I’m usually hard at work in the accounting office here at Gill’s, but I’m the first one outside to greet a new truck of plants to pick things to try in my garden at home. Seeing how much our customers love planting Tropical Butterfly Weed (Milkweed) in their gardens, I decided to purchase a couple of plants for myself. The very same day I brought the plants home, I noticed a Monarch flying around and landing on the plants. Then, about 4 or 5 days later, I started seeing tiny caterpillars!
After the caterpillars hatch from their eggs, they begin to feed on the leaves of the plant and let me tell you they are hungry little caterpillars. I watched them chew through entire leaves in just a few seconds!
Once they’ve eaten enough leaves, they go through 5 caterpillar (instar) stages, in which they molt their skin, increasing in size with each stage. In their final stage, they find a safe place to hang upside down in a J shape, then shed for the last time forming a light green chrysalis (pupa) that will protect the caterpillars as they transform into beautiful butterflies. I made sure to get a close-up photo of each stage, and more photos once the butterflies emerged.
Butterfly Weed is the only host plant for the Monarch butterfly, but there are many other plants that attract other types of butterflies such as Salvia, Coreopsis, Penta, Zinnias, and Buddleia (aka Butterfly Bush). Make sure you have plenty of these in your garden so your butterflies will have plenty of nectar to feed on!
-Stacy
All from a shiny reddish ball. Or a fuzzy white ball. Or a corky brown ball. I’m talking oak galls, which commonly strike terror into the hearts of live oak tree owners this time of year. They are all caused by various species of small, stingless, solitary wasps. These wasps insert an egg (or several) into the tissue of small oak branches or young leaves, and are thought to modify the DNA of the plant, forcing the plant to produce a growth (the gall) that supplies both housing and food to the wasp larvae living inside. The saliva of the wasp applied at the time of the egg laying is thought to contain a virus that produces the genetic changes, so wasp larvae have been eating GMO’s for millions of years. 
So wasps are defacing and eating your oak tree this fall, what you gonna do about it? As one writer says, “I recommend a cold drink, a good book and a comfortable chair.” ‘Cuz there’s nothing you can do or should do about it. Oak galls come in periodic waves, a few one year, more the next, and none the year after. Or close thereabouts. This is thought to be due variously to the tree buildup up of tannins to discourage the gall formers, and to a buildup of parasitic wasps (also stingless) that drill into the galls and lay their eggs on the gall inhabitant. Wild Mother Nature, there are even wasps that lay their eggs on wasp larvae that are consuming the original gall wasp larvae (did I put one too many eaters of larvae in there, I must proofread). The galls do not do substantial damage to your trees, and there’s really no way to get involved in the crazy gladiator’s pit of nature without screwing things up, SO DON’T SPRAY, just sit back in awe (or take a nap). And empty oak galls actually take in desirable boarders such as lacewing larvae and small spiders, scavenger ants and more beneficial wasps, all feeding on caterpillars and aphids. 
Oak galls were an important source of dark and permanent ink used for writing 
