Attracting Butterflies & Thinning Peaches

- Hi, thanks for joining us for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Everyone likes to see a beautiful butterfly in the garden.

Today we're going to talk about attracting them.

Also, thinning peaches in the spring is essential for a good harvest in the fall.

That's just ahead on The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

- (female announcer) Production funding for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South is provided by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

[upbeat country music] - Welcome to The Family Plot.

I'm Chris Cooper.

Joining me today is Mary Schmidt.

Mary is the Backyard Wildlife Center curator at Lichterman Nature Center.

And Mr. D will be joining me later.

Mary, it's always good to have you here.

- It's great to be back.

- Yes, yes.

So we're gonna talk about attracting butterflies, right?

And I know you like this topic a lot, don't you?

- Of course, yeah.

Butterflies are some of my favorite insects, and so we're gonna talk about some ways to attract them to your yard or your balcony, or to one of your favorite outdoor spaces.

- Okay, good deal.

So let's start with the first question, right?

So what is the difference between butterflies and moths?

- Okay.

So we're gonna get into talking about how to attract them, but I think it's important to kind of understand them a little bit first.

- Yeah.

- So butterflies and moths all belong to the order Lepidoptera, which means scaled wings.

So when you look at butterflies and moths, their wings are covered in scales.

Most of the Lepidoptera are actually moths.

So moths get kind of a bad rap, but there are a lot in the United States.

There's about 12,000 Lepidopteras.

About 11,000 of those are moths, and then the rest are butterflies.

So we're not gonna talk too much about moths today, but I just wanna point out a couple, that they...

There's a lot of 'em out there.

- Yeah, I had no idea it was that many.

- Yeah.

- So that's good.

That's good.

- And there are some ways... That's a common question we get, "How do you tell the difference between them?"

The more we learn, the less differences we see, right?

But there are some general differences, and some exceptions to those.

So the first one that most people think about is moths are active at night, butterflies are active during the daytime.

There are a few daytime-flying moths.

The clearwing hummingbird moths, those are visiting flowers during the daytime, but technically a moth.

A second difference that a lot of people talk about is color.

Most of the time you think butterflies are more colorful, and they are, a lot of butterflies are really colorful, but there's a lot of moths that are colorful as well.

- Oh, I didn't know that.

- The best way to tell is actually looking at their antenna.

So a butterfly is going to have a club-like antenna, and a moth is gonna have a feathery-like antenna.

- Okay.

- And that's the best way to tell the difference.

Again, there are some exceptions that you can get into, but for most people, seeing that difference between a moth and a butterfly.

- Wow.

- Now, one other difference that sometimes comes up is a cocoon and a chrysalis.

Okay, so there is a difference.

A cocoon is what a moth forms, and a chrysalis is what a butterfly is going to emerge from.

- Got it, yeah.

- So when we talk about butterflies, we're gonna be talking about chrysalis.

- Okay.

- Which kind of leads me into the life cycle of butterflies, and that's gonna be important to know because when we're trying to attract them, we can attract them at different stages, so we wanna incorporate different plants along the way.

- Okay.

- So life cycle, typically eggs.

And for butterflies, they're gonna be laying their eggs on a host plant.

A host plant is what the ca terpillar is gonna be eating.

- Got it.

- So we got egg, caterpillar, then we go into the chrysalis stage, and then finally what emerges is going to be our adult butterfly.

So complete life cycle.

Sometimes that happens in one season, sometimes it happens over two seasons.

- Got it, okay.

That's good.

- And the reason is butterflies have to...

It has to be at least like 60, 55, 60 degrees for butterflies to become active.

So that's why we're not always seeing them in the wintertime.

- Ah, and that's why we don't see 'em in the wintertime.

- Yeah.

And there's different strategies that they use to survive the winter.

So we've talked about monarchs before.

Monarchs are gonna be migrating.

There's a few other butterflies that are gonna migrate to warmer areas.

