Garden Critters

I'm back! We had an incredible time in Cabo San Lucas and came back tanner, happy, and relaxed after a week by the pool and on the beach. I have pictures and stories to come, but while I'm decompressing, I thought I'd share something from our first day back at home.

I don't know exactly what happened in Philly while we were gone, but we came back to a garden that was more like a wild jungle. It's already produced lots this year - we've already eaten spinach, arugula, and romaine, plus brought in a crop of swiss chard, 2 zucchini, and lots of herbs - and a week away from taking care of it led to overgrowth. Our lovely neighbors looked after the kitties and watered the plants, so it was well-tended.

I didn't take a photo of the garden before I spent almost three hours weeding it, but this picture might give you a sense of what I'm talking about:

That's our enormous dill plant. Sure it was a little big before we left, but I swear it AT LEAST doubled in size over the course of a week. Now, look on the ground to the left of the dill plant. That's what all the dirt in our 9' x 12' garden looked like. To the right, you can see 20+ minutes of work clearing out all of the weeds and overgrowth.

Anyhow, we had several plants that bolted while we were gone. Nick and I (mostly Nick) read up on what to do for each of them, and we removed what needed to be removed. When it came time to assess the dill plant, I noticed that we weren't alone anymore:

Hello, little friend! Nick and I liked this big green caterpillar, but we didn't think too much of it. Then Nick went to read up on the dill plant in one of our books on growing veggies, and he discovered that this isn't unusual at all. Here's what this book had to say:

"Largely free from diseases and insects, dill is one of the host plants of the parsleyworm, more elegantly known as the larva of the swallowtail butterfly. Leave this bright green caterpillar with black stripes in peace. Better to lose a bit of dill than to lose a butterfly"

We completely agreed. So we had a closer look at our new friend and his host plant. Then we saw this:

Another one! And then we watched these guys for awhile and how exactly they eat the dill. They crawl out onto a frond of dill and then use their first few pairs of hands to climb up one of the wisps. Like so:

Click on images for larger versions. And then they gnaw their way down until it's all gone.

We were amazed at how much dill these things could put back. We're wondering just how long this enormous plant is going to last. We don't mind, though. Eventually these little green dudes will turn into one of these:

And that's A-OK with us. We just hope we get to see the final result!