In the category of “life happens” I have to chalk up my first growing season in a long time in which I did not consciously create a butterfly garden. I won’t go into the details – on the one hand, I feel bad because it’s historically been a source of real pleasure and learning for me. But on the other hand, we did get our vegetable garden in, and we are reaping a tremendous bounty from that, and so the fact that I didn’t plant too many flowers (and the lilac bushes had a short season owing to rain) is just going to have to be okay.
That said, we are moving in the direction of Monarch butterfly season! This has long been my favorite butterfly activity and, as I’ve alluded to before, the one that got me hooked on all this stuff so many years ago. While there are plenty of live butterfly kits out there in the world, nothing quite beats trekking out into the world and growing your own, as they say.
If you’re new to Monarchs, the first thing you want to do is find some common milkweed plants. My favorite locations are fields – there happen to be quite a few in our vicinity. Particularly if the fields are not hayed (or at least not hayed twice), you can get some real rich stands of milkweed. That’s important, actually. It’s not hard to find or two plants here and there, but in my experience those tend not to yield as many eggs or caterpillars. When the milkweeds are grouped together – when you can’t turn in the field without bumping into one – that’s ideal.
Soon – in a few weeks where I live – the caterpillars will be hatching from the eggs and starting their nonstop chomping of leaf and stem. When the caterpillars are out, that’s the best time to collect. I’ll cover this in more detail in a future post, but we usually take four or five plants and maybe ten caterpillars. Carry them home and set them up in a nutrient rich terrarium.
Anyway, I’ve enjoyed the summer. There were certainly plenty of butterflies fluttering through the yard – and a veggie garden doesn’t actually repel a butterfly – but I did miss the concentrated effort of a real live butterfly garden. I’m shifting my focus to the Monarchs!
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