Some are going to overwinter in the egg stage, some overwinter in the caterpillar stage, a few overwinter in a chrysalis stage, and then there's a couple that actually overwinter as adults.

One of those is mourning cloak.

And mourning cloaks are ov erwintering behind tree bark, and so they're some of the first butterflies that we see sometimes in the Mid-South as early as February.

The more we're learning about butterflies, we're seeing just a variety of overwintering strategies.

- How about that?

All right, so what are the type of butterflies that we need to know about, right?

- Okay, so when we get into attracting butterflies, there's basically five different groups of butterflies.

The first one is swallowtails.

Those are the big, showy ones, and they all have these little tales.

And the swallowtails are interesting because a lot of them are named after their host plant.

- Okay.

- So we've got spicebush over by you.

- Spicebush, all right.

- Spicebush is a host plant for spicebush swallowtail.

- Okay.

- Okay?

- I like it.

- Yeah.

So that's an easy one.

Parsley, there is the black swallowtail is gonna go to things in the carrot family, but they'll also utilize herbs like parsley, and dill, and fennel, and you can get the caterpillars on those.

So those are swallowtails.

- Swallowtails, okay.

- Then we have a group called the whites and the sulphurs.

Those are like the white, yellow, orange butterflies that you see, kind of medium size.

And those, if you are growing any sort of broccoli, cauliflower, you've probably encountered those as well.

- Yeah, I've seen those.

- Yeah?

- Yeah, I've seen those.

- So the cabbage whites, but a lot of those are going to different types of legumes as well.

So if you wanna attract those, you're gonna be looking at some legumes.

- Okay.

- Now, the other group, this one is really interesting, This is gossamer wings.

- Yeah.

- And these are...

They're all about the size of a nickel.

- Okay, small.

- And a lot of them have blues and greens in them, but this contains one of the most interesting caterpillars in North America, okay?

- All right.

Let's hear it, let's hear it.

- Okay.

- All right.

[chuckles] - So we think about caterpillars, most of the time they're eating some sort of plant.

- All right.

- But there is one carnivorous caterpillar, and that's the harvester.

And the harvester is a caterpillar in aphids' clothing, okay?

So the eggs are laid among aphids, and as the caterpillar is developing, he's actually eating those aphids, but he's disguised so the aphids think he's one of them, so.

- That's pretty cool, though.

- That's pretty interesting.

A carnivorous caterpillar, so.

- How about that?

- Yeah.

So that's in the gossamer wings.

And a lot of the gossamer wings also have relationships with ants.

And just like ants can protect and harvest aphids- - Yeah, for the honeydew?

- Yes, yup.

- Okay.

- So some of the chrysalis make a squeaking sound that sounds like an ant in distress or something, and so the ants tend to them too.

- What?

How about that?

- I know, pretty interesting in the gossamer wings.

- Okay.

Yeah, how about that?

- Then we get to the brush-foots.

- Okay.

- And the brush-foots is kind of a catchall for a lot of different butterflies, like our monarchs, our viceroys, and all of these actually have furry front legs, which is how they're kind of grouped together.

But there are a lot of different ones, and so, if you're looking to attract a specific one, you'll wanna see what their specific host plants are.

- Got it.

- But overall, the best way to attract them is to be including host plants and nectar sources.

- Gotcha, okay.

- Okay?

- Okay.

- Then the last group of butterflies I'll talk about real quick are skippers.

- Yeah.

- Skippers...

There are a lot of skippers out there, and they often get overlooked, but their named skippers because of their kind of skipping flight, right?

And they're a little bit different too.

They are butterflies, but they just act a little bit different, the way they hold their wings, and a lot of them, their host plants are gonna be grasses.

Some of our native grasses, like this is inland sea oats, and then we've got bluestem as well, those are some of the host plants for the skippers.

- How about that?

- Okay?

- All right.

- So kind of went through all the different types, and as we've talked about before, when you wanna attract a certain animal, you wanna think bigger than just the food.

