New monarch butterfly ready to come out of his chrysalis and flit about my milkweed. This is what they look like about 24 hours before they emerge. He is hanging on the side of my milkweed box since I didn’t try to capture any more caterpillars and put them in my cat box. It seemed late in the season, and I was trying to discourage them from laying eggs. They ignored me and 20 or so more butterflies took off in February.
This is a long story, but it’s going to have to be a blog post because it’s still ongoing. Here on the end of that leaf is a tiny (like a quarter of an inch) Monarch caterpillar.
It’s on a milkweed plant that I had a lot of trouble keeping, and this little guy was the first caterpillar that I had seen on the plant since it was chopped down and revived. It had become infested with milkweed beetles and aphids.
For the moment, I felt a small yay of triumph when I saw this guy. The story continues …
The beginning of a beautiful Monarch butterfly is happily munching on my aphid filled milkweed plant. We did a number of milkweed plants – both red, yellow and the Florida pink milkweed – in an effort to increase the Monarchs that will find their way to our yard this winter. So far, my milkweeds have done well and we have planted more and more seedlings, so our garden is always filled with butterflies.
My milkweed garden is filled with pretty blooms in yellow, orange and red. It is also filled with tiny aphids who seem to be enjoying eating everything on the plant.
While a good soaking for soap and water will rid the plants of the aphids, so will a happy Ladybug. She is moving along eating those aphids like Pacman and dots. All of this, and I don’t see one Monarch caterpillar.
I spent this spring working really hard to plant and cultivate a butterfly rich garden area in order to attract Monarchs and other of these wonderful fruit bearers. I even planted a single stalk of milkweed as a special treat for my Monarch friends. That one stalk now has six or seven offspring, and one of them has started to bloom already. While this beauty was not on my milkweed, he was busy flitting about in the late autumn sun. It was great to see him, and he is not alone, and that means that my garden has attracted them.
Here are some things that I found out about raising Monarchs from caterpillars to adults:
I hate that they are endangered, and I know that I can never raise enough to make a big difference, but I hope to help some butterflies live on.
Since kids love bugs, why not help them understand how important the pollinators are to the world?
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You can see two little heads popping up between the leaves in this photo.
Part 3 of 4
Previous posts here: Part 1Part 2
It took a few weeks before my stumpy plants started to flourish and grow. During that time, I was a hawk when it came to invading aphids and marauding milkwood bugs. If I saw them, I physically removed them from the plant and destroyed them. I read where if you spray the plants with soapy water, which is my ‘go to’ method of pest removal, I would also be killing any eggs or caterpillars that may appear on the plant.
To be honest, I walked away from the plants for awhile because I had other things I was doing. Since the big pot sat outside my back door, I saw the plants every day, but didn’t spend a lot of time on it.
My neglect was exactly what was needed to ensure that I would have some caterpillars.
I watched a couple of eggs hatch, and realized that if I was going to save any of these beauties, I needed to enclose them to protect them from whatever was munching on them. My woodworking husband took up the challenge and built a screened in 3’x2’x2’ cage to go over the plants. He built is as a rectangle because I only needed to cover the plants, but gave no thought to any open areas on the so-called “cage”. That would become a problem later when caterpillars got frisky.
This was my first shot at this, so everything was a new experience, and we learned as we went along. Like herding cats, literally, cats, these guys would go everywhere when they got towards their chrysalis time, and open spaces around the pot were fair game. I thought that because there were tall walls on the pot that they would not climb out. That was dumb. They have a million legs and jet propulsion when they’re hungry.
By the time we had them corralled, we had three out of six left in the container.
Then the storm hit.
Continued in part 4
While I was trying to do everything the natural way, as part of that natural way, those milkweed bugs were munching on more than my milkweed; they were adding protein to their diet and eating monarch caterpillars. Once I figured out what was happening, I decided that natural wasn’t working for me.
In all fairness to the milkweed bugs, if your property is being overrun with milkweed, the bugs do work to keep everything trimmed back to a manageable size. The aphids brought in ladybugs that were not in as much abundance as was needed to curb the aphids, and for a while, I thought the little baby milkweed bugs were ladybug babies that I did not want to destroy.
I had every intention of dumping the plants onto a vacant lot next door and giving up on the whole thing, but at the last minute, I trimmed the plants back to the root and removed all of the bugs. If nothing else, I thought I would have some beautiful flowers.
All in all, my start to 2022 milkweed garden was a huge loss. I was afraid that I had missed the season because of the pests.
That wasn’t the end of the grand milkweed plans, though. Apparently, monarchs lay eggs all year round in Florida. There was hope after all.
pt 2 of 4
Read part 3 here
As far back as I can remember, I’ve loved the look of a monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), and as much as these orange, black and white butterflies with their white-spotted black bodies are used in motifs throughout the ages, I’m not alone in my fascination with them.
The monarch was an important cultural symbol of the indigenous peoples of Mexico, and Tula warriors wore the monarch on their breastplates. The butterfly was added to stamps, frescos and ceramics of the Teotihuacan people.
This stands to reason considering that Mexico is the migratory destination of these colorful creatures. They can cover thousands of miles to get to Mexico.
The International Space Station even raised a few monarchs in space.
Since we try to include as many native species of plants, trees and flowers in our yard, we see a large assortment of butterflies as they migrate through, as well as our native butterflies like the zebra butterfly. I have tried to plant only Florida milkweed, to not disrupt the natural cycle of the monarch. Every year, I have planted or tried to raise from seed a selection of milkweed that invites the monarch to lay eggs. Every year, I see a few caterpillars, and then they are gone.
This year, I decided to move my annual milkweed purchase into a large pot on the back porch where I could monitor it. I bought a pink and an orange flower from reputable nurseries and set up my monarch watching station.
It did not take long before I started to see aphids show up. I try not to upset the natural order of things (see the movie The Biggest Little Farm for information on why you should not upset things), to keep nature in balance. I decided to leave the aphids and let nature take its course.
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That might have been a great idea for the aphids and then the invading milkweed bugs, but it didn’t do my prospective monarchs any favors. While I resisted doing anything about the invading bugs, beetles and other creatures, I monitored the plants for monarch eggs. I was very happy to see that I had both eggs and a few quarter-inch caterpillars moving about my milkweed.
Until I didn’t.
part 1 of 4
Read part 2 here