Okay my Virginia gardening friends…or just anyone in the know…what will this cocoon turn into? I found three on my buddleia (Butterfly Bushes) in the butterfly garden I put into the perennial flower beds last year. They are each about two inches long, fat, and beautifully ridged shades of gray, taupe, and brown, with a bit of red cast to them. Am I hatching something wonderful, like a monarch or swallow tail butterfly, or Mothra?
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How to Grow Butternut Squash Organically
Learning how to grow butternut squash organically ensures you know how to grow this tasty, nutritious vegetable in your home garden. I’ll share with you some basic information on growing butternut squash, followed by some organic gardening tips that have been helpful for me here at Seven Oaks Farm in dealing with the various pests…
How to Make the Perfect Cup of Herbal Tea
Make the perfect cup of herbal tea, right from your own garden! In May, I gave two free talks on how to grow, harvest, dry, and create your very own herbal teas. This lecture proved so popular that I recorded the narration and uploaded it to YouTube. You can view it below: Supplies to Make…
How to Get Rid of Tent Caterpillars
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Replenishing Raised Bed Garden Soil
Raised bed vegetable garden soil soil needs to be replenished periodically. If you’ve done your job right and selected great soil, and amended it with nice compost, you’re going to have super garden soil for the first few years. Because you don’t walk on a raised bed garden the way that you do with typical…
Phil said immediately, ” It’s a praying mantis. They’ll have about 150 babies in each cocoon. Make sure they stay outside. It’s good to have alot of them around.They eat insects.” We have seen the babies right after hatching. They cling tenaciously to leaves and sway in the breeze. And always, they remind us to pray. 🙂 Annie
That would be wonderful! I’ve seen praying mantis egg cases in the woods, but they usually dangle under a branch, and these egg cases are firmly attached to the leaves. I go out every day and visit them. We left them and didn’t trim down the bushes….even if it was a moth, I’d have left it. I can’t wait until they hatch. And I love praying mantis. We had one on a window screen last fall that just stayed with us until the cold weather set in. We’d go and say hello to it every day.