You wanna think habitat.

So in addition to your host and nectar plants, you wanna include water, shelter, and then the space to raise young is gonna be those host plants that you're offering for the butterflies.

- Got it, got it.

- So one of the ways that you can offer water is what we have kind of set up here.

Butterflies don't typically go to standing water, so what they need is a wet surface.

So you can do that by either getting a shallow dish, you can add sand with a little bit of water, so it's kind of like a wet sand, or you can do rocks and just put a thin layer to where they can land on the rocks and get the water underneath.

And that's gonna be one way to offer puddling areas.

- Puddling.

- And that's when they're getting water from the ground.

- So, again, you don't have to fill this up with water, just a little bit.

- Just a little bit, yeah.

You wanna make sure there's something that the butterflies can land on above the water.

- Okay.

- The other thing that butterflies need, like we talked about, it has to be so warm for them to be active.

- Yeah.

- So, especially in the mornings, they're looking for a sunny spot.

And you can offer that by just a big rock in the sunniest part of your yard.

And a lot of times, they'll visit these to warm up in the mornings.

- Okay, to warm up.

How about that?

I like that.

I think that's pretty cool.

Yeah, there's a lot about butterflies and moths I guess people just don't know.

- Right.

And one of the things you can do is...

I always think, when you wanna attract an animal, think like that animal, right?

So if you think like a butterfly, what you're looking for is big clumps of color.

So you wanna plant in clumps instead of kind of sporadic here and there, so planting in clumps.

- Yeah.

- And then, butterflies, when they are visiting nectar sources or food sources, they need a flower where they can land, so like a landing surface, and then...

So the asters, coneflowers, those are all really good butterfly nectar sources.

And so they have the landing spot, then they can... That curly tongue called a proboscis is what they're unrolling and putting down into the plant to get the nectar.

- That is good, Mary.

And I do wanna ask you one quick question.

- Sure.

- So can we talk about just a few threats to our butterflies and moths?

- Absolutely.

So butterflies and moths are insects.

Sometimes we forget that because we like them so much, but...

So any sort of insecticide, if it's not a specific targeted pesticide, all those insecticides are gonna affect the butterflies as well.

- Yeah.

- Some other threats are, what we all might find as an attractive plant might not be a good nectar source for them.

So always be thinking about what's native in your area.

And then also habitat destruction, right?

So we talk about this with a lot of animals, but creating these spaces for animals, if you can provide one square foot, right?

One square foot is that two to four potted plants on a balcony, or a sunny spot in your yard, those are all gonna help butterflies restoring the habitat, especially for the migrating ones.

- That's good, Mary.

Thank you so much for being here.

- Yeah, thanks for having me.

- Yeah, it's good to learn about those moths and butterflies, right?

- Yes.

- Thank you much.

[upbeat country music] It is always a good idea to inspect your plant material, because you never know what you may find.

So as I'm sitting here looking at this clematis vine, I actually noticed an egg mass.

This is a egg mass of a praying mantis.

It is always good to know and maybe do some research about some of the egg masses that you see in your garden, because some may be beneficial, some may not be beneficial, but the praying mantis is actually beneficial in the garden.

So again, look at that egg mass.

It's pretty distinct.

Hopefully we'll see what it turns into later.

[upbeat country music] All right, Mr. D., when people see this, they're gonna be like, "Oh no, he didn't do that, did he?"

You know, come on.

- Thinning fruit is probably the...

It's probably done the least about any task other than maybe spraying.

- Okay.

- Before I get very far into thinning, I want to tell you when it's too late to thin.

- Okay.

- With peaches, or plums, or nectarines, if the pit has hardened in the center of that fruit, then it's too late to thin.

The size of that fruit is predetermined.

You can thin all of them off but one, and it's still gonna be a small, scrawny peach.

- Wow.

- So I'm gonna show you how to check that.

Be careful, don't cut yourself.

- Okay.

