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Many suggest that our world would look a lot different if we did not have beetles. Recent reading and long ago high school biology suggests that there are tens of thousands of different beetles in the world. Many are scavengers; some are beneficial while many are pests.

Unless you live in a world of concrete and pavement, mile a minute weed has almost certainly found you. The plant was introduced in York County many years ago as an ornamental vine with jaggy foliage and beautiful blue berries. For decades it was well behaved before going wildly invasive five or 10 years ago. Targeted releases are scheduled. Our farm was buried somewhere on the list of release sites. As we climbed the list a funny thing happened.

We were told to scout our infestations, and, to every one’s surprise, the beetles had already arrived on their own despite the fact that there have been only a few releases in southern Lancaster County to date.

That surprise reminded me of another successful use of a predator beetle. Some 15 years ago my tenant built a rather large cage or something covered with fine meshed wire to raise a beetle that ate purple loosestrife. At the time, purple loosestrife was the demon plant that was choking many wet areas.

Releases of that insect turned the tide on purple loosestrife with no apparent bad side effects. One can only hope that the work with mile a minute vine will follow the same road.

Shifting now to the beetles that I think are the worst garden pests. I am referring to the potato beetle and the one that loves beans.

One of my almost-retirement jobs is to provide homeward transportation to several employees. This gives me a perfect opportunity to view some gardens on an almost daily basis. I have been especially watching one patch of potatoes.

I am aware that this family shuns spraying, so I have been watching for the potato beetles. One day a month or so ago I noticed that the vines were covered with a white material. Finally, when I could still see no beetles several days ago, my curiosity got stronger than my ability to wait. so I asked.

To digress a bit, I grew potatoes commercially nearly 40 years ago and then potato beetles made the chemical companies happy.

The white stuff is diatomacous earth, the ground deposits of ancient seashells. There is a synthetic version. The principal is that when the beetle eats the leaves it ingests the material which lacerates their guts, and they are no more. Applications are made whenever beetles appear. To date there has been three applications, usually made in the morning when the foliage is damp.

One good one, one or two bad ones and one who’s benefit is still to be determined. That’s enough beetles for today. Diatomacous earth is headed for my bean patch and my eggplants too. I may even try a few potatoes next year.

Some friends and I had the opportunity to visit several garden centers just outside of Philadelphia last week. I always like to do some greenhouse reconnaissance, or as my husband says, just plain snooping. I was happy to see several cars at all three places, and a mixture of beautiful blooming perennials, and large, well-shaped shrubs. The only thing I was disappointed in was the annuals. Planters and hanging baskets that should have been full of flowers and bright green leaves were straggly, yellow and in need of deadheading.

It’s a common problem, hanging baskets planted in March for Mother’s Day sales look a little sad three months later. Take a look at your deck, porch or patio. How are your baskets and containers faring?

A few simple steps can take your tired, straggly plants and give them new life for the rest of the season.

1. Evaluate the plant varieties. Early season annuals like pansies, nemesia, lobelia, and the like are beautiful in the cooler temps of April and May but get pretty stressed in the heat of July. Remove these cool-season annuals and transplant them to a shady flower bed. They should recover in the fall and bloom again once the mercury comes back down.

2. Fill in the holes with more heat-tolerant flowers like lantana, pentas, zinnias, verbena, calibrachoas, petunias, vinca, or for shady spots: impatiens, begonias, or torenia also know as wishbone flower.

3. Are you feeding enough? I don’t recommend fertilizing plants in the ground, with the possible exception of the vegetable garden. However, plants in a container without access to the complex soil network of organic matter and active organisms that release nutrients into the soil need a little supplementation. Whether you chose the yellow-and-green box or any other balanced fertilizer, a liquid feeding program at every watering or at least three times a week should rejuvenate yellow leaves and give blooms a boost.

*A word about fertilizer: The three numbers on the box such as 15-5-15 or 24-8-16 refer to the ratio of N (nitrogen), P (phosphorus) and K(potassium). This is a generalization, but nitrogen promotes leaf growth and will keep leaves looking green, the phosphorus promotes general cell growth and the potassium component promotes flower color and size. Some fertilizers add other minerals such as iron, magnesium or calcium. Some plants like petunias and calibrachoas like a little extra iron. Others, like geraniums don’t. Just as you read a cereal box to know what you are feeding your kids, read the fertilizer box to know what you are feeding your plants.

