On 7/30/2016 7:39 AM, songbird wrote:
~misfit~ wrote:
...
It also doesn't mention the fact that yellowjackets can bypass caterpillars
chemical protection so that they'll always go for the easy-to-see
caterpillars such as monarch butterfly larvae. I grow plants specifically to
nurture several species of ornamental butterflies and the wasps always take
their larvae but never seem to find the well-camoflaged larvae of 'pest
species' such as cabbage white butterfly.

when i was growing cabbages, i would sit and
watch the wasps gather the eggs and worms. they
did help, but not enough to get them all.


Wasps will completely eradicate a large population of monarch butterfly
larvae while my vegetable crops get eaten to the ground by hornworms and the
like which the wasps never touch.

yes, nothing seems to get the tomato worms
other than me. i've yet to see any signs of the
parasitic bug that supposedly will use them as a
host.

there are at least two tomato worms out there
that i have not found yet, either it is too late
and they are done and back in the ground or they
are being particularly sneaky. oh well, it's ok
there's plenty...

nice rain today and some yesterday too and the
day before plus i watered that morning so the ground
is finally getting a good soaking. it's been a few
months of too dry weather.

a nice day for reading and frogging around here.


songbird

In our Louisiana garden we had to patrol two or three times a day for
tomato worms, have not seen one here at all. We do have a large
population of barn swallows, purple martins, and other insect eating
birds during the day and, at night the bats come out. I know they've
been eating the mosquitoes and have seen them take moths and butterfly's
both. Of course our tomatoes are out now, temps running into 100+ almost
daily. Crowder peas have been pulled, the original cukes are gone but
the new cukes are blooming like crazy. We still have four pepper plants
that are producing but the fruit is much smaller due to the heat. I'm
ready for cooler weather, if it wasn't for AC we couldn't live here.
That being said I grew up in SE Texas and we only had fans, attic fans,
floor fans, any kind of fan we could get. We must have had 20 or more
screened windows in that old house and there was generally a light
breeze blowing, thank goodness for that. My folks had never had AC until
1957, I turned eighteen that year and was in the Navy, who also didn't
have AC.