Gardening by Mistake

Nearby University of Kansas is home to Monarch Watch, a program dedicated to education about and study of monarch butterflies.  They estimate 100,000 people participate in their monarch tagging program each fall. While I have no plans to tag butterflies, I am interested in having a certified monarch waystation. Quite simply, a certified monarch waystation involves having an area that is designed as a monarch habitat. This can often be done in an existing habitat with just a few changes. Monarch Watch says an effective habitat is 100 square feet or more, but this modest size is not a hard minimum.  Even easier, multiple small areas can count toward the overall size.

I had hoped to become certified this year. While I meet the bare requirements, I’m not happy with my overall milkweed population. One significant part of my pocket prairie was going to be the milkweed plants for the monarchs and since my pocket prairie area wasn’t ready this year, I’ll have to plant it next year. Next year I will have more milkweed and I’ll have more than 1 species which is something they encourage. At that point I’ll feel like I can apply for the certification. I’m looking forward to that. Milkweed, in case you are wondering, is vital to monarchs. While they can and do get nectar from plants other than milkweed, their caterpillars only eat milkweed (asclepias). Monarchs will lay their eggs only on milkweed (asclepias) plants. There are no other host plants for monarchs. Without those, you may have the butterflies visit your garden for nectar, but they won’t stay to lay eggs for the next generation.

Whether I’m officially certified or not, the monarchs do find my garden every year. I have many caterpillars every year. In past years, I’ve even taken some caterpillar eggs to the elementary school for several teachers and their classrooms. It has been fun for the kids to watch their caterpillars grow and turn into butterflies. And it has been rewarding to be able to make that possible and from my own garden.

If you are interested in making your garden monarch friendly or you’d like to make a garden specifically for monarchs, Monarch Watch has made it easy for you with a seed kit. The kit contains 6 species of milkweeds and 6 other nectar plants for monarchs. There is a list of those plants on their website, so you can order their kit for a very reasonable price or you can get those seeds on your own through trades or seed companies. You might also be able to get some of those various asclepias seeds from people on the MW listserve who may offer extras from their own gardens. I have so many asclepias syriaca seeds every fall that I could supply the midwest, I think!

Check out the Monarch Watch website. There is a wealth of information there and it’s a great opportunity for a way to make a real contribution to animal conservation.

I’m trying a new thing: I see questions people have by the searches that bring them to my site. Although the person who searched on this probably will never see my answer, someone else will probably wonder this and maybe my post will help that person.

So, someone was wanting to know: how do I keep monarch caterpillars off my roses?

Answer: They aren’t on your roses to begin with. While you may have some kind of caterpillar on your roses, it isn’t a monarch. Monarchs are very picky about where they lay their eggs. While they’ll dine from a wide array of flowers, they lay eggs only on plants in the milkweed family. The milkweed plants contain a toxin that the monarch caterpillars are immune to. Anything that tries to eat a monarch caterpillar, however, isn’t so lucky. Predators have learned to avoid eating the monarch caterpillars because of this.

As I was working in my garden yesterday, pulling out some of the still encroaching milkweed, I thought perhaps my kids’ teachers would enjoy sharing the cycle from egg to butterfly with their classes. I asked and yes they were. I ended up taking 4 different teachers 3 monarch eggs apiece plus extra leaves for food. I warned them that eventually they’ll be needing far more food than I provided. To make sure it’s fresh, I’ll just take more up to them as needed. I was pleased when one teacher was excited to get the eggs. She said when she orders caterpillars, they come as caterpillars and that she’s never had the eggs before.

I know how interesting it was the year we raised and observed some monarch caterpillars and I’m happy to think a whole bunch of kids will get to have that experience. It was 3 years ago when we did it. My son was only 3 and my daughter 6. This will probably seem like a new thing for them. I doubt they remember 3 years ago.

Of course, the one drawback to this is that now I can’t pull any more milkweed from my garden! Ha, the joke is on me! If I need food for up to 12 caterpillars, I need to let all the milkweed currently there keep growing. At least I can keep it from going to seed.

Barbee’s questions on milkweed made me think back to almost 3 years ago when my kids and I watched two monarch caterpillars grow and become butterflies. I was homeschooling back then and I thought it would make a great addition to our science materials. It was fascinating for all of us.

At the time, I had great big milkweed plants growing among my roses. (BIG mistake; see my earlier post). I began looking on the undersides of leaves. I actually found monarch eggs. They are very tiny and easy to miss on a plant. They are only slightly larger than a period.