[laughs] - But you just take a knife or an exacto knife, or just any kinda sharp knife, and I go right to the center of that fruit.

- Oh, wow.

- And I'm just gonna cut through here.

- Look at that.

- So this is the pit.

It's watery, it's clear, I know it's healthy, I know the freeze didn't damage that, and I also know it's not too late to thin.

And this is one of the larger peaches on this tree, so I know I'm good.

This is an ideal time to thin this peach tree.

- Well, that's good to know.

- Good to know.

- Didn't know that before.

All right.

- Thinning is very, very simple.

Have you ever heard of good old common horse sense?

- I have.

I've heard my grandmother say that a couple of times.

- That's probably the main ingredient in properly thinning fruit.

I've always said, and Dr. Arlie Powell down at Auburn burned it into my brain, that if a fruit tree sets probably 90% more fruit than it needs to, so properly pruning is gonna take some of that off, and then thinning is gonna take the rest of 'em off.

This tree has already been partially thinned by Mother Nature.

We have some dead fruit, like that right there.

- Okay.

- The little bitty ones, they're not new ones.

They're dead ones that just haven't fallen off.

So Mother Nature took those off.

So I'm not gonna leave one of those thinking it's gonna be a good fruit.

Now let's go to this limb right here.

This is a really, really good example.

In this six-inch span, we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven peaches.

Now, this is where the horse sense, the good common horse sense... [Chris laughing] Picture in your mind how big you want a peach to be when you bite into it.

- I'm with you, oh yeah.

- Two or three inches?

[Chris chuckles] How many would fit within that six-inch space?

Just a couple.

- Just a couple, right.

- So I'm going to- - Oh, boy.

- Pick this one off.

I'm gonna pick this one off.

- Oh, they're cringing, Mr. D. - I'll take this one off.

Now, four to six inches, this gives this one room to grow a couple of inches on each side.

We're taking those off.

Okay, this limb now has three fruit on there.

- With enough space.

- And you can imagine how big those fruit are gonna be.

And if you'd left them like they were, they would've just been like a grape cluster, larger than grapes, but not much larger than grapes.

And that's about what you want.

You want between four and six inches between healthy fruit to properly thin them.

- Four to six.

- Four to six inches.

- All right.

- You wanna get another one up there?

- Yeah, let's get another one.

You see a good one?

- Yeah.

- Oh, yeah.

- Let me pull this one around here a little bit.

Okay, I've got two right here, side by side.

I'm gonna kind of favor the one that got more sunlight.

So, okay, now we've got...

There's one here we don't need.

So we've got probably four inches here.

I'm gonna leave that.

Okay, we've got another one up here.

So actually, I'm gonna take this one off, leaving the one on the upper side.

So I have one here, one there, one here, and a cluster right here, so I'm gonna take- - And the two right there together, yeah.

- I'm gonna take...

I'm basically gonna leave one.

- Aha.

- And I think I'm gonna leave the one on the upper side.

And there's one I didn't see.

I'm taking that off.

- Wow.

- So here we have one here, one here, and one here.

- That's enough room.

- I've got a dead one.

The dead ones you don't have to worry about taking off, because they're gonna fall off anyway.

- Okay.

- Eventually.

- Look at this one underneath it.

- All right, this is one little stem.

It's got four peaches on it.

If you had four big peaches on there, do you think that stem would hang on there?

- [chuckles] It would not.

- Thunderstorm?

I mean, imagine four peaches that big.

So I'm gonna leave... That stem is big enough to hold one peach.

- Okay, one.

- So I'm gonna leave one peach on there.

- Wow.

- And I'm gonna leave it kind of back, close to the base, because it's stronger there.

- Ah, that makes sense.

- So that you can have a big peach there instead of four little bitty scrawny ones.

I'm gonna do the same thing.

I'm gonna take this small one off here.

Just go to all of them and do kind of the same thing.

And you move pretty fast.

You don't have to have any special tools.

You don't even have to have your gloves on.

[Chris laughs] So we got two on there.

