- Howdy, I'm John Hart Asher.

This week on "Central Texas Gardener", are monarch butterflies in danger of extinction?

Monika Maeckle of the Texas Butterfly Ranch explores the history and controversy in her book, "The Monarch Butterfly Migration: Its Rise and Fall".

Three Studio Balcones landscape architects create pocket prairies in their own small yards.

Entomologist Wizzie Brown answers your insect questions and herbalist Leighla Molina makes fire cider.

So, let's get growing, right here, right now.

Central Texas Gardener is made possible by generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden.

and by Diane Land and Steve Adler.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) - In different timelines, spaces, and designs, three landscape architects create pocket prairies in their own small yards.

- We learned very quickly that we do not like mowing at all.

So we started killing our lawn in August of 2022.

And we had black plastic down for quite a long time.

And finally, in May of 2023, we lifted up the black plastic and seeded it.

I'm Ilse Frank, and I am a native Austinite and a landscape architect with Studio Balcones.

My husband, Tim Braun, and I purchased this home in November 2021.

And we had been living in condos previously, and this is our first yard as adults since leaving our parents' nests.

And so it was a bit of an adventure to begin on.

I've always been interested in native plants and wildflowers and seeding.

And so, it was just an opportunity to experiment, honestly.

Like, I've never had a yard.

I was very nervous, honestly.

Like, is this going to work?

Like, what's going to happen here?

- My name is Jennifer Orr, and we bought this house fall of 2008.

And when we bought it, there was a fence around it.

There was a big red oak in the front yard that we've since lost.

And really horrible nandinas, and other invasive shrubs and that's about it.

And lawn.

Yeah.

- Pretty boring.

We had to get rid of the grass the hard way with a shovel, with pickaxes and just get after it.

And you dig it all up by hand.

And thankfully, I think we were still in our 30s.

So our bodies can handle it for a day.

But, yeah, and then we just had to keep after it and keep weeding until I think finally over the last 15 years or so, the garden has established dominance and so we've been able to weed less.

Jennifer thankfully has a design eye, very artistic and instead of just doing what I would have done is just rectangles or squares, she designed a very contoured landscape here.

So the backyard was a driveway where all the flowers are now.

- [Jennifer] A driveway and a big concrete just patio or, I mean, in the middle of it was basically just a square.

- It was a concrete pad.

And so as a result, and Jennifer can speak more intelligently to this, that that soil underneath the concrete had never had seeds in it, or at least not since maybe the 30s or the 20s.

And so when we seeded it, there was no competition for those seeds because there was no weed base.

- [Jennifer] There was no St. Augustine or Bermuda or dandelions or anything, or Johnson's grass or I mean, so many things that can get in the way.

And believe it or not, all of our native wildflowers and even grass mixes, they like crappy, poor soil.

They respond well to that kind of soil.

I was curious to try seeding.

My employee, well, he was my employee.

Now he's my business partner, Michael had done that to his entire front yard.

Had just killed all the grass and gone with native seed.

It seemed like it was something that a lot of people were doing.

And so I was like, well, let's try; this is a perfect place to try it.

- My name is Michael Meihaus.

I'm a principal at Studio Balcones Landscape Architects.

This is my native Texas landscape.

This is a yard that we've been managing since 2018.

So going on about six or seven years now.

What used to be Bermuda grass is now our experiment.

Our main goal was to get rid of Bermuda grass.

The first step was, okay, how do we create a good environment for a seed germination?

We wanted to just do mostly herbaceous cover from seed at first.

And I don't like to do one treatment over the whole area since it's an experiment.

We can try different things.

So I tilled half the yard and raked out what we could of the Bermuda roots.

And the other half we just let go essentially, and seeded over the Bermuda grass.

And we did it in fall of probably 2018.

So this yard was seeded once, six years ago.

And it's probably due for another round, but our prep was only native soil and a little bit of compost as a top dress, just to kind of get some nutrients back in there.

- I'm pretty sure that this was farmed land before it was developed in the 50s, our neighborhood here.

