Inviting Hummingbirds and Butterflies Into Your Garden
Despite our best efforts, early Spring (certainly NOT where we are NOW) are pretty sparse for hungry hummingbirds. Intercept those spring migrants and hold onto them as potential nesting birds. Hang your hummingbird feeders out in mid-March in the Rogue Valley. The males will arrive first. From that day forward, the hummers will be regulars at your feeder and in the treetops as they chase spiders and other small insects (yes, hummers eat other things besides nectar). The constant source of food that a feeder provides in a garden that is always changing, and where nectar is not constant, may be what entices a hummer to nest in your yard or perhaps nearby.
The proper solution for hummingbird feeders is one cup of sugar to four cups of water. Making it stronger will not help the hummingbirds; it is hard to digest and could cause liver damage. You can make it up a quart at a time and store it in the refrigerator. Red dye is unnecessary and generally discouraged. Most hummingbird feeders have red parts that serve quite well to attract the birds. Whatever you do, DON’T use honey in your feeders! It can lead to a fatal fungus disease in hummingbirds.
There is a responsibility that comes with the enjoyment that feeder brings and that is maintenance. Cleanliness and making sure that you are offering fresh, unfermented solution. Feeders must be cleaned thoroughly with hot, soapy water and then rinsed with hot, clean water at least once a week, more frequently during the extreme heat of summer. Refill with fresh solution, even if the birds are not diminishing the supply. Old solution will ferment and could even be harmful if it turns into alcohol. In the early spring, only fill your feeders with a couple of inches of solution due to the lower activity at the feeders. Really, the only time you need to top up the feeders is from around mid-June to late September or so.
People often wonder if feeders are “bad”. No, they are not, as long as they’re maintained and not the only source of food in your yard. Feeders should complement yards full of nectar sources and healthy insect populations. This means NO PESTICIDES that can harm hummers or butterflies that visit your yard. Use, instead, organic and low impact, non-poisonous solutions. This mix of food – evolving gardens and always-available feeders) is what may entice a hummingbird to nest in or near your yard. When their favored sources are blooming, hummingbirds generally ignore feeders.
Many flowering plants attract hummers. Most are tubular in shape and many are red, though certainly not all of them. A successful hummingbird garden provides nectar sources from May through the first hard frost. There is a great temptation to plant acres of Bee Balm or Cardinal Flower, two of the hummer’s favorite nectar sources. In each case, however, nectar from those sources would be available for just a brief period in a hummer’s life. The wise gardener selects an assortment of flowering plants with overlapping bloom periods, mixes perennials and annuals and allows nature’s wildflowers and even some weeds to remain, many of which are favored by hummers and butterflies.
And what is a hummingbird garden without the added dazzle of butterflies and moths? Quite simply, plants chosen to attract hummers will often attract butterflies and moths too. The core of a great hummingbird garden is a large corridor of Tropical Sage, a dozen Butterfly Bushes and sizable patches of Bee Balm, Butterfly Weed, Common and Swamp Milkweed, Joe-Pye-Weed, Mistflower, Phlox, Purple Coneflower, Asters, Goldenrod, Zinnias, Sedum, Vervain and Mexican Sunflowers. All this is interspersed with many other flowers, herbs, and volunteer weeds like Queen Anne’s Lace, Lamb’s Quarters, Curled Dock and flowering trees, shrubs and vines.
Plant a butterfly and hummingbird garden and they will come. Lure butterflies right into your own yard so that you can enjoy them. You’ll first notice the big, showy swallowtails – who could miss THEM? – but actually most butterflies are tiny and easily overlooked. Be sure to look about with binoculars when you go out to enjoy your garden. Butterflies are easily flushed by movement, so be sure to look ahead at your flowers for visitors. A butterfly’s camouflage is amazing and the naked eye can’t be counted on to detect many of them. Binoculars are essential. A camera is fun, too, but be sure to move in slowly and low so as not to cross over them with your shadow and you might get a surprisingly good photo.
Most moths are active at night. Treat yourself on a moonlit night to a stroll through your gardens to see another world unfold, as many of the flowers that are attractive to butterflies by day are littered with moths by night. By day you may see hummingbird moths in your gardens; the two species to expect are the Hummingbird Clearwing and the Snowberry Clearwing.
Butterflies often have unusual preferences in food. You can make a butterfly feeder out of a plate hung in a plant hanger in a tree. They like watermelon and frozen, defrosted bananas. A little orange juice added each day keeps the bananas moist and attractive a while longer to the elusive butterflies.
Providing water adds another enticement into your yard. Garden sprinklers draw in hummingbirds and mud puddles please butterflies. Misters and drips are a more permanent solution than a garden sprinkler. They are easy to set up and readily available now that gardening for wildlife has become so popular. Let your mister spray down through tree branches and into a series of birdbaths. Take advantage of that moist ground and plant some Cardinal Flower, Joe-Pye-Weed and other plants that like having wet feet. Hummingbirds find misters irresistible and will fly through the mist and bathe in the drips collected on the leaves.
