Awesome Mary!! It's great that you're doing your best to ensure that the monarchs thrive.

Also great to see that your local nursery is stocking pentas lanceolatas. They're hard to find without ordering.

Rhonda

I have 6 chrysalises now and 40 or more cats I am watching. I still have to clean out the enclosures that had the older cats in them (one just changed this morning and the other was still changing last I looked), then I will be moving and doing a recount and figuring out how many more I can accomodate. I am still working to create a new enclosure -- hope to be sewing on that tomorrow.

I picked up a showy milkweed and a narrow leafed one. Wow, iis it hard to find those cats on the narow leaf! That one is shorter and mounding. I hope it blooms -- I'd really ike to get some seed from it. I have not seen the gigantic -- how tall does that one get?

And I am afraid I wasn't aware that they had a newer shorter pentas. I guess that explains why mine seem stunted in their growth and the butterflies are ignoring them (but they are also ignoring the guara, salvias, and even the porter weed now thhat some of the milkweed is blooming). I will have to look for the taller ones. At least the ones I got were 4 inch pots and inexpensive and I can enjoy the blooms. Sigh

Butterflies and hummingbirds will visit the shorter pentas in my experience, but just not as frequently as the older, larger pentas lanceolatas. In fact, yesterday I watched a Giant Swallowtail using some smaller ones. I bought some of the smaller ones to put in front of the larger ones. I am taking cuttings from the larger ones and will probably switch out the smaller ones later on.

I have Monarchs flying around almost all the time now. There are usually four or five that I see when I walk out to the garden in the afternoon.

I have stopped trying to raise them in cages. I have enough of them now and in the past I haven't been all that successful raising them. I might still try to raise some Eastern Black Swallowtails. It's depressing to see about twenty on a fennel and then the next day see only one or two. Wasps are bad, but I think the cardinals are the major offenders; when they find the cats on a plant they just keep coming back.

lascatx, click on the link below to read an earlier thread (2015) here in the butterfly forum. It contains a photo of a giant milkweed plant that one of our forum members grows in his garden in Florida. You can get a perspective of size by comparing to the structure behind it. This milkweed is sold in some of the plant nurseries in Florida (and I 'think' in south Texas) and from what I've read, the Florida Monarchs will use it. It is frost tender and will only grow year round in warm climates. This is the milkweed that is commonly known as Crown Flower in Hawaii.

My giant milkweed grew as large as the one in Tom's photo in one season of being planted in ground. It was at least 6 ft tall, with many branches. I dug my two up last fall, trimmed back and potted up to overwinter in my small gh. I managed to keep them alive so they will provide food again this year. In fact, both are putting out a lot of flower buds already this spring. Mama Monarchs here showed only minor interest regarding depositing eggs on this particular milkweed, but I've found the mama Monarchs will usually choose tropical mw or common mw over all others when it's available. What I do is feed the little cats on softer mw leaves until they reach abt the third instar. Then I switch them to the giant milkweed leaves if I think I'm running low on milkweed. It takes a lot of worry off my mind to have a backup source of food that is in good condition (my native milkweeds are pretty much shot by mid summer). I've read some people report that the little cats won't switch but last fall, the older cats here switched over easily to Calotropis gigantea. The leaves are so big, you can cut them up into pieces if you're feeding individually.
Giant Milkweed photo in houzz message

You can purchase seed for either Calotropis gigantea or C. procera, another very big milkweed. I have grown both and I prefer the Calotropis gigantea. It grows more branches and grows more shrub like, whereas the procera seemed to want to grow more like a small tree, continuing to grow tall without putting out side shoots. They were all in pots so that might have had some bearing on their growth habits. I cut this milkweed off last fall before placing in the greenhouse and it did put out new growth along the small trunk. I am interested to see how it grows this year after being hard pruned. I also fed leaves of this mw and the little cats ate them.

Another of our forum members purchased seed and germinated one of these giant varieties of milkweed this spring. I hope she will let us know how it did for her this season.

Mary

Fantastic, Mary! Somehow I missed it that you had the giant milkweed, one I've never tried.........hmmmm....... I'll check in with Almost Eden to see if they get any in, I'd like to try this one for, as you say, backup. The last time I raised monarchs, I had to go back and forth to an area locally where A. lanceolata grows to finish them off. Giant milkweed sounds much better!

