How To Easily Attract Butterflies & Pollinators to Your Kitchen Garden: Garden Journal 6/17/10

Just plant some echinacea!

Realization of the Day:

There's a winged frenzy going on out in my flowerbed.

More below. . .

The Winner of Butterfly by Thomas Marent!

Butterfly in the Farmyard (And I Really Should Know What Kind!)

The randomly selected winner of a copy of the gorgeous and gigantic book, Butterfly, is. . . Laura! Here's what she said in her butterfly related contest entry comment:

I have always loved butterflies, since I was a kid. My fondest childhood memories of butterflies were the tiny orangish-brown cuties that would come to visit our butterfly bush every summer. I don't know their name, but they are so small and cute. I used to catch them sometimes (I know, that's bad!) to look at them up close.

Here's a picture of a pretty butterfly on my finger in Costa Rica. It had just hatched from its cocoon at a butterfly farm.

Congratulations Laura! Please e-mail me at farmgirlfare AT gmail DOT com and let me know where to send your new copy of this amazing book.

Thank you all so much for sharing your butterfly stories and memories and links - what a wonderful collection to savor. I know this was a book giveaway contest, but I feel like I'm the one who really received the gift!

© Copyright 2008 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares stories & photos of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres - and we're thrilled that it's the height of moth & butterfly season.

Luna Moth Love & A Book Giveaway!Win a Copy of Butterfly by Thomas Marent

Some of you know about my love for moths and butterflies. I'm constantly awed by these remarkable creatures, and of course it would be nearly impossible to have any sort of garden without them. Well if I'm in love, then Swiss author and photographer Thomas Marent is obsessed - in a good way. And his gloriously gigantic new book, simply titled Butterfly, offers a (much) larger than life size look at these 'flying flowers.'

The more than 500 stunning photographs in Butterfly - all shot on location in natural habitats - offer an extraordinary portrait of some of the 165,000 species found in almost every region of the world, and visually document each stage of the life cycles of butterflies and moths in an incredibly detailed, close-up view of their world. This large hardcover is first and foremost a picture book (there's a slideshow of images here), but the minimal text offers tidbits of fascinating information. For example, of monarch butterflies, which I remember going to see migrate when I was growing up in Northern California, Marent says:

"The monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) repopulates eastern North America every year after spreading north from Mexico. In fall, the entire population east of the Rocky Mountains returns south in a flight of over 1,800 miles, completed by a single generation. Guided by instinct, stopping only to sleep or refuel with nectar, their destination is a remote area of central Mexico, where hundreds of millions of monarchs gather in a few patches of highland fir forest. Here, the butterflies are safe from frost yet cool enough to spend most of the winter semi-dormant."


Luna Moths In The Garden, August 2006

We have all sorts of butterflies and moths here on the farm, and one of my favorites is the large luna moth. I was thrilled to come across this mating pair at the edge of the garden two years ago, and just yesterday I saw one perched on a beam in the sheep barn. According to Marnet, "female luna moths 'call' males in the night by extruding a scent gland at the tip of the abdomen. Males can detect the scent from a few miles away and react by flying doggedly upwind along the scent trail."

Butterfly would make a wonderful gift for anyone enamored with these little winged creatures, and thanks to the nice people at DK Publishing (the same company that published Bread, one of my favorite bread books, as well as all sorts of other beautiful publications), I have a brand new copy to give away.

Just leave a comment in this post between now and next Thursday telling me something - anything - about butterflies or moths: why you love them, what your favorite kind is, why you wrote about them on your own blog (leave a link to your post!), your best butterfly story or fondest memory, or simply why you want to win this book. I'll randomly pick a winner and announce it in a new post on Friday, May 16th. Sorry, but due to the weight of this enormous book it can only be shipped to a U.S. address.

© Copyright 2008 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where life is always better with butterflies.

What's Growin' On 1/1/08: Happy New Year!

Moth & Zinnia, September 2007

Realization Of The Day:
All flowers look perfect to pollinators.

May you always find perfection in the garden.

It's a whole new year out there, and I'm looking forward to sharing it with you!

© Copyright 2008 FarmgirlFare.com.

What's Growin' On 9/11/07:Welcoming Autumn With Open Arms

Sedum Autumn Joy Flowers Change Color As The Weeks Go By

Realization Of The Day:
And just like that summer ended.

What a change! It's like I went to bed last night and woke up in another season.

Yesterday was 84 degrees, hot and humid and still. Sweat poured down my face and biting insects attacked as I transformed one of the 4-foot by 8-foot raised garden beds from weed choked nightmare into beautiful bare ground so I can sow seeds for fall greens. (That always feels so good, doesn't it?)

At dusk I had a sudden urge (brought on, no doubt, by the pound of leftover pizza dough in the fridge) to harvest the bulk of my basil patch, and last night found me whizzing up two batches of my favorite pesto and swooning over freshly baked tomato pesto pizza long past the hour that will soon mark my bedtime.

This morning dawned cool and crisp and breezier than it's been in weeks. The air conditioner in my little office has been finally turned off, and the windows are wide open. Tonight it's supposed to drop down into the 40s. Autumn is blowing in, and I am welcoming her with open arms.

