Milkweed is the Monarch Butterfly's host plant. This means that the Monarch will not lay her eggs on any other plant. The loss of milkweed throughout the nation so one of the main causes of the Monarch's population decline, as well as habitat loss of their hibernation forests. Pesticide use, as well clearing of milkweed on land is the reason for the decline in milkweed, thus the decline in Monarchs. Fortunately, you can help! One of the easiest and sure-fire ways that guarantees Monarch success, that YOU can do to help Monarch Butterflies, is to plant milkweed! Here is how you can do it.
Milkweed is a picky plant
Before planting your milkweed, you have to consider several things:
How to Collect Milkweed Seeds
You can purchase seeds for the native milkweed in your area, but you can also save money and collect the seed pods from the wild! Collecting milkweed seeds can be pretty messy, as the milkweed pod has tons of seeds inside it attached to a fluffy umbrella like a dandelion seed, but there's a pretty easy way to work around that. Purchasing seeds online or from a local gardening store can be easier, but you need to make sure that the seeds you're buying are the native Milkweed of you area. Find out which milkweed is native to where you live. Online websites such as Monarch Watch sells many milkweed species, but you can save money and search your town for milkweed so that you know that you have your native species are tuned and adapted to your environment. Milkweed loves water, so look in places such as parks, roadside ditches, rivers, rain gardens, ponds, etc.
Milkweed species that are native to New Mexico are: Showy Milkweed, Spider Milkweed, and Horsetail Milkweed. During a drought year like 2017, we were able to find a monarch to tag on a Horsetail Milkweed when almost all of our Showy Milkweed around town had become dried up. This is because Horsetail Milkweed is extremely hardy to droughts. So if you want to guarantee that there's milkweed even in a drought, you can plant Horsetail milkweed too.
Milkweed creates seed pods full of hundreds of seeds attached to a fluffy umbrella like a dandelion. This is so that when the pod opens up, the seeds can fly out and spread anywhere it lands and grow a plant. Because of this, collecting and separating milkweed seeds can be pretty messy. This is how to do it hassle free.
What you'll need:
Growing the Milkweed
There are several ways to grow milkweed. You can grow milkweed from seed scattered in a designated area in the fall, grow them into seedlings indoors and then transplant them outdoors, or grow them from stem cuttings or bigger transplanted plants from out in the outdoors!
Method 1: Growing Milkweed From Seed by Scattering Them
This is the best way to grow milkweed and you can insure that the seeds get the natural stratification that they need in order to germinate. You also don't have to worry about the milkweed being too picky, and dying, if you were to transplant it. You'll need to do this in the fall so that they can be exposed to that cold winter.
What you'll need
Read this article for more information on how to grow seeds in the fall like this:
Fall Planting Milkweed Seeds - 10 Simple Steps! - Monarch Butterfly Garden
Method 2: Growing Milkweed From Cuttings/Transplanted Plants
We've actually had a lot of success growing milkweed by transplanting them! The small milkweed patch developing in our garden started with a milkweed plant that was transplanted from a plant that we found in town. It's best to transplant milkweed or take cuttings during the peak milkweed season. For NM, that's in the summer. Once it's fall time, the milkweed plant is already starting to become dormant and won't be able to create a strong enough root system to go through fall. This is how we've had the most success:
What you'll need:
Read these articles to learn more about how to grow Milkweed from cuttings:
Milkweed Cutting Propagation: Learn About Rooting Milkweed Cuttings - Gardening KnowHow
How to Start Native Milkweed Plants From Simple Stem Cuttings? - Monarch Butterfly Garden
Method 3: Growing Milkweed From Seed INDOORS to Seedlings
Milkweed is a picky plant, so growing them from seed can be difficult, especially indoors. Milkweed has a hard time being transplanted, but it isn't impossible! Mr. Lund Science, Monarch raising hobbyist and YouTuber who creates videos related to helping Monarch Butterflies, has a 4 part series on growing milkweed like this (see below). Here is a brief summary with our own tips:
What you'll need:
Milkweed is a picky plant
Before planting your milkweed, you have to consider several things:
- Refrain from using pesticides as this can directly harm Monarchs, and the milkweed, and other pollinators that come to your house.