Sherry

I am going to have to try the giant milkweed. It sounds like it would be good to have as a back up source for food and to put across the street in the island of the cul-de-sac. I have planted some milkweed (still getting started) and lantana and coreopsis over there. Trying to attract butterflies but also hoping the neighbors will take some interest.

I won't rip out my pentas, but at least I can stop wondering when they will have put down roots and will get taller. Haha And I can start looking for the taller/ol fashioned ones.

I planted milkweed years ago, but I started rearing the cats last year after going out and spending $100 on more milkweed to feed the bumper crop I had munching away. Just as they were getting all fat and happy and about ready to hang, I watched as a wasp attacked -- and it seemed once they found one, they just came back ver and over -- and all their friends. Noone would have survived, so I put something together on the fly. I am trying to do something a little different, but too many projeects to get it completed so far. In the meantime, I bought some pop up hampers at Walmart to ease the situation. They have zippers on the top and side. The cats tend to hang from or near the top zipper, so I turn the side zipper toward me and make sure the pulls are not at the top. It is helping and they make good isolation wards if I have any who appear questionable.

I'm in Florida (Sarasota) and planted giant milkweed last year. I had no luck with it. Butterflies visited the flowers but never laid eggs on it. It was huge, over 7 ft I dug it up.

I buy the tropical milkweed at $5.99 a pot. I buy so many pots its killing me. I do take cuttings and root them, but I can't keep up with the butterflies.

We released 15 last week and the new milkweed is covered in eggs. I have so many monarchs in my yard, we duck each time we go out! But I can't keep up with the supply of Milkweed.

Jane

That's where the giant milkweed would help, Jane. It can be used to feed the cats. They take readily to it.

I find that Monarchs do lay eggs on the giant milkweed, but the cats have little to hide behind, since the leaves are so big. The wasps and other critters get to them easily.

Jane, Tom is right. I've fed mine leaves from the Giant Milkweed with great success. I try to wait until they're about 3rd instar, simply because they're a bit larger and of course, eating more with each feeding. When the cats are tiny, I feed them soft leaf material from Tropical, A perennis, A texana or Swan. They don't eat as much when tiny so these small leaves work very well for them. I didn't see much egg laying on the Giant but it may be like Tom says, everything is so exposed on those big leaves, the eggs or tiny cats are more exposed. I did find a few cats on the Giant last season so at least one mama monarch used it.

Six monarch cats have settled into their pretty green homes. Still have 20+
to feed and they are at an age where they're really putting away the
milkweed.

Tom, the giant milkweed is feeding my older Monarch
cats again this season. Thank you so much. I still have the largest
plant in a big pot and I may just leave it there all season to see how
it does. It was grown in ground last year. It is putting on lots of
flower buds, many more than it produced last year. Perhaps being a year
older has something to do with it's blooming habits. The smaller one,
which is currently in a smaller pot, will most likely go back into the
ground if I can find a spot that will meet it's needs. I'm running out
of garden space. I'm sure I will get better growth with it in ground and
I really need it so something else may have to come out of the garden to allow it growing space.

I also found a
source for seed of this variety of giant milkweed and now have this
seed under grow lights and waiting for germination. I'm anxious to see
how much growth I can get from first year seedlings. I feel tip cuttings
will likely produce stronger growth but I needed to try seed, in case I'm
unsuccessful with tip cuttings.

My spider milkweed is in the
third year and boy, I would need a huge number of plants in order to use
it for food for the cats. I think I counted six three year old plants
currently up and growing (some even already producing flower buds) but
so far, there's not a lot of leaf material on this variety of milkweed. All six together
might support one Monarch cat through to maturity but I doubt it.

I've
had two new Mexican migrators visit recently. One was very faded and
missing a portion of upper wing, the other was intact but very faded,
with tattered edges on her wings. Both were frantic to deposit their
eggs. I watched for about thirty minutes while 'Miss Missing Wing' left
eggs on every type of milkweed I grow except for the giant milkweed.
Eggs are everywhere. And there's no telling how many more visit when no
one is around to see them. There is no way I have enough milkweed to
feed if all these eggs hatch. It is sad. I wonder if they had to fly this far north in order to locate milkweed or if they are driven by other instincts? They both seemed to
adore the A perennis, even favoring it over Tropical. That was the
preferred flower, too, when they finally stopped to nectar. We've had
rain and the ground has been so wet, I've still not gotten all my
seedlings into the ground. Maybe by mid week. It always takes a while,
once planted in ground, before they begin to grow so I'll most likely
not get any benefit from these young milkweed seedlings for a while.

Mary