Our little oasis of diversity

(Guest post by Jessica Palmer)

Biodiversity is the variation of life forms either within a species, or species within a larger ecosystem. Why is this important?

Increased biodiversity increases productivity because each species has an important role to play in a healthy ecosystem. A larger biodiversity within a species will help it survive disasters because some of those variations will help it adapt to the situation. If each specimen in a species was exactly the same it would not allow for a fast recovery and would lead to higher extinction rates. Biodiversity also helps sustainability and variation of our crops.


 It is well known that many of the habitats for grassland butterflies have been damaged by farming and pesticides as well as climate change causing a decline in these species. These wonderful creatures are not only beautiful to look at but also help those busy bees with the pollination of our fruits and vegetables. We are trying to do our part by leaving many areas as natural as possible and having a varied site including grass land, woodland, stream and agricultural areas.

I have not spent as much time as I would have liked to capture our beautiful wildlife but here are a few examples. We had a beautiful swallowtail butterfly but it eluded my camera. We had common ones like small and large whites, admirals etc. Unfortunately I only captured the most common ones.

Peacock  

Small Tortoiseshell

Painted Lady

a type of skipper I think

 and this special one who is giving me some trouble to identify.

Please help identify and correct me if I am wrong on the others.  As our little Freya is often running by my side scattering the flying ones so the caterpillars are easier to capture. 

We had:
Swallowtail (Papilio Machaion if I am not mistaken)

Cinnabar Moth

Orgyia Antiqua Moth

again I can't identify this one so help please

The damselflies love the water as did the dragonflies but they were to fast for my focusing. 

Here are a few poor snaps to show the 4 most commonly seen at our stream.

 
 

Toastie Start to July

This first week is due to see temperatures soaring here in Northern France. It's an explosive growth time, I submit some updates of how the small-holding is coming along, with a bit of a focus on our varied Kale beds... for Kristen. Freya and I couldn't spend too much time in the poly-tunnel, but you can see the tomatoes doing marvelously on the left and Kale on the right.

Lacinato Rainbow Kale

Halbhoher Kale

A mix of both Lacinato and Halbhoher Kale, so why the large amount of Kale you may be thinking, well that's a very good question.  Kristen Beddard, the face, brains and driving force behind The Kale Project (http://thekaleproject.com/) found us, care of Olivier Cappaert, the face, brains and driving force behind Excuse My French (https://www.facebook.com/ExcuseMyFR).  The project has a simple objective, "to bring the healthiest green vegetable to Paris".

True Siberian Kale

True Siberian

Red Ursa Kale

Red Ursa Kale

The nutrient values on this incredible super-food are simply staggering: in 100 grams of cooked, strained and unsalted Kale you will find (USDA recommended daily amount in parenthesis) Vitamin A (85%), Vitamin B1 (5%), Vitamin B2 (6%), Vitamin B3 (3%), Vitamin B6 (11%), Vitamin B9 (3%), Vitamin C (49%), Vitamin E (6%), Vitamin K (778%), Calcium (7%), Iron (7%), Magnesium (5%), Manganese (20%), Phosphorous (4%), Potassium (5%), Sodium (2%) and Zinc (3%)
Nero Di Toscano Kale

Delphinium

Foxglove

The clover is awash with countless bumble bees. The sound is so soothing, I honestly don't think I have ever seen so many chunky bumble bees in one spot.

A truly remarkable creature, we never get bored of watching, listening to or taking pictures of bees!

Strawberries a plenty too. This is the fifth straight day of picking them and we have been cropping pretty much this same amount daily... jealous much?

They say that you are what you eat, well Freya is aiming to become a massive juicy strawberry.

She is now starting to understand the seasonality of fruit and vegetables. We refuse to buy strawberries out of season, which is often hard to explain to 3-year old, but when there are more strawberries then this little one could possibly eat, she gets it and can look forward to natures bounty.

Bees & Bumbles

I've always had a love of these hard-working buggers. It must come from my Grandad, he loved his honey bees! But with the recent well-documented problem of colony collapse syndrome, our focus should at least consider these little guys when planning on what plants we want in our gardens ie why not make them Bee-friendly :~) (http://www.generous.org.uk/actions/home/192/make-your-garden-bumblebee-friendly)

The out-laws visited recently and whilst here we went to Wakehurst, a Kew-managed garden in the Sussex countryside where the pictures you see on this blog were taken. We were fortunate enough to bump into a real bee-keeper who told us that 1 productive hive can produce over 60lbs of honey each season... SIXTY POUNDS! Another reason to bee-friend them (pun intended).

Consider also that most of the pollination that takes place to your fruit and vegetable is carried out by the industrious bee, without which, would mean we'd be out there cotton bud (q-tip to the Yanks) in hand cross pollinating all the plants ourselves!

And finally as that intellectual lightweight Einstein once said (although it is an unattributed quote) "If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more then 4 years left to live. No more bees, no more pollination, no more men!"

You get the picture.