- Milkweed seeds have to stratify which basically means they have to go through a cold period in order for the seed to activate and start growing.
- Milkweed growth isn't as successful by starting the seeds indoors, and then transplanting outside, like most garden flowers, but it isn't impossible.
- Milkweed creates a seed pod full of hundreds of seeds which have fluffy tufts attached to them. So collecting seeds can get messy.
- Milkweed LOVES water, so be sure to choose a spot that either has a natural collection of water, such as a dip in the landscape, or by a ditch or water source. Make sure that it's also a place that you can regularly access so that you can water your milkweed and ensure that they get the water they need.
- When milkweed finds a place that it loves, it will spread like crazy. It has a complex root system where it can root out from the bottom, and sprout another plant, even far away from the mother, so make sure that where you're planning to grow your milkweed, its a place where you can allow it to spread. This is also what makes Milkweed perennials as they come back from the root in the spring.
How to Collect Milkweed Seeds
You can purchase seeds for the native milkweed in your area, but you can also save money and collect the seed pods from the wild! Collecting milkweed seeds can be pretty messy, as the milkweed pod has tons of seeds inside it attached to a fluffy umbrella like a dandelion seed, but there's a pretty easy way to work around that. Purchasing seeds online or from a local gardening store can be easier, but you need to make sure that the seeds you're buying are the native Milkweed of you area. Find out which milkweed is native to where you live. Online websites such as Monarch Watch sells many milkweed species, but you can save money and search your town for milkweed so that you know that you have your native species are tuned and adapted to your environment. Milkweed loves water, so look in places such as parks, roadside ditches, rivers, rain gardens, ponds, etc.
Milkweed species that are native to New Mexico are: Showy Milkweed, Spider Milkweed, and Horsetail Milkweed. During a drought year like 2017, we were able to find a monarch to tag on a Horsetail Milkweed when almost all of our Showy Milkweed around town had become dried up. This is because Horsetail Milkweed is extremely hardy to droughts. So if you want to guarantee that there's milkweed even in a drought, you can plant Horsetail milkweed too.
Milkweed creates seed pods full of hundreds of seeds attached to a fluffy umbrella like a dandelion. This is so that when the pod opens up, the seeds can fly out and spread anywhere it lands and grow a plant. Because of this, collecting and separating milkweed seeds can be pretty messy. This is how to do it hassle free.
What you'll need:
- A plastic Ziplock or a paper bag.
- Some pennies.
- A Handkerchief to cover your nose and mouth (recommended for those of you with allergies.)
- Rubber bands
- To collect your milkweed, you'll need to take the seed pods and put them in the bag. You can also collect seed pods that haven't opened yet and bring them home to "ripen" at home. You'll want to take you rubber bands and wrap the seed pods so that when they're "ripened" and are supposed to open up, the seed pod won't be able to open and and spread the fluffy seeds everywhere and it's easier to contain them.
- Once you've got your seed pods at home, (you'll want to do this outside) empty out the pods into the bag, leaving only the fluffy seeds inside. Toss some pennies into the bag and shake. This is going to knock the seeds off of the fluffy tufts and push them to the bottom of the bag.
- After this cut off a corner of the bag and pour out the seeds into a container. Now you've got your seeds separated with hardly any mess, and a ton of fluff that you can use for stuffing! (haha yes, people do use milkweed seed fluff for many thing such as this).
Growing the Milkweed
There are several ways to grow milkweed. You can grow milkweed from seed scattered in a designated area in the fall, grow them into seedlings indoors and then transplant them outdoors, or grow them from stem cuttings or bigger transplanted plants from out in the outdoors!
Method 1: Growing Milkweed From Seed by Scattering Them
This is the best way to grow milkweed and you can insure that the seeds get the natural stratification that they need in order to germinate. You also don't have to worry about the milkweed being too picky, and dying, if you were to transplant it. You'll need to do this in the fall so that they can be exposed to that cold winter.
What you'll need
- Gardening tools
- Milkweed seeds
- Potting soil (semi optional, keep reading)
- Water
- First, you'll need sow an area (clearing the space of any weeds, turning the soil, adding more gardening soil to ensure the dirt is good enough dirt for the new plants, if needed).
