Hey all,
If you follow my blog posts over on Wild Homesteading you likely know that I'm all for planting native plants. A big reason I do this is to support picky insects--these are insects like the monarch butterfly that rely on a specific type of plant for at least one part of their life cycle. Without that plant the picky insect can't survive.
It turns out roughly 90% of all plant eating insects fall into this picky category. Supporting these picky insects means an increase in overall diversity of life on my wild homestead. But the benefits go beyond just supporting the picky insects.
These picky insects are often food for many other critters like birds. By planting native plants you attract the picky insects which in turn support birds and other predators which means your
land can support a larger amount of these predators. But these predators won't just eat the picky insects--they're also going to eat the generalist insects that eat your food crops.
From the perspective of growing food supporting picky insects is all about supporting more predators which in turn mean less garden pests.
But a big question is how well does this actually work? I've planted a lot of native plants in my hedgerows which run along the south side of my wild homestead. One type of
native plant I planted is called cascara (
Rhamnus purshinana)--cascara is a small tree (20-30 feet) that has
medicinal uses and can grow in sun or shade making it great for a hedgerow. And it gets small berry sized fruits that wildlife love.
This year I started to notice some damage to the leaves of my cascara
trees. When I went out at night I found a bunch of small green caterpillars (see attached pics) and after doing some research I discovered that these are the caterpillars for the
tissue moth (Triphosa haesitata). The tissue moth is one of those picky insects--various sources state that it only uses cascara as a host plant for its caterpillars.
Seeing these caterpillars makes me really excited because it means that it is possible to attract picky insects by planting native plants after only a couple years of effort over a relatively small area of my wild homestead. I'm planning to plant more cascara overtime and other native trees and shrubs so hopefully the population of picky insects will just keep growing which in turn will mean more birds, predatory insects, and other wildlife. Which will all have the added benefit of more hungry mouths ready to eat the critters that go for my food crops!
Great to see these caterpillars and to know this strategy is working. I'm excited to keep monitoring and see what other picky insects show up!