While I am the first one to harp about keeping your garden clean and tidy, there is at least one good reason to be a lazy gardener in the fall. Many butterflies actually pass the winter in our gardens, not as adults by as eggs on a plant, a caterpillar in a curled up leaf or down in the leaf litter or a chrysalis attached to a plant stem in a sheltered spot. The adult butterflies died months before, after laying their eggs. For this reason alone, you might want to consider leaving at least some portion of your garden standing through the winter. You could be adding next year’s potential butterflies to the compost pile as you tidy up. When things start to warm up a bit, in March or so, some of the butterflies that winter as an egg, caterpillar or chrysalis, are beginning to complete their metamorphosis and emerge as adult butterflies. By April, more and more adults will have emerged to decorate your garden as fluttering jewels.
NEXT WEEK: Plant It & They Will Come – Planning The Garden
GARDENING JOBS FOR JUNE:
Place beer-filled plastic tubs or saucers in the garden, set level with the soil, to lure snails and slugs to a drunken death. Studies show they prefer imported beer. Or place a few old boards in the garden and turn them over every morning to find slugs as they sleep. Dispose of them by dropping them into soapy water or get the kids to squish them with a brick.
Mulch around your trees to create a safe zone where your mower won’t go. Nicking a tree trunk can seriously damage even a well-established tree.
Mow your lawn according to the needs of the grass and not the calendar. Don’t mow every Saturday, just because you’ve ALWAYS mowed every Saturday. Grasses thicken and provide better cover when regularly clipped at the proper height. Adjust your lawn mower blades to cut the grass at 2 or 3 inches rather than 1-1/2 inches. Instead of mowing this Saturday, why not take your lady out for a morning of breakfast and garage saling?
Prune rhododendrons after they flower. On young and old plants, snap off the spent flower stalks by bending them over until they break away from their stems. Be careful not to damage growth buds at the base of each flower stalk.
Don’t trim iris leaves into scallops or fan shapes after the flowers fade. Leaves carry on photosynthesis and develop nourishment for next year’s growth. Cut off brown tips and remove the flowering stalk down to the rhizome. If you’re dividing irises, cut the leaves back by about half just before you move them.
Despite our best efforts, early Spring (certainly NOT where we are NOW) are pretty sparse for hungry hummingbirds. Intercept those spring migrants and hold onto them as potential nesting birds. Hang your hummingbird feeders out in mid-March in the Rogue Valley. The males will arrive first. From that day forward, the hummers will be regulars at your feeder and in the treetops as they chase spiders and other small insects (yes, hummers eat other things besides nectar). The constant source of food that a feeder provides in a garden that is always changing, and where nectar is not constant, may be what entices a hummer to nest in your yard or perhaps nearby.
The proper solution for hummingbird feeders is one cup of sugar to four cups of water. Making it stronger will not help the hummingbirds; it is hard to digest and could cause liver damage. You can make it up a quart at a time and store it in the refrigerator. Red dye is unnecessary and generally discouraged. Most hummingbird feeders have red parts that serve quite well to attract the birds. Whatever you do, DON’T use honey in your feeders! It can lead to a fatal fungus disease in hummingbirds.
There is a responsibility that comes with the enjoyment that feeder brings and that is maintenance. Cleanliness and making sure that you are offering fresh, unfermented solution. Feeders must be cleaned thoroughly with hot, soapy water and then rinsed with hot, clean water at least once a week, more frequently during the extreme heat of summer. Refill with fresh solution, even if the birds are not diminishing the supply. Old solution will ferment and could even be harmful if it turns into alcohol. In the early spring, only fill your feeders with a couple of inches of solution due to the lower activity at the feeders. Really, the only time you need to top up the feeders is from around mid-June to late September or so.
People often wonder if feeders are “bad”. No, they are not, as long as they’re maintained and not the only source of food in your yard. Feeders should complement yards full of nectar sources and healthy insect populations. This means NO PESTICIDES that can harm hummers or butterflies that visit your yard. Use, instead, organic and low impact, non-poisonous solutions. This mix of food – evolving gardens and always-available feeders) is what may entice a hummingbird to nest in or near your yard. When their favored sources are blooming, hummingbirds generally ignore feeders.
Many flowering plants attract hummers. Most are tubular in shape and many are red, though certainly not all of them. A successful hummingbird garden provides nectar sources from May through the first hard frost. There is a great temptation to plant acres of Bee Balm or Cardinal Flower, two of the hummer’s favorite nectar sources. In each case, however, nectar from those sources would be available for just a brief period in a hummer’s life. The wise gardener selects an assortment of flowering plants with overlapping bloom periods, mixes perennials and annuals and allows nature’s wildflowers and even some weeds to remain, many of which are favored by hummers and butterflies.
