.The Next Generation
You might recall that I visited The Butterfly Conservatory in Massachusetts. While there, I purchased this egg case
housed in a sealed plastic container.
The instructions say keep it in the fridge till the 15th of April,
then transfer it to a room temperature location and wait.
Approximately 100-300 babies will hatch in May (4-6 weeks). It's extremely important to take the container outside to the garden quickly and sprinkle them around, because overcrowded babies will begin to eat each other if you don't.
Yikes!
and
Be sure to see the exquisite flower Mantis's
3 comments:
oh how wonderful they will be in the garden. a great pest control alternative.
That's the idea...but, unfortunately, on further reading, I discovered they also eat the "beneficial" insects, like ladybugs and butterflies. So if, indeed there are hundreds of hatched and healthy ones, I will also scatter them in another nearby garden half and half with the church gardens. It is said they can Winter over, but I don't know. We used to have them in the garden behind our building (before the LL shut us out of it and turned it to trash)...but they didn't appear in the next season. There were, at that time, many cats (neighbors used, then, to let their cats roam out their back fire escape windows to the garden. We shall see.
They are fascinating, aren't they? I did a similar thing with my children many years ago and I don't remember ever seeing a single one in the garden, they must've eaten each other all up. I remember reading once about someone who kept a pet one in the house!
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