And so it's pretty good soil, as far as I can tell.

But we did amend it, with some compost.

And we used two different seed mixes.

Mostly we are just seeing the wildflowers and little bits and pops of grasses have been coming up.

- [Jennifer] You know, the agaves, the grasses, they can kind of hold the garden when everything else is really tired and thirsty.

- With so many great, like, really just kind of workhorse plants that are widely available to put in your landscape, Lindheimer muhly really being one of the best for sure.

It does create structure.

In our yard we used it to just designate the wildflower area from something else.

These have been in the ground for almost seven years now, and I've never cut them back.

They don't have a problem pushing through the old growth.

I would encourage people to resist the temptation to cut back bunch grass if they can.

Really I've been experimenting with just letting things go, no disturbance.

This is a way to see what happens if we just let it go.

So all that dead herbaceous cover, everything that's senesced and gone to seed is just matted down over time.

And we walk on it a little bit, occasionally pull weeds, but for the most part, not cutting back grasses.

I'm largely not cutting back any of the herbaceous growth.

- Controlling an environment can be done with less effort.

- [Jennifer] Well, that's true.

- Because you accept new things coming in and really, you're just there to kind of provide parameters and make sure nothing dies.

- [Jennifer] It's like parenting.

- Yeah, right.

We're the guardrails of the garden.

- Right, right, right.

You don't want anything horrible to happen, but it's not like you can control it all.

- And this little strip is our 2024 project.

We put in the raised beds, which will keep the Bermuda out, we hope, from the vegetables and we put in ollas also with the raised beds.

We collect our HVAC condensate.

And so my hope is just to take the watering can, fill it up over in our cistern and then fill the ollas.

And we're going to have a little seating area, too, so we can enjoy the prairie.

- Our little garden we built this year for my two-year-old is really just about just creating a little bit of a barrier to introduce some new soil and create a good environment for some vegetables and flowers.

We like rocks.

So you know, collecting rocks, stacking rocks, piling them.

Critters like them, too.

Really, the rock work is a great way to slow water down and to create these just like little micro catchments where plants can take root and seed can distribute and germinate.

- We put in a Little Library.

My husband is a writer, and he's a professor at Saint Edward's.

And it's just such a joy.

Everyone stops by and peeks at it, and we like to curate it.

We also have a dog library, which is where you can take a stick or leave a stick.

And, yeah, it's just like a fun little piece of like community and getting to know our neighbors.

- I feel like people should know, should have some relationship to the trees and plants that keep us alive.

I do want my kids to have a relationship with nature, and I think your yard is the easiest place to do it.

I mean, going to national parks and state parks, that's great too, of course.

- Yes.

- This is the day to day.

- But we can't live in one.

- No, we can't live in one.

- [Matt] No.

- [Jennifer] But we can bring butterflies to this one.

- Just like never ending butterflies and bees.

It's amazing.

It's just like a constant show.

Our dog and our cat are just like enamored.

So they just, like, sit on our couch looking out the front window at the yard, and we love it.

And everyone stops to look.

It's just this is the gift that keeps on giving.

- I know this has been sort of beat to death, but getting away from lawn and planting native plants does create habitat.

- Yeah, it does.

- And that's good for everybody, not just the animals.

But it's good for the humans because we're all connected.

And it can create just a more interesting environment, I think throughout the year.

- We're plant enthusiasts, obviously.

We're here to learn, learn about the landscape.

And this is our little microcosm to do that.

So yeah, we like to have fun and watch things grow and watch it change year after year.

- Monika Maeckle is a butterfly evangelist and pollinator advocate who explores and documents how our lives intersect with all wildlife.

She's the founder of the Texas Butterfly Ranch and the Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival in San Antonio.

Today, she joins us for a look at her thoughtful, insightful book, "The Monarch Butterfly Migration: Its Rise and Fall".

Welcome, Monika.

- Thank you for having me.

- What is the Butterfly Ranch?

- I like to say that the Texas Butterfly Ranch is a state of mind.

