Butterflies???

 Hey everyone,

I'm getting a little ahead of myself by asking this question since I
dont have a garden yet :) but I would like to know a little about
using butterflies for pollination.

I know that you need milkweed to sustain a butterfly population since
they lay their eggs on it. It would also help to keep them around. In
an open garden.

In a greenhouse enviroment how big would it approximatly have to be
before one could use butterflies to do the pollinating instead of
doing it by hand (besides having butterflies around is nice)?

Will they pollinate all veggies?

Problems with using butterflies to pollinate, predators etc.?

 jjbarby@yahoo.com says...

That's just Monarchs, not all butterflies.

Can't answer your other questions as I've never heard of butterflies
being major pollinators.

--
Where ARE those Iraqi WMDs?

 I didn't see the original post, but each butterfly has its preferred,
or required host plants.  I know that cabbage butterflies will lay
eggs on more than just cabbage, they were all over my horseradish one
year, and I find cabbage butterfly like green larvae on petunias from
time to time.

One year I had a hoard of cabbage butterflies because I had planted
Green Comet broccoli, and it had hollow stems when I cut the stalk,
and I didn't realize it didn't really branch like other non-hybrid
broccoli, and so I left the stalks in place, and then it rained, it
got into the hollow stems and proceeded to rot them.  Ewwww the yard
stunk of rotten cabbage smells and the butterflies started showing up,
and more and more of them  After while it seemed like it was snowing.
Ok.. I exaggerated a little but there were an unnatural number of them
around.  So, it only goes to show ya, they find their hosts with a
sense of "smell" of some sort. ;-)

Swallowtails I think are supposed to like celery or parsley .. don't
know what else.

I think morning cloaks lay eggs on trees, don't recall which kind.  We
used to have a lot of butterflies around, but I rarely see one these
days other than the little bitty ones that mimic monarch coloration,
or are pale blue or rusty colors, fritillarias maybe.

All I know is if it's a caterpillar and it's eating my garden, it
meets BT!

Janice

On Sun, 1 Feb 2004 09:55:16 -0800, Larry Blanchard

 

Janice wrote:

Carrot leaves.  I find the caterpillars in my carrots sometimes. I just
let them eat. They don't kill any plants and they don't seem to eat
enough to diminish the final harvest enough to notice.

Steve

 
Swallowtails like *everything* in the parsley/dill/carrot family.
AFAIK, they don't pollinate much -- they just eat like chainsaws! Very
attractive, however, both as caterpillars and butterlflies.