Common milkweed grows fine in clay.

I grow common milkweed here....It does ok but never did bloom this year. If you want to attract Monarchs the milkweed that I have found that works best is the annual variety, Tropical Milkweed (Asclepias curassavica). They love it! It grows easily from seed.

There is still a chance that you will attract Monarchs this year. They seem to go thru this part of the country late on their journey south. I've had them in the yard here as late as October.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.monarchwatch.org/milkweed/guide/curass.htm

I have tried to grow swamp milkweed four times from bare root plants as well as a potted plant without success. It is my understanding that if you have 2 or more different varieties of milkweed you will have a better chance of drawing monarchs. I now have 3 types (none of them the swamp kind) and after many years of trying I am loaded with monarch cats!

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One of the milkweeds without a monarch!

byrdlady, it's so good to hear this! where i grew up in western PA therew were syriaca grwing everywhere roadside, with nearly every patch having monarch colonies. now the milkweed is less common, because of more mowing, and monarchs are much less common, even up there. i've been trying to get syriaca going here, too. i have some nice patches of tuberosum after working on it for 8 or 9 yrs, and have grown currasvica from seed before. recently got some otherr ones (don't recall off the top), and just this yr, noticed 3 cats on my tuberosum. so maybe it does take a while for them to come. ralph gave me some potted currasavica, which i hope to overwinter in the cool basement, and some cats, too. hoping they'll come back in spring and lay eggs. the last one is making a chrysalis now. your expeience heartens me that i wasn't doing anything wrong. tammy

Quirkpod, when I lived in Pfafftown there was a feild next to our house with both common milkweed and butterfly weed. There were butterflies galore, and yes monarchs and viceroys. I see no reason why you couldn't grow them in your yard. -Ais.

Has anyone else had the milkweed bugs? They are awful here this year on my tuberosum. I'm wondering what the best control method would be for them. I didn't know they were bad guys until they had overwhelmed my plants.

I had milkweed bugs last year. Which I thought was the final insult since blister beetles had already stripped all of my swamp milkweed. The blister beetles did it again this year too. I thought they weren't going to be much of a problem, then bam -- blister beetles crawling everywhere, I got a blister from one of them on my leg (painful, and leaves a scar for about a year), and none of the swamp milkweed or tomatoes or cleome had any leaves. I have heard of spraying lemon juice as a deterrant for blister beetles, perhaps it would deter milkweed bugs too.

i was squishing the young as i found them, but i sill had an awful lot of them this yr, too. nasty buggers, even if they are pretty colors. hadn't seeen any blister beetles, but will be watchful. tam

I grow a lot of asclepias-curassavica, incarnata, verticulata...THey are sooo easy to grwo from seed. I collect all my seed every fall and plant them late winter using both winter-sowing techniques as well as stratifying them in damp towels in the fridge. They'll not bloom until the second year(except the tropical/annual curassavica) I've also simply thrown seed down in the fall and have tons of plants...They will definitely draw the butterflies! Just remember that they break dormancy later than most perennials. I would simply ammend the soil some and go from there!
Michael