Cathy Theys is a homeschooling (preschool and "regular" school) mother of 3, who loves creating websites! She has degrees from Purdue University in Electrical and Computer Engineering, teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago on and off in the Computer Science Department, and is very interested in everything Green, Drupal, Shaklee, Usborne, Natural, Educational ... etc. and has started businesses to go with her passions. She would love to help you!
creatures on plants
Trying to photograph a butterfly is difficult! Is it a Cabbage White?
A day after taking the pictures of the caterpillars on the broccoli, we were outside and I spotted a white butterfly around the broccoli. A said, "Oh, that is a Cabbage White. But, why is it on our broccoli?" Well, I luckily had just watched a Good Eats episode on broccoli, and it turns out that broccoli is genetically indistinguishable from cabbage. And so, I told A.
We also got the old butterfly house from last year, and put some caterpillars in it. We know what they eat! I try to cut off the mostly eaten leaves for the pets. We'll see for sure what they turn into. :)
The first picture is the best, the rest are hear to try and convey the absolute difficulty of photographicing a flitting butterfly that won't hold still! And I deleted the same number of pictures again that were complete misses.
Picture 1. Cabbage White butterfly around broccoli.
Picture 2.
Picture 3.
Picture 4. Shows damage to broccoli too.
Creatures on my Broccoli
I've been trying to grow my own food, blogging about it here under the heading Grow Your Own Food, GYOF, and tweeting about it too under #gyof. I'm trying to learn more about growing food so that each year I get better and better at it.
Lately I've been noticing something has been eating my broccoli plants, making little holes in the leaves. Today, I was out in the garden (late September here in Chicagoland) and there were so many caterpillars on one leaf, I could not help but notice them. Then I started looking more closely. I ended up pulling and brushing off any critters I could find, after taking pictures! So, here are the pictures, If you know the names of these creatures and can help me learn about them, please add a comment (you'll have to log in or create an account), I'll appreciate the help.
I think there are caterpillars, little white bugs and maybe caterpillar poop, or eggs?!?
Picture 1. Lots of Caterpillars
Picture 2. Light green caterpillar and white insect.
Picture 3. Close up of white bug, and can see the thin yellow stripe on the caterpillar.
Picture 4. Tons of what at first looked like dust on a leaf, might be lots of those white bugs.
Picture 5. What are these tiny slimy green balls, caterpillar eggs, poop, or ...?
You should be able to click on each picture to see a bigger picture, and then you can probably zoom in on that bigger picture.
Thanks! -Cathy
