photo than I had thought. It is a convergent ladybug (Hippodamia convergens). 

Now that the ladybug air force is landing, I believe my aphid problem will be gone soon. Already the stems and flowers of the plants that ladybugs and their larvae have settled on are looking cleaner than they did before the ladybugs landed on them. The ladybugs seem quite happy, since they haven't left the plants since I started photographing and trying to identify them this morning. Every time I go out to  count spots or take another photo, they are in almost the same place. I hope they lay eggs and hang around.

Organic Aphid Control 

If you have an aphid problem and no ladybugs, you can buy live ones at Amazon.  Green lacewings eat even more aphids than  ladybugs do, and you can also buy those if you need them. Amazon sells the eggs, the larvae, and packages of combined live ladybug and lacewing eggs. 

 Predalure
You can also buy lures like this one that attract beneficial insects like ladybugs and lacewings. Once the insects you want are lured in, they are tempted to stay a while instead of just flying away, as live ladybugs often do.

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If you want to work harder at it, you can spray aphids off your plants with a forceful stream of water. I don't think that's as permanent a solution as getting them eaten by beneficial insects who like to dine on them. "Honeydew' and black sooty mold, byproducts of aphid infestations, can be gently washed from plants with a mild soapy water rinse. Since most of my plants are edible or next to something edible, I wouldn't even consider a pesticide that has toxic substances in it.

To discourage aphids from taking over your garden, keep ants from nesting in your garden or get rid of any you find there. Using a reflective aluminum mulch in early spring may also discourage flying adult aphids from laying eggs.

As for me, I prefer to let the ladybugs do the work.

If you enjoyed this post, please share it. The sharing buttons are just above the comment box at the end of the post. The photo below is especially designed for pinning.

This is my sixteenth post for the 2016 AtoZchallenge, a Blogging Challenge for the month of April, 2016. My theme is plants, since this is a gardening blog. Here are links to the other posts if you missed them.

A is for Apple Blossoms
B is for Bottlebrush
C is for Carnations
D is for Daisy
E is for Elderberry
F is for Flowers
G is for Gazania
Hollyhocks are Edible
Irises Are Garden Survivors
Jupiter's Beard: A Mystery Finally Solved
Kale for Lunch
Lion's Tail - A Perennial Summer Burst of Orange
Miner's Lettuce is Tasty and Free"Naked Ladies" Bloom in August

Oleander through the Year

What Blooms in November?

Red Pansy Face in November

It's always interesting when planning a garden to know what blooms when. I'm gradually trying to show the photos of plants in bloom month by month in my neighborhood in Paso Robles, California. Our climate is fairly mild, but we do sometimes go below 20 degrees F. in winter. We get into the triple digits on some spring and summer days. This post will show you what's been blooming here in this month of November. The photo shows a pansy in bloom. Pansies add a lot of color in fall and winter, and sometimes last until spring.

Some plants that typically bloom in summer still have a few flowers left, along with some that dried on the plant. Here are a couple of those.

Lingering Butterfly Bush Flowers in November

Lingering Hyssop Flowers in November

Some of these flowers are really herb flowers and perform for many months. The hyssop above has been in bloom since June, but it had many more flowers then. The sages also bloom over a long period, as does the rosemary. I love rosemary in winter because you can cut it and bring it in for fragrant holiday greenery. It also helps the bees through the winter.

One Variety of Cherry Sage, © B. Radisavljevic

Hot Lips Sage

Rosemary in Bloom

Some flowers I depend upon to brighten my garden year round. One of these is calendula, which you see in bloom below.  To its left is Lamb's Ears, with its contrasting gray leaves. To its right, you see gazanias. Behind is star jasmine with the dark green leaves. It, like the Lamb's Ears, has stopped blooming, as has the browning remains of a Euphorbia plant (also known as gopher plant.), which has greenish-yellow flowers in summer.  The lighter green plant surrounding the dying Euphorbia is rue. It has never bloomed for me yet.

Calendula in Bloom

Gazanias in Bloom

Some flowers just linger into winter.

Mums and Calendula

Miniature Chrysanthemums in November

Cecile Brunner Climbing Rose in November

A Neighbor's Roses in November

Gazanias, a Blooming Ground Cover, in November

Scabiosa (Pincushion Flowers) Hiding Between Hyssop
And Hollyhock Leaf in November

Jupiter's Beard in November. I was not able to identify this until
today, but it blooms for several months out of the year. I see it all
over town and I want some, even though it is invasive. 

These flowers belong to others and are blooming today on November 27, 2015. I'm not sure how long they have been blooming.

Mystery Plant belonging to My Neighbor. Click to enlarge and
see it more clearly. The pink flowers in the back are roses.
The blue is the back of a light.

Society Garlic in Bloom in November, Next to Browning Rose Plant
Click to enlarge. The flowers are small. Red roses are blooming
in back by the fence. 

Snapdragons in Bloom in November. Behind to the left are poppy
seedlings and to the right are young scabiosa plants.

I hope this helps you plan next year's garden or decide what you might want to transplant now for immediate color. Maybe a neighbor is even cleaning out plants she would be willing to share. Rosemary is easy to root in water. I had one plant in the back yard and roots three more plants for the front yard. It should be easy to find someone who will let out take a few cuttings. I just put it in water and it roots enough to plant within two or three weeks.

What are your favorite winter flowers? I somehow missed posting my photos of petunias and hibiscus that I've seen around the county, but I don't have any growing in my own yard now. I did have a petunia growing in November last year. I saw the hibiscus in Santa Maria in a planter at Trader Joe's.

Here are two more colorful shrubs that give you red berries for winter.

Holly Berries in November, © B. Radisavljevic

Pyracantha (Firethorn), © B. Radisavljevic

The cotoneaster shrub is similar in looks to the pyracantha, but has no thorns. I decided to make a blank greeting card out of one of the photos I took of cotoneaster.

Red Cotoneaster Berries: Holiday season Greeting Card by barbsbooks
Browse Cotoneaster Cards online at Zazzle.com

Here's a matching postage stamp.

Holiday Postage Stamp: Red Cotoneaster Berries
Check out more USPS postal stamps online at Zazzle.

Related Links:
This Butterfly Bush Shows How Nature Adapts