- Then, take your seeds and scatter them on this area Scattering the seeds during the fall will allow them time during the winter to stratify, necessary for their seed propagation. Like we said above, consider a space that you are okay that the milkweed could take over. You can either scatter them then cover up the seeds with about a 1/4 inch of soil on top, or you can take each seed individually and press the seeds into the soil, making sure to still cover the area with soil on top.
- Once spring comes, the seeds should naturally start to sprout. Even if they haven't sprouted yet and it's the end of frost, you should still water the area so they can start to activate and germinate. Once they do start germinating, you can start watering them regularly. They need to be watered so that they can get enough water to grow well while they get stronger. Watering them at least once a day, depending on your climate, is best when they're still seedlings, and about twice to three times a week when they start grow bigger and stronger. If you have a really dry climate like New Mexico, you might want to make a little mini greenhouse to help them with some some burlap around them on the edges (don't cover them), or make little "teepees" with some white frost cloth to help keep them moist and protected from harsh sunlight.
- Once they start to grow into bigger plants, and their root system starts to establish, you can make berms around each plant so that you can water each one and ensure they get all the water they need. Be sure to re-berm the plants every so often because the erosion will cause the walls to deteriorate.
Read this article for more information on how to grow seeds in the fall like this:
Fall Planting Milkweed Seeds - 10 Simple Steps! - Monarch Butterfly Garden
Method 2: Growing Milkweed From Cuttings/Transplanted Plants
We've actually had a lot of success growing milkweed by transplanting them! The small milkweed patch developing in our garden started with a milkweed plant that was transplanted from a plant that we found in town. It's best to transplant milkweed or take cuttings during the peak milkweed season. For NM, that's in the summer. Once it's fall time, the milkweed plant is already starting to become dormant and won't be able to create a strong enough root system to go through fall. This is how we've had the most success:
What you'll need:
- Shovel
- Pot/Bucket to put your plants in
- Gardening clippers
- Knife
- (Optional) Root hormone powder
- Before you get ready to gather and plant your cuttings/transplants, you'll want to prepare the soil. Because the plant you're transplanting/cutting is a wild plant, usually the soil you have at you house will generally be the same as the one the plant was originally growing in, so it's already used to this kind of soil. But, to make sure it's nutritious enough for the new plant, you can re-soak the soil in the spot you're going to plant your milkweeds, and then create a small hole in the dirt for each plant/cutting, and fill it with potting or gardening soil. Don't fill the hole all the way so that you can create a little underground "pot" for when you're going to water your plants. If you really want to, you can sow a larger area with gardening soil and make that the designated area for your milkweed to start growing.
- First, of course, you'll need to go out and find a patch of milkweed. It's best if you find a spot with a plant that is smaller such as a foot to a couple feet tall so the root system won't be as deep.
- Now, dig up this little plant. Remember, milkweed has a complex and DEEP root system, so you'll likely not even get any root, and rather, a part of the stem. This is ok though, because this stem will still root and turn into a plant. The milkweed root system is very strong. If you do end up getting a whole plant though, that's even better! Put the plant in the bucket. If you're taking a cutting, cut off a stem that has 3-5 leaf nodes (3-5 levels of leaves, or about 4'' of stem).
- Once at home, you'll want to clip off all leaves up to the last two nodes/levels/sets of leaves at the top of your plant/cuttings. You want to keep only 2 sets of these leaves so that too much water doesn't evaporate out of the leaves and the cutting/plant doesn't lose too much water (transpiration).
- While under water, cut off the end of the stem so it's a clean cut, and, using the knife, gently scrape the bottom of this cutting and the sides (only about 1'' to 1 1/2'' up). This helps the plant to root. If you want, you can use rooting hormone to encourage the plant to root. This is why doing this under water helps, because then you can dip the end of the wet stem in the root hormone powder so it's covered.
- Take your stems or plants and stick them in each of their hole with potting soil. Finally, water your plants. You'll want to water them at least every other day so they can start to root. If you really want you can spray the leaves to refresh the leaves of transpiring.
- After a few days the leaves are inevitable to dry out, but don't stop watering. Keep watering them even if the plant looks like it's dried. You need to keep watering so the stem can root. The stems can tame 6-10 weeks to actually grow a solid root. Don't give up on them! We've done this method and thought that the stems would never grow a root, but after just a few weeks we started to notice small sprouts growing from the base of the stems. That meant eh root system is starting to establish and grow plants!