Because like so many great things in life, it's something I didn't plan to do and it just kind of happened to me.

I was actually working here in Austin a lot as Vice President of New Media for a company, and I was suddenly assigned to reach out to all our clients about social media.

And I had to learn about Twitter and Facebook and what's a blog.

This was back in the early 2000s.

And teaching our clients how to use these tools.

And at the same time, I had just been introduced to monarch butterfly migration and tagging monarch butterflies.

And I just became captivated by these insects.

And one of the ways that I processed what I learned is to write about it.

So since I was having to do this at my company business more, I thought, I'm just going to start a blog on butterflies.

And I so I started a Texas Butterfly Ranch on WordPress.

I mean, when I go back and look, that very first blog post, it's still up there.

I think it's like 50 words.

And I was like, ooh, I got three views.

So it just started out.

And then I would see these things in nature, and I would write about them would help me understand and process.

And then the lessons that I learned blogging about butterflies I could apply to my job and vice versa.

And I got more and more subscribers and thousands of email list subscribers.

And I would literally get people emailing me.

It's like, hey, I'm going to be visiting San Antonio coming up.

What's your address?

I don't see a location here.

I was like, well, that's because it's only online.

And so I kind of came up with this idea that it's basically a lens through which to look at all these complex issues like sustainability, climate change, migration and immigration.

And I like to say it encompasses the Hill Country, San Antonio and Austin, but basically it's just a way to look at the world.

- So it's not necessarily from a biology background.

It's really more from an analytical.

- It's a nature nerd curiosity background.

I mean, I've always been a gardener and loved being outside.

And in 2000, my family was able to acquire a small piece of property on the Llano River.

And that I always like to say, I call it the Texas Butterfly Ranch.

Everybody in our family has a different name for this place, but I call it the Texas Butterfly Ranch.

- That'll work.

- And I like to say that the Texas Butterfly Ranch is where I got my master's degree, because I've learned so much from that land.

I mean, just amazing amount of stuff.

And captivating, interesting, just shocking amount of stuff that you can only learn by experiencing and being out in nature.

- Science is observation, right?

- Absolutely.

- So why did you write this book, and why did you call it the rise and the fall?

- I've interviewed all the major monarch butterfly scientists.

I've been fortunate as the organizer of our Monarch Butterfly and Pollinator Festival in San Antonio.

Having been very involved in the Mayors' Monarch Pledge designation of San Antonio as Monarch Champion City in 2015 to really get to know some scientists.

Used them as sources.

Have invited them as guests at our festival.

And there's just a lot of competing narratives about monarch butterflies.

Is tropical milkweeds okay?

Not it's okay.

The migration's a problem, no.

You know, the lack of milkweed's the problem.

No, habitat loss is the problem.

No, the roosting sites are the problem.

It's like, well, what's the truth?

What's the right thing to do here?

And I think everybody that's not a scientist or even probably scientists struggle with the right thing to do and where the truth lies.

And I honestly more than ever, and I think our political climate demonstrates this is that the truth depends on where you sit.

And the objective reality that you witness depends on where you come from.

- I know with a lot of things like with the bees, with colony collapse, it seems like everybody wants a singular answer, right?

This is the reason for perhaps its decline of the species.

But it's really complex, isn't it?

- It's very complex.

And in the case of the monarch butterfly, it's a perfect storm of negative circumstances, climate change, habitat loss, insect repellents, pesticides.

But I think climate change is becoming the premier threat.

I mean, you see what happened this year.

We're having a very weird year this year.

I was out in our ranch last weekend, and usually I see what we call the leading edge of the migration the first week in September.

And I haven't seen any monarchs at all.

And I was out there last week and I saw three monarch butterflies over three days.

And I would normally see dozens.

There were thousands and thousands of snout butterflies.

I don't know if you've seen the snoutbreak that we've been witnessing, but it was so impressive.

- [John] I like that.

- Like, literally you couldn't open your mouth and there were snout butterflies everywhere.

