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Butterfly Garden

Monarch and Milkweed question

14 years ago

Every year I usually only see 1 or 2 monarchs the whole season. However my back yard is swallow tail heaven. I also get a lot of huge black butterflies and some a bit smaller. Many brightly colored moths and dragonflys. Last year I planted some common milkweed and this year tons of the stuff came up. My monarch visitations have multiplied! They are everywhere! Now the milkweed has pods which will burst soon. Can I cut them down before they do? /ABI

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Comments (3)

jrcagle
14 years ago
Absolutely. Milkweed, like many (but not all) perennials, do just fine with a cutting. I always cut my milkweeds to the ground after the season is over.

Jeff
butterflyman
14 years ago
Since you mentioned that you had a back yard, what you're going to find is that common milkweed weed, Asclepias syriaca is VERY invasive. I recommend to people the incarnata, tuberosa and the annual curassavica versions. They are much better well-behaved in a typical suburban garden.
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Betula - What kind of milkweed did you plant that has gotten five feet tall already? I planted common milkweed this year from seed and it's hard to picture them that big anytime soon. I also planted tropical milkweed from seed and have several of those. I think the biggest one is about five inches tall. I purchased one tropical milkweed in a four inch pot that is blooming its head off and today I found my first little hatchlings on it (three). I've only spotted a monarch in my yard once this year but apparently she was around long enough to lay eggs. They need to eat slowly so my other milkweed has some growing time.
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Well Wis Tom, NO I have not been organic gardening since the 70's lol, but I did garden during that period. There is no need to convince you of my qualifications on Monarchs, GMO's, Monsanto etc., but I'm glad you read my talking points, hopefully it helped. What does it have to do with trees? Well I did qualify the post with which tree would best help the Monarch, or did you not read that? But you and Brandon made the thread a war zone not I. Let's look at the first responses of Brandon and yourself - shall we? "sensationalism/spam" from ol' Brandon "Alarmist media" "Attain your level of wisdom" from you Tom The reality is you two psuedo-intellectuals have no idea whatsoever as to what your talking about in this matter or in your case Tom you may want to get back to the sales dept of Monsanto.
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lindacatherine
14 years ago
Yep, they can take quite a beating and still come back every year. I have a few milkweeds, but not enough feed all my Monarch cats. So I go to my nearby cemetery because there is a certain section where milkweeds grow and I guess the workers think they are plants b/c they never cut them down. It's funny because two of the headstones where the milkweeds grow have the surnames Plant and Blossom.

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