I took in an egg and a young caterpillar, as well as some milkweed leaves for them to munch on. I placed all of this into a peanut butter jar, drilled holes into the lid and jammed a stick into the inside of the lid. The stick was intended to be a place where the caterpillars could attach their chrysalises.

The larger of the two caterpillars on August 25th. (The other caterpillar is on the far right, about 1/3 of the way up the picture):

Also on August 25th, this picture shows both caterpillars together. The smaller one is right above the 28.5 cm mark of the ruler. “He” is tiny!

Two days later, August 27th, the larger caterpillar is almost twice as long and twice as wide. In two days!

The little guy has also grown considerably in those two days.

On August 31st, the larger caterpillar was ready to form his chrysalis. You can see in the picture that the caterpillar didn’t need my helpful stick. I have no idea how it got the chrysalis webbing to stick to that plastic lid.

The kids and I waited for the butterfly to emerge. On September 11th, a beautiful monarch emerged from the chrysalis. The second caterpillar was also in a chrysalis by this time.

Here the first caterpillar turned monarch is on our deck, where we placed it while it warmed its wings. The butterfly is holding on to a stick in the second picture.

This last picture was taken September 14th, shortly before the second butterfly emerged from its chrysalis. Look closely and the butterfly’s wings can be seen through the chrysalis.

In zones cooler than my 5b, you might need to look for monarch caterpillars earlier than late August, as I did. You want them to have time to mature and then migrate once they are butterflies. If you do this, you must make sure you have a supply of fresh milkweed leaves as this is the sole diet of monarch caterpillars. And you will be amazed at exactly how much a caterpillar will eat before turning to a butterfly.

I know I’m not the first person to make this mistake, and I won’t be the last, but perhaps you can learn from my own ignorance.

About 4 years ago, these tall plants started popping up in just one part of one of my rose beds. For a year, I ripped it out whenever I came across it. Then I found out it was wild milkweed. I knew just enough to cause myself years of trouble. “Milkweed,” I thought. “Hey, that’s the plant that monarch caterpillars eat as their sole food source.” I had the brilliant idea that I’d let that milkweed grow and do the monarchs a favor.

All went well for 2 years. I did have a lot of monarchs in my yard. One year at the end of the growing season, we brought in a monarch egg on a leaf and watched the entire cycle of egg to butterfly. That was really cool. The kids and I enjoyed that a lot. That seemed to validate my reason for allowing the milkweed to grow. And one year I found a hummingbird enjoying the nectar from the flowers. The flowers are funky in design and the smell quite nice. Finally, bees of all kinds love these plants to the point of delerium. More seemingly good reasons to allow it to grow, right?

Here’s a good reason for not letting it grow: it spreads by rhizomes and is, apparently, unstoppable once it gets established. I will be removing this plant from my gardens for the rest of my life, I think.

There are many kinds of milkweeds. Some, like the “butterfly milkweed” are “good” kinds. That is, they will not overtake the entire garden in two years. They are asclepias and monarch caterpillars will happily eat them. Then there are the “wild” or species milkweeds. These are now, in my book, “bad” milkweeds. In my garden it is asclepias syriaca which is so well established. I have been ruthlessly pulling out each new shoot as it erupts in my garden this year. It doesn’t seem to be killing them off. I make sure I get out and pull those (even if I don’t do anything else) every other day or so. I think this time it was 4 days since I’d pulled some. I don’t want to let them get large enough that they leaf out and begin making food; I want them using up their reserves in their rhizomes so that eventually there will be no reserves and, happily, no more milkweeds sprouting in my gardens.

After those two blissfully ignorant years of enjoying the wild milkweed in my garden, came year 3. This was the year when I realized I was about to lose my garden to the milkweed. The plants grow quite tall, about 6 feet in height. They towered above my rose plants, surrounding, dwarfing, and crowding them. About 1/2 way through the season, I went through and whacked all the milkweed down, thinking I’d keep it from going to seed and from getting so big. Ha! They didn’t even falter. I got busy and by the end of the season, once again that particular bed in the garden was lost to the milkweed. (That milkweed also went to seed, unfortunately).

So, this year I determined that if I didn’t do anything else, I would keep ripping out those spears of milkweed as they pop up. And I have, not that the milkweed have noticed. I suppose it will be interesting in an academic way to see how many years I’ll be pulling those damn things out of the garden beds. And all because I wanted to be nice to the monarchs. Now I’m growing some asclepias cultivar from seed. Someday my monarch friends will once again have buffet in my garden, but it will be something more manageable that won’t dwarf my roses or take over the beds.