Lots of stuff going on at the farm, and a lot changes in a week or two with these long solstice sunlight hours. Things are booming, but the rain is also still coming (we’re up to 140mm on the month of June so far). There’s a lot of topics I could write about (and probably will write about soon), including a green infrastructure project, potato sap analysis and foliar nutrient applications, persistent pepper issues in the hoop house, the orchard project moving along, or a crazy year for spring honey from the bees.
But I thought today instead I’d share the results and some photos of a monarch butterfly survey that’s more on the fun side.
On the back half of the farm we have a problematic 2-acre piece of land that we are slowly trying to get into full production shape. The issue is tree roots primarily, so we have used this field for our first cover crop trial two years ago.
On the long northern edge of the field, I noticed quite a lot of milkweed growing just past where the cultivator doesn’t go. And then I noticed there seemed to be quite a lot of monarchs. So we decided it would be fun to take a sort of survey, count all the Milkweed and count all the caterpillars and see what we get.
Today we counted 281 Milkweed plants, and 55 Monarch Caterpillars.
It was really nice to see not only a healthy stand of Milkweed but also that the butterflies had found them. I will happily run a butterfly farm operation on the literal side (of the field).
But these are the places – the edges – where a whole host of interesting creatures thrive. Like Milkweed.
The edge cases, the fenceline, the treeline, are often the first to be scrubbed and sprayed for victorian lawn perfection. Often pesticides are the first to be mentioned when talking about insect or pollinator decline, but in the total ecological picture destroying habitat is just as problematic.
With insect populations plummeting and accelerating bird population decline, one of the easiest ways to prevent these things is to allow nature to do her thing. If a few hundred feet of a tree line can host 281 Milkweed plants and 55 Monarch caterpillars on those plants, what is possible collectively?
Monarch Butterflies are kind of like Orcas or Polar Bears…there’s these lucky creatures that we put on the top, that draw our attention or fascination, that just seem more visible. Thankfully at least butterflies and Monarchs in particular capture our attention that way, and by extension, their host plant. I’m not 100% sure but I’m pretty sure a lot of people would be able to correctly state that monarchs feed on milkweed.
The lesser-known are not less fascinating!
What was surprising to me after a much more careful look at 281 plants was the amazing diversity of things that live on Milkweed…not just Monarchs, but ants, ladybugs, the milkweed stem weevil, and today I even saw my old friend the wasp mantidfly.
There she was, just sitting on a Milkweed plant. I found my first mantidfly last season…these are not wasps nor mantids. Rather these are predatory insects who appear like mantids via convergent evolution and whose larvae attach themselves to wolf spiders, and feed on the spider eggs.
They’re also just stunning insects and I was super excited to see one today and get these photos.
My camera has more powerful tools to get even better macro shots, so next time hopefully I’ll have a little more patience to try those tools out.
Planting Milkweed is quite easy and it should come back in following years and spread around.
Leave your Milkweeds (they also have quite pretty flowers) and all those unknown plants on the margins, they’re holding wonderful treasures.
Graham
thanks for reading complimentary blueberry juice
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