Hi, Loris and everyone, I am glad you brought up the idea of pruning the MWs for fresh new growth. I never hear anyone talking about it on BF forums so I sort of had to go by trial and error. I like to try to keep my Incarnatas in bloom 'til the big onslaught of Monarchs in August and September here in Ohio and it took me a while to put together a strategy that I think might work. Here's what I try to do with my Milkweeds (incarnatas): I cut back just part of each milk weed plant. Maybe every other stem, or just the back/front of each depending on how it is growing in the garden. I try to leave about a foot of stem or more there, and also try to cut just above a node to try to get a nice branching. That way I have some of the mature plant growing and also can stimulate new growth and tender leaves. I do this with most of my perennials and I should imagine it would work with your A. incarnata too. When I did this last time I went ahead and made some rooted cuttings: I took the pruned off parts, trimmed them to a node on the bottom of each stem, left about 5 inches of stem, took off most of the leaves except maybe the top 2, then dipped them into a little Roottone and stuck them into a glass of water and left them on the kitchen counter. Now I have a 10 rooted cuttings growing in the garden. This was easy and a new 'trick' that I was happy to learn about. I wish we got some of your volunteers you pull for weeds! I never have enough milkweed. It took me a while to figure out how to work with the MWs to get the most out of them here in our growing environment in southwestern Ohio.

I have tropical milkweed, swamp hibiscus (red) and cardinal flower seeds. If you are interested in any of these I am looking for swamp milkweed and any other milkweeds.

There's a whole science to monarch/milkweed preference ��" that is, a lot of research being done, by Monarch Watch, the University of Minnesota, and others. Also, many anecdotal observations by many amateurs suggest egg-laying monarchs prefer certain species when they have a choice. My own observations agree with yours, to some extent. Compared to syriaca and tuberosa, monarchs will almost always prefer incarnata. I'm surprised, though, that your speciosa doesn't attract at least an equal number, as mine do. I have no experience with C. laeve, although I would suspect that it would be less attractive than Asclepias species in the same setting. In my yard, the most-preferred native species, by far and away, is A. sullivantii. I have a dozen species of milkweed on the property, and in 2012 (drought year) and 2013 (recovery year), I'd say 90 percent of all eggs were laid on Sullivant's milkweed in preference to all others. NONE were laid on common milkweed during the latter half of both those seasons. This year, swamp milkweed has been about equally popular with Sullivant's, but I also planted a lot of A. curassavica (tropical) as an annual amongst the swamp milkweed. Curassavica is very attractive to egg-laying females, and I think it drew some to the incarnata. But the Sullivant's was still king. Tuberosa is very low on the list. Monarchs seldom lay on it if any other variety is available.

Ice Ballet has been around a long time. I had a plant years ago and it did great, until it got tugged out. Maybe yours are having a harder than normal time adjusting. I was planning on having more this year, but the seeds that were winter sowed never germinated. Seems like A. incarnatas are more finicky and problematic than any of the other native milkweeds. I'm trying out a new incarnata variation for next year. Asclepias incarnata var. pulchra. It's beautiful and it has more cardioglycoids than regular incarnata, so it probably won't be ruined by the aphids like straight species incarnatas.