Those of you who have been following me know that I’ve been working to promote milkweed growth in support of Monarch butterflies, that iconic orange and black beauty that has unfortunately been impacted by loss of their milkweed food source for a variety of reasons — less fallow land and profligate use of broad-spectrum herbicides among the biggest culprits.
Last year I was able to harvest nearly 3/4 of a pound of milkweed seeds from my garden patch, and, considering that the seeds are so tiny, that’s a lot of seeds. This past winter and early spring I “delivered” nearly 1000 milkweed seed bombs — a mixture of compost and kitty litter (binder) along with several seeds in a small (3/4 inch) dried ball that can be tossed into likely habitat areas — and toss I did! Every time I was running an errand or heading off to some park or other attraction I’d have my car window down in anticipation of suitable spot for seeding. Power line cuts, drainage ditches, empty lots and back road edges were all targets for my “bombing runs”. Won’t be a year or two before any results will be known and I certainly didn’t keep track of everywhere I distributed seeds but there are a few places I made note of that I’ll be keeping an eye on.
Recently I traveled to Michigan and was pleased to see milkweed growing in many such areas, notably roadside ditches in rural farm areas. Hopefully some misinformed public works teams won’t descend on them with mowers and string trimmers and they’ll come to full maturity. Unknown fate but encouraging to see nonetheless!
My backyard patch is off to a good start with several hundred stalks up nicely. With lessons learned last year:
- Keep an eye out for Monarch activity and bring any eggs in for protected hatching and feeding indoors, at least until the caterpillar get large enough to be safe from at least ants, prime suspect for last year’s egg losses.
- With that in mind I’ll likely put out some ant block in the bed. I hate using pesticides for obvious reasons but in this case I think it is justified.
- I’ve got the seed harvesting art down much better so hopefully will get an even bigger haul this year. The trick is to get the pods right after they’ve split open — fully ripe — but before they open so much that the silks are all exposed.
- I’ll be making compost bombs throughout the summer. Couple of techniques I used: simple round balls that I then glued (good ol’ Elmers) seeds to, and also making two halves via some silicon chocolate molds then put a few seeds into the dried halves and glue them together.
- Lop off the tops of some stalks when they are halfway grown, causing a new leader to form. This delays bud formation and thus provides a longer blooming period. The aroma from milkweed is wonderful, so adding a week or two to their blooming would be awesome.
Wish me luck!
