Show your butterfly and hummingbird gardens/plants

[ginger2778]

Originally Posted by Gardenboy

The passiflora edulis flavicarpa variety taste like a little like strawberries and guava mixed together. The fruit pulp is more sweeter the longer you let it ripen. I let mine ripen until the yellow skin or rind starts to wrinkle. I love to mix the pulp with my vanilla bean ice cream or make a smoothie. Can also mix with yogurt.

Yummy! Thank you for my seeds, I sowed 12 of them about 2.5 weeks ago, they are just starting to emerge today. All at once! I can't wait , very excited.
My corky stem passion vines are getting decimated by Zebra Longwings, our state butterfly, and our native passiflora.

[Nan_PA_6b]

Originally Posted by Gardenboy

The passiflora edulis flavicarpa variety taste like a little like strawberries and guava mixed together. The fruit pulp is more sweeter the longer you let it ripen. I let mine ripen until the yellow skin or rind starts to wrinkle. I love to mix the pulp with my vanilla bean ice cream or make a smoothie. Can also mix with yogurt.

Oh, that does sound good!

Nan

[SpookyShoe]

I bought one a couple of weeks ago and thought I could grow it in a very large pot on my patio. Wrong! The thing is growing at an alarming rate and is already taller than the "trellis" I put around the plant in the pot.....(I confess I used a tomato cage as a trellis). Anyway, I moved the pot (not an easy task) against the fence, but I need to find ASAP some tall trellises to put between the pot and the fence to support the vine. The thing grows like some monster.

Anyway, I hope to get blooms and fruit this summer.

Donna, Texas Gulf Coast, zone 9

[Gardenboy]

You may have to wait and see. Some passiflora hybrids are crossed and the flowers become sterile and will not produce fruit. Time will tell, but you should get a great display of flowers. Perhaps it will cross pollinate and you might get fruit.

[MissS]

That sure is a lot of growth for 1 month's time. If it's maturing that quickly I would think that you would be having buds in no time. I have seen much smaller plants blooming their hearts out in stores.

[SpookyShoe]

Hopefully it will fill in at the bottom and cover the ugly tomato cage "trellis." I've only fertilized it once b/c I want the energy to go into establishing a good root system. I hope you are right about the blooms.

Donna

[SpookyShoe]

I was playing on Facebook today and I came across a picture of a praying mantis on a hummingbird feeder that had caught a hummingbird and killed it. I did some searching and I found that this is not fake news, but real. I did some more searching and found other photos of where the praying mantis was by the hummingbird feeder and it was clutching the hummingbird. I'm not posting the photos because, well, they are not pleasant.

Donna, Texas Gulf Coast

[Shrinkrap]

Pineapple Guava flowers!

[PureHarvest]

'Magnus' Coneflower (8/8/17):

8-8-17 ech2.jpg

Monarda bradburiana (5/21/2018):

5-21-18 Mon brad1.JPG

5-21-18 Mon brad 2.JPG

'Black Adder' Agastache (8/8/17):

8-8-17 agastache.JPG

Eupatorium fistulosum (8/14/17):

8-14-18 fistulosum.JPG

Monarda punctata (9/29/17) (with white aster underneath):

9-29-17 perfoliatum.JPG

The overall planting (last September)
There is Echinacea 'Magnus', Coreopsis verticillata, Euaptorium fistulosum, coelestinum and perfoliatum, Monarda bradburiana, Pycnanthemum muticum, Aster 'Purple Dome', Soldago odorata, Agastache 'Black Adder', :

9-4-17 ech.jpg

[Old School]

Wine & Roses Weigela for the Hummingbirds.

IMG_1827.jpg

[GrowingCoastal]

Red Hot Poker is in bloom here now though this is an old pic of mine.

[MissS]

Thanks for all of the pictures of great pollinator plants. GrowingCoastal, that's a lovely picture.

PureHarvest you sure have a great line up of pollinator plants. Joe-Pye weed Eupatorium fistulosum has been a great butterfly magnet for me and the Black Adder has been greatly used by the bees. You have a very nice selection of plants.

[SpookyShoe]

Some of these flowers look like they are from an alien planet. The colors of the flora and fauna are stunning.

Donna, Texas Gulf Coast

[PureHarvest]

Thanks MissS.
An NRCS grant allowed me to go large scale because the plants were all paid for, and I installed them.
My background is in plant science/horticulture.
It's been fun to bring that into farming/growing at my "farm" (part-time venture) to return some land to pollinator habitat.
I'm doing my third planting this spring.
I'll have to list them all out sometime, but I think by the end of this spring I will have installed over 30 native species on my land for pollinators.

[oakley]

Such gorgeous flowers we do not have in the North.
I did have a rare, to me, weekend of HummingbirdMoths last season.