May 2025
- STEAM Garden
- May 23
- 7 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
These are my black and white garden companions! Sophie is 14 and acts as my personal
security detail. She is a short-haired border collie who herds our cats, chickens, and humans. Pepper is five years old this month. She is our COVID baby. We rescued her when she was two days old. Thankfully, we had time to give her the care and attention she needed to survive, but she missed socialization. She hides when visitors enter her gardens so you might not see her, but she will know you are there!
This scarlet sage or Texas Sage has been growing in the herb garden for over five years. It dies to the ground after the first freeze and regrows quickly in spring to reach this size by May. Even though it is not a culinary herb, it is a great source of nectar so I leave it alone.
We have several herbs that flower seasonally and attract bees – rosemary, sweet basil, Thai basil, chives, borage, mint, tarragon, parsley, lavender, lemon balm, lemon verbena, oregano, and epazote.
May 3
Sunflowers can attract deer to a garden, that is why I grow cowpen daisies instead. However, when sunflowers come up volunteer, like the one in these photographs, I allow them to grow. These sunflowers are growing near our bird feeding station so they were probably dropped by accident. Deer love to eat the leaves of sunflower plants, but they tend to grow back, and the plant will usually survive and flower.
May 4
I planted my first artichoke plants about ten years ago. When the buds develop, we cook and eat a couple of them, but we leave 90% of the buds on the plant so they will become flowers. Artichokes (Cynara cardunculus) are a type of thistle that is kin to sunflowers. The large silvery-green leaves of the plant are attractive, but the large purple flowers are magnificent. They attract bees, beetles, and butterflies.
Tall verbena plants (Verbena bonariensis) tower into the air above other STEAM garden plants. Clusters of purple flowers grow on very long slender stems. Pollinators easily access these flowers for nectar and pollen. Lots of flying insects use the flowers as an aerial resting place, too. This heat-loving plant is a good, long-season bloomer. Be careful not to over water as that can result in root rot and/or powdery mildew. They are easily propagated by cuttings.
This is a wild rose bush that has been cut, transported, and nurtured by my family for generations. I know it was in my great-grandmother's garden, and family lore relates that it was brought to America by her great-grandmother from Ireland. I have propagated numerous plants so we can continue to pass it to the next generations. It is very thorny, blooms for a very short time, and quickly becomes bramble-like.
Mason bees, are solitary bees that nest in gaps, tubes, small tunnels, or cavities they find in nature or in structures made by humans. The female gathers and clusters pollen and nectar to make a clump of food that she lays an egg on. She then uses mud to seal the egg and the food into the back of the cavity. She continues laying eggs and sealing them into compartments until the cavity or tunnel is full. Eggs with female bees are laid first at the back of the cavity and eggs with male bees are laid toward the front.
Once or twice a week, I place over-ripe or decaying fruit on plates in our Visitor’s Garden. A few species of ants, bees, wasps, flies, beetles, and butterflies are attracted to juicy, decaying, sugary fruit. Look at the video of a beetle eating a banana. Question marks, admirals, commas, and monarchs are a few of the butterflies that use their proboscis to sip juice from the fruit and nectar from flowers. Watermelon is a favorite treat for butterfly visitors in our STEAM garden.
Last year on this date we had giant standing cypress plants (Ipomopsis rubra). This plant is biennial so this spectacular bloom was in its second year, or 2024. This year we have new plants that are small and consist of a rosette of leaves. They won’t flower and look like this until next year. Once they are established, they usually do not need supplemental water. Sometimes they need stakes to support their height and heavy flower heads. Pollinators love this plant! The flowers open sequentially from the tip of the stem downward.
May 11
Sometimes in our Visitor’s Garden we find unexpected visitors. Can you see the porcupine hiding in the bamboo thicket? Porcupines are not fast-moving mammals, but they are expert climbers. Females usually give birth to one pup in April or May, so we suspect there is a den in the vicinity. This time of year, porcupines eat green leaves, herbs, and twigs. Do not get near a porcupine, their quills are very sharp and painful to remove – just ask my dog and one of our longhorns!!