And so I mean, one of the things that I posit in the book, and I think I might have annoyed some scientists with this is that I think that... the monarch migration is going away.

Any scientist you speak with, migration studies experts will tell you that migrations are ephemeral and they serve a moment in time.

And with everything that's going with monarch butterflies, it's kind of getting clear that it really doesn't make sense to migrate when you have everything you need locally.

You've got host plant.

You've got mates.

You've got the ability to reproduce.

You've got shelter in a hospitable climate.

As climate change warms up and these ecozones move north, why would I get out of Dodge and fly 2800 miles in a very often fatal undertaking to reproduce?

I know I've noticed more since I learned the word phenology of the timing of the seasons and how it's so incredibly important, these syncopations of the rhythms of the planet where the monarch butterflies fly north in March.

They're expecting to find some milkweed along the way to lay the eggs.

The females lay the eggs to start the first generation that will launch the whole cycle of that year's migration.

And for example, we had a very hot February one year.

All the milkweed sprouting, coming out of the ground.

And then we had storm Uri and everything dies to the ground.

So when those monarch butterflies come up and they're looking for milkweed, there's none there.

So they keep flying.

They burn through their fats, and they die before they can reproduce.

And that can really affect future generations.

And I think this year in particular it's very weird, because we're seeing the ramifications of that storm Uri.

In that second year we had another big freeze.

And those all fuel the future generations.

And last year we had the second lowest roosting population since records have been kept.

And it's going to be very interesting to see what happens this year, because as you know, the monarch butterfly was admitted for endangered species listing status in 2014.

They took fiver years to decide that, yes, it's warranted, but we're not going to do it, because we don't have the resources.

Because it's 165 other species in front it or something that are more demanding.

- Probably freak a lot of people out.

- And I agree with that, because the monarch butterfly is not endangered, but the migration is.

But they also agree that every two years they would reevaluate that.

And 2024 is one of those years.

So by the end of this year, they're going to reevaluate the monarch butterfly's listing status.

And it will be very interesting to see where they come down, given last year's low population.

- Really quickly I want to say, you have a new book coming out.

I mean, this one sounds absolutely amazing with all of the content, the controversy.

But what is the new book?

- Not surprisingly, the monarch situation led me to this book, because I started to really dive deep into native plants and well-adaptive plants.

It's called "Plants With Purpose: Twenty-Five Ecosystem Multitaskers".

And it's a book about plants that do more than look beautiful.

- Well, Monika, that is amazing.

Thank you so much for coming and visiting with us.

Sharing about "The Monarch Butterfly Migration: The Rise and the Fall" and your new book.

Now, let's check in with Wizzie Brown.

(upbeat music) - There is a new pest to keep an eye out for in Central Texas, and that is the muhlygrass mealybug.

These will get on pink muhly grass and also Fakahatchee grass.

So they are going to be a white fluffy insect.

So if you have really high infestations of them, you might want to remove those plants and replace them with something else.

Are you thinking about moving your outdoor plants inside for the winter?

If so, you may want to begin preparing before we have our first freeze.

Plants that are moving into a home or greenhouse should be inspected thoroughly, and making sure to check soil, stems, and the underside of leaves for any pests so the pests are not taken inside.

You may need a magnifying glass, hand lens, or jewelers loupe to help see smaller specimens.

Any plants with pests should be placed into a quarantine area and treated before moving them inside.

The most common pests are usually small soft-bodied insects such as aphids, whiteflies, and mealybugs, which can be treated by squishing and removing them with your hand, removing with a jet of water, or treating where they are located with insecticidal soap.

Another common insect pest, fungus gnats, comes from overwatered soil.

To manage fungus gnats, you can allow the soil to dry out and change your watering schedule to ensure that you don't overwater.

Fungus gnats can be monitored with yellow sticky traps placed in plant pots.

Winter can also lead to other insects and arthropods indoors looking for warmer temperatures.

Often as the weather gets colder, we see things like scorpions, spiders, cockroaches, or even ladybugs move inside.

Now is a great time to head this off by blocking areas where these animals can get in.

