I'm looking for sizable plants for trade or postage. My monarchs laid a BUNCH of eggs and my hardy milkweeds are going dormant and my non-hardies are too small to feed the horde.
Asclepias curassavica Tropical Milkweed
That's not a good situation. Are these Monarchs lost and confused? I thought they should be out of your area. I can't help you out unless you'd just want to send me the eggs to put outside on the plants. I'm interested in how you would get a plant large enough to feed a lot of cats and keep it alive while getting to you. Mine grow in a tall, single stalk.
My milkweed has been growing all year, but the bad thing about that is that it's had all this time for the aphids to reak havoc on it while the Monarchs were at your house. My plants have lost the bottom half of their leaves to aphids and most are covered again now. At least the ladybugs and cats have arrived and will eat them.
I've got about 10 cats inside now. I usually have enough new plants that I can put them in a vase and they stay fresh and I can keep the cats in a cage, but most of mine are too big now. I cut them off and put a wet paper towel around the bottom and then foil. That keeps it barely alive. Hopefully I will have enough for them since they are coming my way.
Good luck!
There's still adult monarchs in the area, now more than the summer which is strange.
But these are ones that I'm breeding for re-population efforts. If you pinch the tops of your milkweed, they can become multi-branched.
Also, bending the tops that don't fit in the box or cutting off the parts that don't fit in the box would be ideal. They'll probably branch out.
I used to grow tropical milkweed as annuals and so never got a chance for multi-branched plants. But I dug up my plants (all pretty small) and am growing inside for the winter.
Thanks for that pinching tip. This is really the first year I've had so many come up from seed. Usually I'm feeding from plants I buy. I hope to be better prepared next year, and branching plants is what I need!
Have you heard of this? Artcons just post this for me:
I have a tip for you on growing milkweed plants. It came up in another forum here. I tried it and it works very good. One of the ladies suggested when you take a cutting of milkweed, burn or singe the cut end with a flame from say a cigarette or grill lighter. Singe it good until it doesn't leak milk anymore. You then put it in water or dirt and it will send out roots very fast. I have tried this on other plants and bushes with "milk" in them and the same result. They take very fast. I have Frangipani that took in three weeks using this technique. Milkweed are growing in about 7-10 days.
It's worth a try. Do you tag yours? I did one year, but don't have any tags this year. I watched 2 make their chrysalis just this morning.
I'm going to try that. I heard that making the cutting underwater helps too, I guess anything that keeps the milk from clotting.
I haven't ever tagged. I'm not sure I understand why people tag. I saw a kit somewhere and it was kind of expensive and I'm not sure why if they want to encourage people to tag. How do you catch them to tag anyways?
They do have get-togethers where they catch them and tag them. I guess they use nets? I tagged mine before I released them. They tag them and then as they come back after migration people record the tag numbers that are spotted. From what I understand they are able to somehow get a count of them. For a while I watched their list of tags looking to see if any of my numbers were on it, but have forgotten all about it. I will go look again. That would be neat to have one of the ones I released be found.The kit tells you how and where to hold them, and that sure has come in handy. The tagging kits are $15, but I think there are more tags than I would use, and I never want to pay that much. I thought the same thing this year, that they should lower the price if they wanted everyone to tag.
How is your supply holding out? Have they hatched?
Oh yes! Lol. I have a bunch of babies crawling around. I also removed a milkweed cutting from the butterfly enclosure today and it was loaded with eggs. If they say that monarchs will only lay one per leaf, that's just not true, in captivity I guess. There were maybe 30 on some leaves, just one side.
I have to go pick up some windows that I'm getting for free and I'm going to glue and tape them together to make a flight cage for them, 3' x 6'. Reptariums aren't any good b/c it's too dry in my house.
I also tried the burning method that you advised me about when I inserted the milkweed cutting with eggs into my floral foam. I hope it'll work fast!
Oh my, you've got a lot of eggs! I've never seen them lay that many on a leaf either. Maybe they're not all fertile since they are like that?
I was going to take some of the Monarchs and Queens I have to my son's school today but they have decided it's time to pupate, so I might not have any by that time. I've not seen any other cats outside so I need to go looking for eggs. I've got these big wasps, I think they are Golden Digger wasps and they like to let me know that the think the milkweed is theirs. Between them, the gigantic Bumblebees and the mosquitoes, it's a fight.
I haven't tried the burning thing yet, but will when I have to cut one of my better looking plants. I might just try one as an experiment and see if it stays fresh longer tho.
I'll post here with my burning results. I guess just be careful not to breath it in?
Good grief, I never thought of that! I totally forget sometimes that a lot of plants I have are poisonous. Geez...good thing I've had the windows open lately. I've done it a few times, so now we just wait. tick, tock, tick, tock...
Oh my! I think you'll be fine though.