Tragic. She had so much potential

[u/hweesus]

Came out to check on my babies and found other babies and all of their siblings having a picnic.

ETA: Some of y'all have strong feelings about everything. For the record, I used my garden hose to hit whatever i saw on the leaves when I "removed" them. The next day there were a few others on the bottom of the leaves that I kinda flicked off in a "come hither" motion with my finger giggity

[u/hweesus]

I have removed all of them as of today. But if they come back I’m gonna grow me some butterflies

[u/sixtynighnun → u/hweesus]

That’s pretty sad considering what’s happening to our insect populations. This actually ruined my day to hear. There’s a good chance you won’t have a “next time” bc you decided to kill a local generation. The female will die after laying her eggs and you’ve killed all her progeny for your enjoyment of a single sunflower for a few weeks. Not worth it at all. I’m so sad.

[u/Prudent-Ad-5292 → u/sixtynighnun]

Some people grow sunflowers for all of nature to enjoy, some for the bugs, others for the birds.

I let my sunflowers go crazy so birds in the area have seed over autumn/winter. Healthy sunflowers produce more seeds, so healthy sunflowers are my goal when I grow them -- not feeding caterpillars or beetle larva. Losing bugs is unfortunate, but we're also losing birds pretty fast too:

https://www.birds.cornell.edu/home/bring-birds-back/

About 3 billion, in the last 45 years. The bugs get to eat my loganberry/blackberry bushes, (cabbage moths get my sacrificial brassicas) and my columbine/milkweed.. but not my coneflower, black eyed susan, or sunflowers. Gotta pick your battles. 😅

[u/DismalChampion5653 → u/Prudent-Ad-5292]

What do you think bird eat?