- Once your plants have started to grow, you can create berms for them so that the plants can have their own space for water and get enough. This'll also make watering easier. You might have to re-berm every so often because the berms will start to settle and lose it's bowl shape.
Read these articles to learn more about how to grow Milkweed from cuttings:
Milkweed Cutting Propagation: Learn About Rooting Milkweed Cuttings - Gardening KnowHow
How to Start Native Milkweed Plants From Simple Stem Cuttings? - Monarch Butterfly Garden
Method 3: Growing Milkweed From Seed INDOORS to Seedlings
Milkweed is a picky plant, so growing them from seed can be difficult, especially indoors. Milkweed has a hard time being transplanted, but it isn't impossible! Mr. Lund Science, Monarch raising hobbyist and YouTuber who creates videos related to helping Monarch Butterflies, has a 4 part series on growing milkweed like this (see below). Here is a brief summary with our own tips:
What you'll need:
- Milkweed seeds
- Paper towels
- Water
- potting soil and seedling starter pots (you can use anything such as an old plastic water bottle, egg shells, egg cartons, newspaper, or biodegradable pots)
- Plastic ziplock bags (ugh plastic)
- Optional: grow light or artificial light source
- Before growing your seeds indoors, you'll need to stratify the seeds so that they can get the cold treatment they would naturally get outdoors in the fall. To do this, there's several methods you can do. The first method is to cold stratify seeds in a paper towel in the fridge. To do this, place the seeds in some damp paper towels or coffee filter, and put them in a plastic bag. Place this bag in the refrigerator for at least a month. Then you can start growing the seeds. You can also cold stratify the seeds by putting the seeds in some moist soil and putting this soil into the fridge. If you want to learn more about how to stratify seeds, the article by Monarch Watch talks about cold stratifying:
- Once your seeds have stratified, you can start growing the seeds. The best way is to germinate the seeds in damp paper towels. Put the seeds in some damp paper towels near a source of light, such as a window. Don't put the seeds directly on the window sill because the sunlight could be too bright, pu them just a little away from it. The best is a side with sun coming from the south. If you want, you can place the seeds under a grow light. If you don't have a grow light, you can actually use fluorescent light bulbs! Read more about what kind of lights work best: Can You Use Regular light Bulbs as Grow Lights?
- Make sure to keep the towels moist. You can also germinate the seeds in water! Simply fill a cup with some water and put the seeds in the water. Put the cup of water in the sun such as a window sill and wait until they germinate. You can then take the seeds and p them in dirt. You can read about this in this article on MonarchButterflyGarden.Net which the author, Tony, mentions a member of their community who explained how she grew milkweed in water (scroll to the end of the article): https://monarchbutterflygarden.net/cold-moist-stratification-milkweed-seeds/ Milkweed seeds take about 10-15 days to germinate.
- Once they've grown quite a bit of root and there are some leaves starting to grow, put the little seedlings into small seed germination pots and let the milkweed grow until it has about about 4-5 levels of leaves, about 6 weeks. We've found that starting them in these germination pots and transplanting them outside when they have their third level of leaves, doesn't work as well, as it seems that the seedlings are too young or weak for the change in atmosphere. We recommend waiting until they've reached their 4th or even 5th level of leaves to ensure that they are strong enough to adapt to a new location.
- Now you can either go ahead and transplant the plants.To get you seedlings adjusted better, put the seedlings outside overnight before you put them in their permanent spot so they can get used to the temperature. This helps the plants from having too much of a big "shock" when they are moved. You can also transplant them in a bigger pot outside and let them grow there for a while until they have grown larger so their roots are stronger, and then move them into their permanent spot. This helps them adjust to the change in atmosphere better.
Resources to help you:
Here are some additional resources that may help you grow milkweed successfully:
GROWING MILKWEED - Monarch Watch
Propagating Native Milkweeds for Restoring Monarch Butterfly Habitat - PDF - US Forest Service
Propagating Native Milkweeds for Restoring Monarch Butterfly Habitat - PDF - US Forest Service
Mr. Lund Science's Series on Planting Milkweed
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