I was walking around my garden today and saw a very large and beautiful Swallowtail Butterfly laying eggs on the leaves of my peach tree. Here is one of them. Although the children's book "The Little Hungry Caterpillar" came to mind and brought a little bit of worry with it, I decided to do some investigating and found out that they are in fact desirable and will not cause a lot of damage, so I will let nature take it's course and let it do it's thing! Maybe I'll get lucky and see it hatch!
So this picture is a followup from my last post on spring bloomers. As I inspected my Columbine I noticed it was covered in aphids. I also noticed a lady beetle and thought I would wait to see if nature would take it's course. Today I went out and saw these tiny orange-ish eggs (lady beetle eggs) with a few more lady beetles and not as many aphids! Lady Beetle larva gorge on aphids, even more so than adult beetles. You can never have too many lady beetles!
The last few weeks I have noticed that my Swiss Chard and Spinach aren't growing as well as I had hoped. As I took a better look I noticed these tiny white eggs on the undersides of the leaves. Leaf Miners! The picture below shows damage done by these little pests. I have sprayed Neem Oil on the leaves and mechanically removed the eggs. The veggies should be good to eat within a day after Neem Oil application.
I haven't figured out what is going on with my tomatoes. Not sure if it is a fungus or an insect... I applied Neem Oil, a great organic pesticide and insecticide. I guess I'll just wait to see what happens.
You can visit the Universtiy of Minnesota extension website page called "What's wrong with my plant?" and find out more about your own garden insects and plants! http://www.extension.umn.edu/gardeninfo/diagnostics/vegetable/index.html
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