Monarch Butterflies Love Milkweed
March 13, 2008 by Linette Gerlach
Filed under Butterfly Gardens
I love seeing butterflies in my garden all through the summer. We have a bike path near our home that’s loaded with Monarch Butterflies in the early fall. I love taking a walk and watching them float from flower to flower.
One of the most important plants for the Monarch is the milkweed plant.
If you want to have Monarch Butterflies in your garden plant milkweed. It is the native host for Monarchs, they lay their eggs on the leaves and stems. It’s said the butterflies can smell the milkweed plant from over a mile away.
Where can you find milkweed plants? Annie’s Annuals has several varieties of milkweed. Plant it in a pasture, or on a sunny hillside. Plant it and forget it, most milkweed varieties thrive in poor, dry, well-draind soil types.
I’ll have more on attracting butterflies and beneficial insects to your garden in the upcoming weeks.
Nice post, Linette! In my province, native milkweed (A. syriaca) is listed as a noxious weed, which really needs to be changed. We plant it anyway, because monarchs are in trouble in lots of areas so we do what we can to encourage them.
We are raising monarch butterflies from the milk weed in our yard. It has been a summer past time for 7 years and can be quite, can I say addicting. We look for eggs, baby’s, and corsaleses. These in turn go into an aquarium in our garage where my children have in enjoyed seeing the process from egg to butterfly.
The Monarch pictured above looks like it is on what I call a thistle plant. I did not think Milkweed plants looked like this.
Sharon~ That Monarch is on a thistle:-) It’s a photo I took while I was walking one day, sorry if it confused you.
It is also important to NOT use PESTICIDES in your garden…bless all the butterflies!
GartenGrl