And what is a hummingbird garden without the added dazzle of butterflies and moths? Quite simply, plants chosen to attract hummers will often attract butterflies and moths too. The core of a great hummingbird garden is a large corridor of Tropical Sage, a dozen Butterfly Bushes and sizable patches of Bee Balm, Butterfly Weed, Common and Swamp Milkweed, Joe-Pye-Weed, Mistflower, Phlox, Purple Coneflower, Asters, Goldenrod, Zinnias, Sedum, Vervain and Mexican Sunflowers. All this is interspersed with many other flowers, herbs, and volunteer weeds like Queen Anne’s Lace, Lamb’s Quarters, Curled Dock and flowering trees, shrubs and vines.
Plant a butterfly and hummingbird garden and they will come. Lure butterflies right into your own yard so that you can enjoy them. You’ll first notice the big, showy swallowtails – who could miss THEM? – but actually most butterflies are tiny and easily overlooked. Be sure to look about with binoculars when you go out to enjoy your garden. Butterflies are easily flushed by movement, so be sure to look ahead at your flowers for visitors. A butterfly’s camouflage is amazing and the naked eye can’t be counted on to detect many of them. Binoculars are essential. A camera is fun, too, but be sure to move in slowly and low so as not to cross over them with your shadow and you might get a surprisingly good photo.
Most moths are active at night. Treat yourself on a moonlit night to a stroll through your gardens to see another world unfold, as many of the flowers that are attractive to butterflies by day are littered with moths by night. By day you may see hummingbird moths in your gardens; the two species to expect are the Hummingbird Clearwing and the Snowberry Clearwing.
Butterflies often have unusual preferences in food. You can make a butterfly feeder out of a plate hung in a plant hanger in a tree. They like watermelon and frozen, defrosted bananas. A little orange juice added each day keeps the bananas moist and attractive a while longer to the elusive butterflies.
Providing water adds another enticement into your yard. Garden sprinklers draw in hummingbirds and mud puddles please butterflies. Misters and drips are a more permanent solution than a garden sprinkler. They are easy to set up and readily available now that gardening for wildlife has become so popular. Let your mister spray down through tree branches and into a series of birdbaths. Take advantage of that moist ground and plant some Cardinal Flower, Joe-Pye-Weed and other plants that like having wet feet. Hummingbirds find misters irresistible and will fly through the mist and bathe in the drips collected on the leaves.
While I am the first one to harp about keeping your garden clean and tidy, there is at least one good reason to be a lazy gardener in the fall. Many butterflies actually pass the winter in our gardens, not as adults by as eggs on a plant, a caterpillar in a curled up leaf or down in the leaf litter or a chrysalis attached to a plant stem in a sheltered spot. The adult butterflies died months before, after laying their eggs. For this reason alone, you might want to consider leaving at least some portion of your garden standing through the winter. You could be adding next year’s potential butterflies to the compost pile as you tidy up. When things start to warm up a bit, in March or so, some of the butterflies that winter as an egg, caterpillar or chrysalis, are beginning to complete their metamorphosis and emerge as adult butterflies. By April, more and more adults will have emerged to decorate your garden as fluttering jewels.
NEXT WEEK: Plant It & They Will Come – Planning The Garden
GARDENING JOBS FOR JUNE:
Place beer-filled plastic tubs or saucers in the garden, set level with the soil, to lure snails and slugs to a drunken death. Studies show they prefer imported beer. Or place a few old boards in the garden and turn them over every morning to find slugs as they sleep. Dispose of them by dropping them into soapy water or get the kids to squish them with a brick.
Mulch around your trees to create a safe zone where your mower won’t go. Nicking a tree trunk can seriously damage even a well-established tree.
Mow your lawn according to the needs of the grass and not the calendar. Don’t mow every Saturday, just because you’ve ALWAYS mowed every Saturday. Grasses thicken and provide better cover when regularly clipped at the proper height. Adjust your lawn mower blades to cut the grass at 2 or 3 inches rather than 1-1/2 inches. Instead of mowing this Saturday, why not take your lady out for a morning of breakfast and garage saling?
Prune rhododendrons after they flower. On young and old plants, snap off the spent flower stalks by bending them over until they break away from their stems. Be careful not to damage growth buds at the base of each flower stalk.
Don’t trim iris leaves into scallops or fan shapes after the flowers fade. Leaves carry on photosynthesis and develop nourishment for next year’s growth. Cut off brown tips and remove the flowering stalk down to the rhizome. If you’re dividing irises, cut the leaves back by about half just before you move them.
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