*One more tip- a drop of dish-soap in a gallon of water will help the soil absorb water.

4. This step is probably the easiest and the most effective. Are you ready? Give it a haircut. Cutting back overgrown plants by half will bring the container back into balance, promote branching, so straggly plants grow back fuller, and will stimulate flowering for those trailers that are only blooming on the tips. With our hanging baskets, a radical trimming to the edge of the container will take about 2 weeks to grow back in, but will drastically improve the appearance for the rest of the season.

5.Deadheading spent blooms periodically will also promote heavier flowering and clean up the appearance of baskets. This is especially true for larger flowering plants like geraniums, verbena, and some petunias. Often smaller flowers are self-cleaning, or shed their petals, but still benefit from a light shearing periodically.

My last piece of advice is to watch the water. A woman remarked to me several weeks ago that her hanging baskets always died by late June. As an afterthought, she added that it might have helped to water them. Put your finger in the soil, if it feels moist, leave it alone. If it’s dry, water. As plants get larger, and are in full sun, they need more frequent watering. Plants that you have trimmed, baskets in shaded areas, or ferns, let dry out more before irrigating.

On that note, I think I’ll heed my own advice and go rip out the pansies in front of my kitchen door.

At a recent lecture that examined bird behavior after the breeding season, I learned something about plants that I already knew. Let me try to explain that fact which keen-eyed gardeners, plant researchers and birds agree on.

The calendar year for most birds is driven by five events. Where do I spend the winter, spring and fall migration, breeding and raising young, and the 45 to 60 days between the empty nest and fall migration.

True, we have a few birds that skip the migrations, but they are in the minority.

The breeding season is the most studied aspect of the five and the most active for most bird watchers. Most birds feed their young insects. What varies is where and how they find them.

Our common robin is what they call a generalist. He’s happy in our yards or in the deepest forest. He generally isn’t concerned about elevation or whether it is wet or dry under foot. We are in the middle (north /south) of his breeding range. In the winter we are at the northern tip of his range.

Most birds are more specific, picking a spot from anywhere on the ground to the tops of the tallest trees. Some like it near water, some don’t. Often their spring and early summer homes and nesting sites are driven by temperature ranges.

Several weeks ago I chased down a new bird in West Virginia which nests in the grass several feet off the ground. But he wants to be near a woods edge in a brushy meadow in a small clearing. As a bird of concern, the wildlife agencies there are clearing patches in thickets, fencing them and leasing them to beef farmers for light grazing. It appears to be working.

Some of us just look at birds. Then you look for birds. As you gain experience you slowly begin to figure out that you must look where they are. Breeding season is the easiest time to find a variety of birds.

The period between raising young and fall migration is the least understood and researched. Where are the birds in that period? There is much variation between species and even between sexes and juveniles of the same species.

What is obvious is that they frequently are not where they were during the breeding and nesting season. Why?

The birds have figured out that the lush plant growth that occurs in the spring brings lots of insect activity. As the growth slows, the plant builds natural defenses and the insects become less plentiful. The birds know that, do we?

Last summer, after eating his fill of the wild milkweed that permeates the flower beds below the store, a fat monarch caterpillar made his way in the door and spun his chrysalis on one of the chairs. 5-yr old Liam and I had a blast watching it hatch one warm day. What a great experience to share.

Attracting butterflies to your garden is easy. Keeping them is a bit more work.

Adult butterflies feed only on nectar, so are attracted to open flowers. Common nectar sources are butterfly bushes, verbena, lantana, members of the daisy family like coneflowers, liatris, black-eyed Susans, coreopsis, and zinnias. Other great nectar sources are members of the mint family like catmint, bee-balm, agastache, and salvia.

To get them to stay and lay eggs, you need the host plant specific to each variety of butterfly for the caterpillars to eat. The most noticeable butterflies in this area are the swallowtails, frittilaries and monarchs.