This is pretty good right here.

One, two, three.

- Yeah.

- That's one we just thinned, though.

That's why it's pretty good.

[Chris laughs] - Makes sense, right.

- And that's got... Now, right here, we've got kind of a cluster.

So I'm gonna take these two off, leave one on that little bitty stem.

- Uh-huh.

And this was... That's three right there.

This one just came off.

- Yeah, that was a dead one.

- It was a dead one.

- Didn't need it anyway, so I'm gonna leave one on that little stem.

And these dead ones are...

They're falling anyway.

- Yeah, they're falling.

- So Mother Nature scared us to death.

We thought she'd gotten all of them.

- Yeah.

- I think we got, what, eighteen degrees while we had small fruit?

It's not supposed to survive.

- Yeah.

- But it didn't stay that cold that long, and that's our only saving grace here.

- I think it's, what, one day, one night that it was- - Just one night.

- Yeah, it's one night.

- I think you got it.

- I think we got it.

- You wanna thin one for me?

- I could do that.

- I want to see if you were paying attention.

- I was paying attention.

- Yeah?

- I will get this one.

I'm gonna take this one off here.

- Okay.

- Take that one off there.

See, that one's right at the top.

It's gonna get good sunlight.

- Okay.

- Take that one off there.

- There you are.

- There you have it.

Good, all right.

[Mr. D.claps] I'm impressed, you did pay attention.

- Oh, I listen to you, Mr. D., you know that.

[Mr. D. Laughing] Well, we appreciate the demonstration, Mr. D., as always.

- You're most welcome.

- All right.

[upbeat country music] If you would like to control grassy weeds next to your desirable plants, use the wipe technique.

Right here, we have Bermuda that's actually growing in our strawberry patch, and it's gonna be real tight to try to use a two or three-gallon sprayer.

So we're gonna use a sponge, we're gonna use a cloth here, and we're gonna use a paintbrush.

And again, this is gonna be the wipe technique.

So we're gonna grab our glyphosate, which does a good job controlling grassy weeds, okay?

Paintbrush here.

Just gonna lean in over here, get some of this glyphosate.

And as you can see, I am wearing gloves.

That's gonna be on your label.

It's always important to read that.

All right, so we have some glyphosate here, and we're just gonna wipe this Bermuda stolon like this, okay?

It's not gonna take much, because glyphosate translocates, all right?

It's gonna control the stolon and also the rhizome, right?

So that's one technique, it's the wipe technique.

The second thing you can do is you can use a piece of cloth, right?

We're gonna be careful with this, stick it in a little bit, all right?

Okay, got a little bit on there, okay?

And you can wipe it that way.

Just be careful as you're doing this.

You don't wanna touch your desirable plants, and we don't wanna harm these strawberries that are here.

So that's the wipe technique using your cloth.

And the last thing you can use is a piece of sponge.

And I actually use a sponge at home, believe it or not.

All right, so we're gonna lean that over.

Got a little glyphosate on there, and there's a little piece of Bermuda right there.

Just wipe it on there, like that.

I like that, okay?

And there's also another piece of Bermuda that's creeping in here.

So we will pull that up.

Look at that new growth right there.

So if we just grab it, just wipe it fair.

And there you have it.

Three different methods of the wipe technique.

[upbeat country music] All right, Mary, here's our Q&A segment.

You ready?

- I'm ready.

- These are great questions.

- Yeah, there's some good ones.

- Here's our first viewer email.

"Can I thin my peach tree by removing blossoms, or should I wait until the fruit begins to grow?"

And this is Susie on YouTube.

So that's a good question.

So Ms. Susie, I can hear Mr. D. in my ear.

[Mary chuckles] And I know what he would say, so I'm just gonna say it, all right?

- Go ahead, say it.

- So the first thing he will say is, You can thin by pruning in the wintertime, okay.

Then he would also say, if we have a late freeze, that's gonna do some thinning for you as well.

- Sure.

