I have 3 relatively new plants and each has 2-3 gangley branches. not at all like catalog pics. Should I give it severe haircuts? How do I make it bushier? Your help will be appreciated. If this has been discussed before, pls point me in the right direction. thanks.
I broke a branch recently and had read somewhere they root easily in water. wow, so true, in less than 1 week my stalk had a bunch of new leaves, although no roots, just those little bumps like brugs do.
making butterfly weed a bushier shrub
Asclepias tuberosa? If so, I've never pruned mine but the monarch cats sure have! And after they got done eating the plant to a nub, it put out a whole new flush of growth that did come back bushier than before so I don't see where pruning would hurt. BTW, my plants were new this year too and, like yours, they started out looking very spindly. They look much better after getting their pruning by the cats :-)
As it's getting close to fall, if you prune your Milkweeds now, they may lose their flowers for flowers are usually form on terminal branches. Next year in early spring when we start the growing season, pruning for more branches in young seedlings, I'd definately try that.
oops, I got ahead of myself. Just this morning I cut some large/leggy stems and am rooting them in water. Hopefully since I am in zone 9 I can get them rooted before it's too cold.
Thanks for your help everybody.
three weeks have gone buy since I started rooting in water and now the cuttings have some roots that are almost 2" long. Should I pot them and then transplant inground next spring or are they strong enough to be planted now directly inground? thanks for your help
How cool is that! They've taken roots! Vossner, these are annuals, frost will kill them if you transplant them out. I've seedlings came up from the ones that I planted in early spring. Those are over a foot tall. I believe, if I pot those up now, next spring I'd have a good head start. When I pot them, that mean I'll move them indoor when frost is threatens. On your zone, perhaps you can temporarily put a blanket of some sort over them when temp. drops? I gathered your 'winter' is relatively mild on zone 9?
yes, mild. I guess I will pot'em up then. thanks.
What kind of milkweed is it? I've only tried the A. tuberosa, which I love. By removing the first seedpods I had 2 flushes of blooming this year.
Karen
The one I rooted and just potted is mexican milkweek, aka a. curassavica, yellow/red flowers. I have also recently planted the yellow and some a. tuberosa, but too young for me to comment.
The Mexican MW is a prennial for us in FW. Last year this one started coming up and the first Monarch's found it very early. This pic of a cat was on 4-7-8 when the plant was only three inches tall.
Asclepias tuberosa comes back for me in zone 5.
I have an older plant that now comes almost hip high and makes seeds like a maniac.
I love this plant!