It's happy hour in the garden. Cheers!

Want to see more?
You'll find all sorts of butterflies and other pollinators here. More flower photos can be found here.

© 2007 FarmgirlFare.com, the award-winning blog where Farmgirl Susan shares stories & photos of her crazy country life on 240 remote Missouri acres.

What's Growin' On: 8/26/06

Realization Of The Day:
Been too busy to blog. Figured butterfly photos much better than nothing.

Personally I never get tired of looking at butterflies--in real life or in pictures. These were taken back on June 28th but never posted. Enjoy.

What's Growin' On 6/29/06: Flying & Hopping

Realization Of The Day:
I am becoming a bit obsessed with butterflies. . .




. . .and bunnies.

Butterflies are welcome in my garden. Bunnies--not so much. Unfortunately this little rabbit (which looks suspiciously like yesterday's rabbit) appears to have taken up residence. I saw it this morning and then again this evening in the garden. And naturally it is not afraid of me (because nothing is). This evening I had time to walk back into the house, grab the camera case I usually always have slung around my neck, walk back out to the garden, and take the following photos. They're not the greatest because the light was low, and the camera is set on auto everything.

Jeph wondered how I was able to get yesterday's furry invader to sit still long enough to get such a close shot of it. Well, if you saw the few other slightly blurry photos I took tonight besides these, you, too, would quickly realize that not only was this hare in no hurry to hop away, but that it was posing for pictures (before it went right back to eating). This is one brazen bunny.










I realize of course that bunnies in the garden are nothing new, and that even urban dwellers with tiny porch potagers are plagued with ravenous rabbits. I guess I'm just shocked that so many critters are attacking my tiny plot of planted space when I have two dogs (including a beagle who loves to catch and eat rabbits), and they have about two thousand acres to graze upon.

I had something totally different planned to write about today, but at the moment I don't have a clue what it was.

Check It Out!
A Farmgirl Fare reader asked me this morning about the source of my recent score of five gallons of locally grown, organic blueberries (some of which went into my Blueberry Breakfast Bars). My supplier is all sold out for the season, but I went online to see what I could come up with, and I hit upon a fabulous website called Pick Your Own--"where you can find a pick-your-own farm near you!" They have links to farms all across the U.S., plus lists of pick-your-own farms in several other countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. The site also includes all kinds of other information--everything from picking tips to canning instructions to recommended books. Check it out! (Note: I have noticed that many pick-your-own farms also sell already picked fruits and vegetables for those who don't feel like picking.)

From Garden To Table:
--First Dragon Langerie beans of the season! (Chopped up and tossed into a salad.)
--Baby Swiss Chard from the greenhouse (because the deer haven't found the door to it yet).
--Nero di Toscana cabbage (in above salad). It rallied back nicely after being fried the other day. I also learned from my foodie pal Clare at Eat Stuff in Australia that Nero di Toscana cabbage (which I knew was also called Black Palm Cabbage) has several other names as well, including Cavalo Nero, Black Kale, Tuscan Kale, Lacinato Kale, and Dinosaur Kale. I know, I know. I said cabbage and these say kale, but it looks like the same thing in the photo. I did do a google search for Nero di Toscana cabbage, but nearly all of the links were on my blogs! Anyway, click here to learn more about Cavalo Nero, which I'm pretty sure is my beloved Nero di Toscana. And if it isn't, please let me know.

Spiderwort! A Beautiful, Easy to Grow Flowering Perennial that Attracts Butterflies and Other Pollinators

Realization Of The Day:
I love spiderwort. The cheerful flowers open up early in the morning, so they're often one of the first things I see when I step outside.





I highly recommend spiderwort for anyone who loves growing plants that require virtually no maintenance, flower for weeks, survive crazy weather fluctuations including extreme heat and cold, and can mysteriously pop up 100 feet from where originally planted. (I never did get around to moving those three extremely healthy clumps that appeared in one of the mini greenhouse raised beds in the garden, but the flowers are beautiful.)





My first spiderwort plants were given to me when I moved to my first Missouri farm back in 1995 by a 76-year-old gardening neighbor who dug them up from her garden. This is the best way to get plants because they're already acclimated to your growing conditions. The spiderwort I have now was dug up and brought with me when I moved to this farm in 2000.








Pollinators also love spiderwort, and planting some is a great way to attract them to your garden.




No plant is perfect, and there are a few things about spiderwort I should disclose. The first is that the plants are fairly tall and do tend to spread, often crowding and shading out surrounding plants. It would probably do best in a place of its own.

When I do get around to moving the plants out of the mini greenhouse bed, I plan to relocate them somewhere where nothing else will grow. I'm betting they'll do just fine.

The mature plants also have a tendency, at least in my garden, to fall over due to high winds and heavy thunderstorms—and possibly dog attack, though I haven't caught them in the act yet. 2011 update: dogs, donkeys, cats, and chickens have all been busted knocking down the spiderwort, and yet year after year it continues to spread and thrive.

And finally. . .








Pollinators and I aren't the only ones who love spiderwort.

Have you ever grown spiderwort? Any stories, fun facts, or growing tips to share?

© FarmgirlFare.com