“Just living is not enough,” said the butterfly,
“One must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower.”

Hans Christian Anderson

This week sees the launch of a Butterfly Conservation campaign which aims to highlight the problems facing the country’s butterfly population and raise awareness of those species which are particularly under threat.

Last year the number of British butterflies dropped to a three decade low – five native species have already become extinct and of the remaining 60, 12 experienced their worst year, with populations decimated by heavy rainfall and low temperatures – these conditions make it hard for butterflies to find food and reduces the chance of successful breeding. One of the other main reasons for butterflies declining is the destruction of meadow habitat. Since the 1970’s 97% of the UK’s meadows have been destroyed together with ancient woodlands, peat bogs and downland.

In 2008 the Butterfly Conservation Survey - conducted by 1,500 volunteers counting butterflies across 920 sites – made grim reading with the High Brown Fritillary having less than 50 colonies left in the UK.

Save Our Fritillary …

To save the High Brown Fritillary (which for some reason reminds me of Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall – although I don’t think he’s becoming extinct is he?*?) a new conservation initiative has been launched. With £430,000 being invested by Butterfly Conservation (with nearly £250,000 of this coming from Landfill Tax via GrantScape) and a further £80,000 in woodland grant packages from the Forestry Commission work has already begun.

With activity taking place in the Morecambe Bay Limestones, an area on the Lancashire and Cumbria Border where the High Brown Fritillary butterflies still have a stronghold. This area includes limestone pavements, scrub, coppice woodland and herb-rich grasslands – emphasis is being placed on opening up larger tracts of the area to make them sunnier and more welcoming to butterflies. Contractors have already widened hundreds of metres of tracks, cut back dense vegetation and cleared stunted trees and bramble.
David Wainwright, Morecambe Bay Limestones Project Officer, said the butterfly is expected to make a comeback “Without all this effort there is a great danger of losing the High Brown Fritillary. However, the project is going well and I’m sure we’ll turn things round. We are expecting to see a large increase in numbers next year.”

A Few Fritillary Facts…

Name – High Brown Fritillary, scientific name ‘Argynnis adippe’

Family – Nymphalidae

Flight Time – late June to mid August

Colour – golden orange upper wings with streaks and black spot markings and a pale chequered fringe, underside is orange with rows of silver spots and row of red ringed spots towards the outer margin

Wingspan – between 60 (male) to 67mm (female)

Altitude – 0-2100 metres

Habitat – dry clearings, steep slopes

Foodplants – the caterpillars main foodstuffs are common Dog Violet, together with the Hairy Violet and occasionally the Heath Dog Violet and Pale Dog Violet, but the butterfly will look for the nectar on thistles and brambles.

Dr William Butler (1536-1617)

A Fruit By Any Other Name Would Taste As Sweet ...

There are a few theories as to how the ‘strawberry’ got its name. The ‘straw’ bit could come from the fact that straw was used to keep the strawberries fresh – with some growers still using straw around the growing fruits to protect them.
Or ‘straw’ could come from the word ‘strewed’, meaning ‘to spread wide’, describing the runners which spread outward from the central plant.
Another theory is that strawberries were named in the nineteenth century by English children who would pick the berries and string them onto grass straws which they then sold as ‘straws of berries’.

A Few Fruity Facts ...

Strawberries are the ONLY fruit that grows seeds on the outside – in fact the strawberry is not classified by botanists as a true berry. True berries are said to have their seeds on the inside – such as blueberries or cranberries ...

There are over 200 seeds on every strawberry ...

The strawberry was a symbol for the Love Goddess Venice ...

A Strawberry A Day Keeps The Doctor At Bay ...

Patrick Holden, director of the Soil Association

As we all know , Mother Nature doesn’t spend all her energy ensuring our fruit and veg grow exactly the same … and as gardeners we know they taste just the same whatever their shape!! So thank goodness the EU Commission has seen sense and from yesterday – 1st July – supermarkets are now able to sell 26 types of produce which previously would have had to be binned as unsuitable for sale…

However…

The top ten most popular types of fruit and veg will still be subject to meeting ‘stringent’ standards – unless they are labeled as “product intended for processing”. These are:

Apples, Citrus Fruit, Kiwi Fruit, Lettuces, Peaches, Nectarines, Pears, Strawberries, Sweet Peppers, Table Grapes and Tomatoes.

So I’m guessing a lot of us will be buying fruit to be turned into something else – and then forgetting and just eating them instead!

On the 1st July the EU will lift its ban on misshapen fruit and veg – as a result supermarkets are vowing to reduce costs and we’ll see more ‘less than perfect’ shaped fruit and veg on the shelves … With the promise of prices being reduced by up to 40% I think we’ll all be keen to fill our carrier bags with curly carrots and cucumbers!

EU Bonkers About Barmy Rules On Regulation Veg …

Cucumbers were the first vegetable to be targeted by the EU in 1988 when they ordered all member states to ensure every single piece on sale met a raft of conditions … including:

i) Class I
Cucumbers in this class must be of good quality. They must:
- be reasonably developed
- be reasonably well shaped and practically straight (maximum height of the arc: 10 mm per 10 cm of the length of cucumber).
... man in white overalls with ruler starts to check the straightness of thousands of cucumbers … blah blah blah

Quickly followed by rules regulating dozens of vegetables … which has resulted in farmers binning up to a fifth of their produce which breached the rules.

(in my best Victor Meldrew voice…)

With the hottest week upon us … I’m sat melting in 26 degrees in the office as I read my copy of Kitchen Garden to see it’s already time to be thinking about planting potatoes ready for Christmas!

If you plant potatoes now – ideally in containers so you can move them into your greenhouse or polytunnel as the weather turns later in the year – you should have a delicious crop of new potatoes in the winter.

Although growing potatoes ‘out of season’ can be tricky by planting them in containers you are going to bypass many of the potential problems – you can control the warmth of the compost and prevent the conditions becoming too wet (which can happen if planting directly into the ground) and you have the option to move the containers or cover them with fleece when it starts to get cold.

You can read more about growing Potatoes for Christmas in the August issue of Kitchen Garden … work now and enjoy later!

The worlds BIGGEST potato weighed a massive 3.2kg and was grown in Germany in 1997.

On average a person will eat 103kg of potatoes in their lifetime – that’s about 500 medium sized potatoes – WOW

Potatoes have even been grown in space – not by little aliens I’m afraid (or I don’t think so anyway!) – they were taken into space aboard the shuttle Columbia in 1995 and they were the first food to be grown in space

Britain can claim the fame of being the third largest consumer of potatoes in Europe – just below Portugal and Ireland

Potatoes first became popular when Marie Antoinette paraded in France wearing a crown of potato blossoms whilst Louis XVI wore potato blossoms in his buttonhole