Kitchen Garden Forum

With the lovely late summer weather in recent days, there has been a wonderful re-emergence of butterflies (third generation this year?), particularly painted ladies, red admirals, peacock and a few small tortoiseshell feasting on sedums, michaelmas daisies, rudbeckia and scabious, quite a change from the miserable numbers we have seen in recent years!

Hi Monika,
There certainly has been the best showing of Butterflies here in the last week or so. Many more than at any other time this year. Here it has been a quite disappointing year for Butterfly but now there a many and also the Honey Bees are in evidence especially on an experimental row of Runner Beans I sowed the second week of July which if we have no frost in the next week will give quite a substantial picking. This sowing is 6 weeks later than any other sowing I have ever made and they have really grown superbly and had I decided about a couple of weeks sooner I would be having a wonderful late crop as it is I feel that before I can really capitalize on the crop Jack Frost will beat me.
JB.

Dear Monika, here, it certainly has been the best year for butterflies for years.

But i wonder why, we had an awful wet spell in the middle of Summer too, and this couldn't have been ideal conditions for them, very strange.

OH, during the wet spell the butterflies may just have been in their larval state which, therefore, would not have been too critical. I think that was the case here, too. Today again, there were lots of the above species and also a speckled wood.

Dear Monika, that is a very interesting thought, and could well be the reason.

Thank-you for your thoughts.

Johnboy wrote: Here it has been a quite disappointing year for Butterfly but now there a many and also the Honey Bees are in evidence especially on an experimental row of Runner Beans I sowed the second week of July which if we have no frost in the next week will give quite a substantial picking. This sowing is 6 weeks later than any other sowing I have ever made and they have really grown superbly and had I decided about a couple of weeks sooner I would be having a wonderful late crop as it is I feel that before I can really capitalize on the crop Jack Frost will beat me.
JB.

Hi Johnboy,

I also made a late sowing during the last week of July after an article in a gardners weekly said that they would crop by the end of September. They are currently flowering well and look really healthy, but we have such a lack of polinating insects that I am not sure if I will get any beans before the frosts. Fingers crossed!