I must say, , even growing my Costus barbatus as a pot plant , it's a little too fast growing for indoors, and I have to constantly be dividing the darn thing, and finding lots of large pots to repot the "extras", which outgrow the somewhat smaller pots within just a few months and then need repotting again. However , since mine act more like biennials in nature , with the older shoots dieing back afer less than a year, it's always nice to have newer growth replacing the old canes all the time. Maybe it's just my indoor growing conditions that cause the individual canes to have such a short life, but I suspect that many rhizomatous growing plants have that "determinate" growth habit like cannas , which after flowering always produce new leaders, and rhizomes from which the new flower stalks can grow. It seems the eyes or remnants of the previous years shoots never grow again to reflower a second time. I wonder, if anyone else has thought about this habit or perhaps I'm mistaken about my assessment of their "habits". Another change that my ginger has undergone, is the failure to produce young pups from the older stems as they died back, as they did the first year , while I was growing them. None have produced the "odd" pups that formed along the leaf nodes next to the dieing leaves. Those came out looking a little like new branches or shoots , but quickly produced and ever enlarging bump at the bottom of the shoots right next to the mother stems, and afer a while they'd drop off naturally and would root just like a regular rhizome , when they lay on the soil. Those came in very handy for starting new plants, but perhaps keeping the plants a bit wetter or something else I'm doing since then has proven to change that habit of forming the pups?? Those plants can have some amazing and yet very "difficult" habits to figure out, and I've been gardening for fifty years.

I doubt if OP is still around, but this reminds me of the ways in which at least some of our native plant purveyors do a disservice to would-be gardeners with their exaggerated and especially, inacurate claims as to nativeness of a given plant. I too live in Wisconsin, and I can't count the number of times-for example-that I've been reading some nursery's listings of native plants for our area, only to see river birch listed, and paper birch not listed. Here in eastern WI, that's just flat-out wrong, and all of the people trying to grow river birch in our too-alkaline soils will be forever dissapointed. Meanwhile, the truly native paper birch is never mentioned. And I do mean never. Sure, it's got some insect problems, but so do most species if they're not carefully sited. And at least it does like the general conditions found up and down the state-here on the eastern half. I suspect much the same goes on with butterfly weed. Beautiful plant, it's got the word butterfly in its name, etc....so everybody is fooled into thinking it's an appropriate choice for where they live. Here in WI, it's only ever really happy in the more western, sandy counties. OP, being in the Milwaukee area, would most likely be in a heavier loam soil, quite good for a wide range of plants, but not at all good for butterfly weed. I'm tip-toeing around here a little bit on this issue. It's one of my pet peeves, and in truth, I know exactly how things got this way, and furthermore, I know who the main players are. Yes, they have a stake in people spending money on plants, whether adapted to their locations or not. Much as with the prairie thing, now everybody around here thinks WI was all prairie-a ridiculous notion here in the state that brought us the legend of Paul Bunyan-the same people and forces are responsible. Sorry, but it's the truth. +oM

Right now I have no plans yet. We bought our house as a Short Sale and the previous owners, while maintaining the house OK let the landscaping get out of control. Everything was very overgrown. There was Buckthorn everywhere, the Yews in the front yard were so overgrown that you almost couldn't get into the house. Elsewhere, trees and bushes were all overgrown, some with several different bushes growing around each other. I have had to cut out tons of dead wood and still each year, find more that is dying. Some things are nice and I would like to keep them but, at times, it seems a lost cause. With the Yews, as we cut them back we started to expose so much of the wood and they didn't look right. We had to remove them. When we did, we found that the dirt was like concrete. Full of gravel and rocks and too hard to dig in. I figure that it is backfill from when they built the house. Once the bushes were removed, mostly, all we had were weeds that came up. We did have a couple nice surprises though as there was a tiny rose bush that was hidden there and some Tulips that came up the next spring. The bushes must have been robbing them of light and water and now they were able to flourish. We do have some nice Roses in front and for the most part, I have been trying to clean them up, remove all their old dead wood, shape and trim them up properly. There were 2 roses on the ends of the bunch that were small and struggling, due to being overgrown by bushes. I have added 2 new ones and now we have a bunch of about 5 plants. I have added some Echinacea and something else that I can't remember the name of that seems to be doing OK. Also I put in some Tulips, Narcissus, and Daffodils. The bulbs came up well but didn't flower. Then, there is the Milkweed. Other than that it is all covered with weeds. I bought a good strong flat garden shovel and found that when the dirt is wet, I can plunge down under the weeds and take them up by the roots. I have removed a lot with much more to get rid of. With the soil being broken up some, I am hoping to be able to add some amendments and remove some of the rocks and gravel. From what it sounds like, I may keep the Milkweed, at least, until I figure what else I want to do with the area. We have a Lilac that is off by itself in the middle of the yard, that used to be at the end of the Yews. It is really nice and smells great. Until the last couple days when the flowers have started to die off. I would like to move it back closer to the house where it might look better. Then, we need to redo the front walk which has sunk and creates a trip hazard going up the front steps. I have also seen other wild or native plants around the back yard that I have liked and just left. They fill in unused gardens and don't look bad. For now, at least. It's all a work in progress.

I have found the best thing to do is leave the Oleander aphids alone, and as they increase they will attract the predators that feed on them. Lady beetles, lacewings, and small parasitic flies and wasps. I will carefully spray any aphids off with the hose if they are on any of my rarer milkweeds that are still. small and not established are still small and not yet established. It's too much work and time to constantly be hosing off all your milkweeds, and you can end up damaging Monarch eggs or little caterpillars in the process. It's hard to see so many aphids on a plant, and not take action, but the natural predators will eventually come and clean out the aphids quickly. Most milkweeds have tubers that store energy, and they have evolved to be able to withstand a lot of predation from Monarch caterpillars, so it's doubtful the could kill a milkweed, except perhaps a very young seedling. Oleander aphids do not turn into red and black milkweed beetles, that's absurd. Hosing them off is reducing the food source of the predators. By leaving them, you help the predator populations, which will mean more predators and less aphids in the future. .