Swallowtail caterpillars feed on members of the carrot family like dill, fennel, parsley and carrot greens. I always plant several parsley plants in my herb garden so I have some to share.

Monarch caterpillars feed exclusively on member of the milkweed family. Asclepias tuberosa, the orange flowered butterfly weed is a wonderful perennial for most gardens, swamp milkweed will tolerate wetter sites, and there is a wonderful annual milkweed, Asclepias curassavica that stays tender into the fall to feed the last generation each summer in preparation for the migration. Toxins in the milkweed provides the adults with protection from predators.

Fritillaries, the delicate orange and black speckled ones with some white markings, drink the nectar of milkweeds, thistles, and members of the daisy family. The larvae, however, feed on violets.

Don’t neglect shrubs in your butterfly garden. Besides butterfly bushes, try including purple ninebarks, vitex, elderberry, lilacs, sumac, or blueberries as nectar sources. Our native hydrangea arborescens is a nectar source for skippers. In addition to supplying nectar, woodies can be a larval food. The spring azure butterfly larva feed on a variety of viburnums. Silver spotted skippers caterpillars dine on Lespedeza, or bush clover. Native deciduous azaleas host a large variety of butterflies, both as nectar and larval food sources. Buttonbush, in addition to attracting waterfowl , is a nectar source for viceroys and skippers. The stately Red-Spotted Purple Admiral and the White Admiral caterpillars feed on the leaves of willows, birches, wild cherries, and shad-bush (Amelanchier). The adults feed on rotting fruit, carrion and animal waste. On second thought, try not to attract those to your yard.

Monarch butterflies should be reaching this area about now, where they will spend the summer before migrating the thousand miles back to the jungles of Mexico. Be kind to these winged beauties and you can enjoy them through the lazy days of summer.

     Unless you are an active member of the Rip van Winkle sleeping club, you are certainly aware of the pollution problems of the Chesapeake Bay and the mixed reviews the cleanup efforts have received. Fingers of blame point in dozens of directions including the home landscape.
      In our backyard, Maryland has recently enacted legislation which, if duplicated here, would impact on our gardening efforts. I would generally agree with the proposal, but am troubled when education fails and government steps in.
The provision aimed at the home gardeners would limit the potency of the ingredients in fertilizer sold to the general public. I guess the logic is that if you normally use six bags of fertilizer, you will still use six bags of fertilizer, which will reduce the runoff potential because you used less fertilizer. The rules get uglier for professional landscaper and golf course operators.
      Granted, Maryland has more at stake with bay shoreline and has a long history of more active government, but Pennsylvania, I think, supplies over half the water to the bay. Will Pennsylvania act or will the feds force their hand? Time will tell. Will water also enter the mix?
      Perhaps it would be timely to review our gardening decisions. Water and fertilizer are the keys to rapid plant growth and lush looking results, but the runoff from our efforts have been documented. The equation is quite simple. We pour on the fertilizer. We follow with lots of water. The water moves the fertilizer into or across the soil.
      As my readers know, I’m a fan of lean and mean plants, which can provide great beauty and, except for severe drought, can fend for themselves. It’s less work, less time (watering) and less cost for fertilizer. I repeat my often offered claim.
     If you are a heavy or daily waterer, let me suggest you reduce your watering in half. After several weeks when you see no difference, cut it in half again and you will be doing yourself and the environment a favor.
      The alternative of lush, fat and happy plants fueled by lots of fertilizer and water has lots of fans. Insects and diseases love lush plants because the plant sacrifices its built in defenses in favor of rapid growth.
      Many plant sellers like them, too. Excesses of water and fertilizer build lush tops while limiting root growth. The ideal growing soil contains significant amounts of air as well as water. Lose the air and you lose or limit the roots. Poor roots and our usual winters equal a trip to the nursery for replacements.
      Recently I suggested that the more you spray the more you need to spray. The same is true with water. As the top growth outpaces root development the plant will appear to need even more water.
      It is my hope that we educate ourselves into better gardeners before someone, who probably doesn’t know which end of the hoe goes into the ground, tells us how to do it.