A few Monarchs are beginning to pass through our area. Look at this one on a Gregg’s blue mistflower plant (Conoclinium greggii). This native plant is loved by Monarchs (Danaus Plexippus) and Queens (Danaus eresimus). Mistflower blooms from the end of April to late fall in our STEAM garden. Both types of butterflies get nectar from this plant, but they only lay their eggs on milkweed, which is the host plant for their caterpillars.
May 12
It is important to have water available for wildlife in a pollinator garden. We provide receptacles for water at heights from ground level to 5 feet high. These containers should vary in depths, but every one of them needs to have something in it to help a stranded animal escape -- gravel, a stone, or a post (depending on the depth of the container). Pepper drinks out of our garden troughs and naps in our cat mint. Deer and small mammals frequent it at night.
This spring, I transplanted over 200 white-veined Dutchman's pipevine plants that I raised over the fall and winter. With the 70 plants I have nurtured for four or five years, I think I will have plenty of food for the pipevine swallowtail butterfly larva that use it as a host plant. You can see a pipevine swallowtail laying her eggs on a plant in the center of this photograph. She will lay up to twenty eggs on the stems or leaves.
I was so wrong!! I panicked today when I saw hundreds of pipevine caterpillars ravenously devouring my new plants. I should have known, if they lay 20 eggs at a time that translates into LOTS of hungry caterpillars. Thank goodness I had used wire covers to protect my 70 original plants from egg-laying females. We saved the day, and lots of caterpillars, by transferring them to the lush older plants.
We now have the new pipevine plants protected from egg-laying females. This will allow the plants to recover! If females continue laying eggs on these denuded plants, the larva will starve to death because they can only survive by eating pipevine leaves, stems, and seed pods. These plants will regrow quickly because they have tubers that store nutrients and energy for new growth. In about two or three weeks, they will have fresh leaves for the next round of eggs and larva.
Last year we propagated two large pots of frog fruit. In March of this year, we divided them and transplanted the divisions into the middle beds of our new Nectar Patches. Notice how well they are growing and spreading over the surface of the garden. Frog fruit (Phyla nodiflora) makes a great groundcover that is also a nectar source for pollinators. We will plant larger, deep-rooter perennials in these areas in the fall. It will be good to have the groundcover well established to protect the soil around them.
Notice that two of the leaves of this zinnia plant have been rolled into a tube. This is a sign that the larva of an oak leaf-roller moth is inside. The feces pellets (frass) on a neighboring leaf are also a sign! It is common for this moth’s larva to use zinnia leaves for its pupa stage. The larva will develop into a small moth inside this tube. After time, it will emerge, mate, and lay eggs on the twigs of one of these trees – oak, hackberry, pecan, or walnut. After feeding on tree leaves, the larva will find a leaf to roll so it can pupate inside. I do not kill them unless there is a damaging infestation.
May 22
Texas rockrose (Pavonia lasiopetala) is a perfect plant for pollinator gardens. It is a perennial shrub that is a good bloomer from May to fall. It is deer resistant and very hardy. Well established plants can survive the summer months in a neglected school garden or in a home garden while the gardener is on vacation. It will frequently self-seed, so look for seedlings around the base of the parent plant. The variety to the right is a red rockrose.
Luis dug up this dead plant only to find that it had not been planted correctly in the first place, and that probably contributed to its demise. Can you see what happened? The roots were not pulled apart, divided, and loosened before the potted plant was placed in the ground. The plant was rootbound and the roots were circling in the pot, and they continued to do so once it was in the ground. When planting, Luis and I stress the importance of correcting root problems and giving roots as much space as possible in good soil!
We got 2.5" of rain! What a joy and a relief. We need so much more, but this is a fantastic start. I always say, "Rain begets rain!" So maybe this rain and the humidity that comes with it is the beginning of a drought-breaking series of precipitation events. Thankfully three of our four new water harvesting tanks were connected and water was collected.
In Nectar Patch 1 we have a Reptile Tower for lizards and skinks. In our two new Nectar Patches, we have added Reptile Rock Piles. It is not uncommon for us to see green anoles, skinks, whiptails, and spiny fence lizards in our STEAM gardens. The Rock Piles are meant to provide the reptiles with a refuge from natural and invasive predators. They need a place where they can hide, mate, lay eggs, and/or adjust their body temperatures since they are ectotherms (cold-blooded). The invasive bamboo along one of our perimeter fences also provides a natural thicket for reptiles.
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