Make sure that you have a good seal with weather stripping around doors and windows, window screens are in good repair, and any pipe or wire penetrations on the outside of the home should be closed off with expanding foam or sealant.

If you have a home with a brick or stone facade, there are weep holes near the foundation that allow air flow in and out of the wall void space.

You don't want to completely block the area because you need the air flow so moisture doesn't build up leading to other issues, but you can use weep hole covers or copper mesh to physically keep insects and spiders from entering the house through these areas.

We'd love to hear from you.

Head to centraltexagardener.org to send us your questions, pictures, and video.

- Next, herbalist Leighla Molina mixes up fire cider to ease winter's coughs and colds.

(upbeat music) - Today we're going to be talking about fire cider.

This is my favorite thing to reach for when I'm starting to feel cold or flu-like symptoms, sinus congestion, digestive issues, headaches.

Even a hangover, it can be helpful for that.

We're going to go ahead and start by cutting up our beet.

I like to work with it in halves just because it's a little easier to control.

You want to make sure you're not going to get your fingers by accident.

I like to personally include beet in my fire cider recipe just because it promotes good circulation, it is antioxidant rich, and it adds just a really nice color to it.

So I'm going to go ahead and add that to my jar.

Now I'm going to go ahead and add the onion.

The onion is a very important factor just because... Well, both the onion and the garlic are actually going to be very warming and decongesting along with the peppers.

Now I'm going to go ahead and add my garlic.

And I'm going to crush it a little bit.

I like to think of the garlic as an herbal antibiotic.

It's very antimicrobial, antiviral.

So I have actually eaten garlic raw while traveling to keep from getting sick.

Or traveling to my family's home country of Mexico, I definitely eat lots of garlic because you just get sick while you're traveling.

And as you just saw, I cut up some peppers.

Now I'm going to go ahead and grate some ginger.

I like to use grated ginger in my fire cider.

And it is a part of the classic recipe that was coined by Rosemary Gladstar.

And when you grate something, it also breaks down the cell walls of the plant making it easier for your solvent to break through and extract those medicinal properties of the plant.

And I'm actually going to chop the turmeric just into thin slices.

I'm adding turmeric specifically to my fire cider just because it has really powerful antiinflammatory properties.

That's the fun thing about fire cider is that you can get as creative with it as you want.

You can pretty much add anything you want to it.

It is a very popular folk remedy.

So I'm going to go ahead and start grating some of my horseradish.

Horseradish is incredibly pungent.

It is super powerful.

It will clear your sinuses completely.

Now I'm going to go ahead and add one of our native varieties of peppers.

This is actually going to be chile pequin.

I'm not going to pop them open.

I'm just going to throw them straight in there.

Now I'm going to go ahead and start adding the citrus.

I like to make my stuff look very nice, so I will just layer it directly on top like that.

And it can be any citrus of your choice.

And now I'm going to go ahead and move onto some of my herbs and spices.

So this is going to be a common garden sage.

So the aromatics work as a diffusive in the fire cider to kind of help everything where it needs to go in your body.

I'm going to go ahead and include thyme.

And now I am going to add some spices.

So here I have a pepper melange.

I personally like to add juniper berries because it is a native tree.

Working with the plants that are around you actually helps with the seasonal allergies.

So now we're going to go ahead and cover everything in the Mason jar with this apple cider vinegar.

You'll want to make sure everything in there is submerged.

You want to give it about an inch of space at the top.

And you will want to cover the top of your Mason jar with a piece of parchment paper just because the vinegar will eat away at the metal of your lid.

You do not want that leaching into your jar.

Give it a good shake.

And if you added beets to your fire cider like I did to mine, you will notice in a couple of days it's going to be a bright red color.

You're going to let this sit for about four to six weeks.

For back here at basics, I am Leighla Molina.

Thank you so much.

- Want more from Central Texas Gardener?

Central Texas Gardener is made possible by generous support from Lisa and Desi Rhoden.

and by Diane Land and Steve Adler.

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