- But he does suggest that you wait until you see those little baby peaches, right?

When they're about an inch across, then you will thin to about three fruit per 12-inch branches.

- Yeah, that's hard for people to prune when they see the fruits.

- Yeah.

- But if you want big peaches, prune 'em when you see the little ones.

- If you want big peaches, you better do that.

Give them a little space, a little room to grow.

- Exactly.

- So again, thin to about three per twelve inches of branch, and that will do it for you.

- Great.

- That'll do it.

So thank you, Ms. Susie, for that question.

Yeah, I think Mr. D. would be proud of that.

- Yes.

- All right.

So here's our next viewer email.

"I get raccoons on our deck in our a small yard.

"What can I do to discourage raccoons from visiting my yard and ripping up everything?"

And this says, "Thank you."

Ms. Barbara.

So Ms. Barbara, I'm gonna get outta the way.

I'm gonna toss it to Mary here.

So what do you think about that one?

- Okay, so raccoons are really smart.

- Oh gosh, [chuckles] okay.

- They really are.

They have pretty big brains, and they can figure things out.

- Okay.

- But they're coming to your yard for a reason.

- Aha, right.

- Most of the time, that's food.

- Yeah.

- So I would ask, are you feeding animals outside, like cats or dogs?

- Okay.

- If so, remove that, especially at nighttime.

Are you using bird feeders, and do they have the right predator guards?

Are you cleaning up underneath it?

- That's good.

- So the raccoon is coming there because there's some sort of food source, I would suspect, there.

- Okay.

- So eliminating the food source, and then figuring out how they're getting in, and if you can do some sort of exclusion.

For example, if they wanna hang out under your deck or under your shed, there's things you can do to exclude them from getting under there.

So eliminate food sources, and then exclusion.

- Exclusion.

- Yeah.

- That is good.

All right, Ms. Barbara, there you have it.

Good luck.

[Mary laughing] All right.

Here's our next viewer email.

"I have extremely hard clay soil.

What can I do to make it better?"

And this is Maria on YouTube.

That's actually a good question.

- It's a great question.

- And before we get started with that, so everybody wants to curse clay.

- Mm-hmm.

- Clay is not that bad, because it does hold nutrients and it holds water.

- Right.

- But if you have a lot of it, it needs to be broken up, of course.

So how do we do that?

- Compost would be my first recommendation.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Especially if you have your own compost.

- Yeah, yeah.

- So you're gonna have to amend it to get some more nutrients in there.

- Yeah, so I would amend it, compost, composted manure.

Horse or cow manure, something else I would add.

Humus, something I would add as well, leaf litter.

How about some of your cover crops, which are considered to be green manures?

So like vetch, your clovers, you know?

Winter rye is something that comes to mind.

Buckeye, alfalfa, to help build up that soil tilth, if you will.

- Right.

- So those are the kinda things I would incorporate or amend to that clay soil, right?

- Yeah.

- To get it nice and fluffy.

- Definitely.

Organic, - To grow whatever you need.

- Yep, organic material, that's what she needs.

- I'm all about the organic material.

- Yep.

- Yeah, so organic material, Ms. Maria, that'll do it for you, okay?

So thank you for that question.

Mary, that was fun.

Thank you much for being here.

- Yeah, it was, great questions.

Thanks, Chris.

- Thank you, thank you.

Remember, we love to hear from you.

Send us an email or a letter.

The email address is familyplot@wkno.org, and the mailing address is Family Plot 7151 Cherry Farms Road, Cordova, Tennessee, 38016.

Or you can go online to FamilyPlotGarden.com.

That's all we have time for today.

Thanks for watching.

Today we talked about attracting butterflies to your garden.

We have a butterfly garden here at the Family Plot.

You can go watch videos of us planting and caring for it at FamilyPlotGarden.com.

Be sure to join us next week for The Family Plot: Gardening in the Mid-South.

Be safe.

[upbeat country music] [acoustic guitar chords]