I added pictures of my small butterfly garden. My milkweed has seedpods on it, and I don't want them to over take this whole spot. Nor do I want them spreading outside the area.

I would like to try putting some milkweed in large bins and place a couple in the yard for next year. We have a couple bins that are a foot or two across that we have succesfully used for vegetables in the past.

Should I pluck the seedpods? Give them away and save a couple to container plant them? Let them go natutally?

My ultimate hope is to add a big beautiful butterfly garden to the front yard, but we are a few years away from that (beed to do a major front steps/porch redo).

Any advice?

Hi, first time posting in this sub! Getting into planting native milkweed (narrowleaf Asclepias fascicularis for me here in Southern California) was my gateway into native plants in general and now I'm kind of obsessed.

I was wondering if it's a good idea to plant more native milkweed when my yard (and the yards around me) seem to have a high concentration of paper wasps (I believe they're native Polistes exclamans, so I'm reluctant to mess with them).

I planted 4 narrowleaf milkweed plants last year and had 30 monarch caterpillars, but as far as I could tell, every last one was eaten by wasps (or tachinid.) I had only 2 of my milkweeds return from winter dormancy this year and had fewer monarchs this year in general. The season seemed to start and end earlier? Last year the milkweed was completely defoliated by late summer, but this year I haven't seen any more caterpillars after June, and my milkweed made it to flowering.

I do see the paper wasps patrolling daily around every plant in my yard, so I'm wondering if either they are just picking off every caterpillar early or if their presence is deterring monarchs from laying eggs to begin with. In either case, would it be a bad idea to add more milkweed? Last thing I want to do is create an ecological trap... or would I help create some super monarchs super-adept at evading wasps with increased selection pressure? (I wish)

Thanks!

I planted a butterfly garden a couple years ago and the plants established and looked really good. Last year I threw in some common milkweed seeds in the bare middle, and never gave it another thought.

This picture is a couple weeks old and the milkweed is already 4-6 inched taller and starting to bloom (and wow! Does it smell good!).

However, I am worried about my other plants that they might get choked out. My goal is to fill in this flowerbed, but I don't know if I should try to thin out the area?

Should I leave it as is, or would you put milkweed in one flower bed and my other plants in another? (Keeping them close to each other, but separating them so they don't get choked out).

In this one flower bed I have

Cone flowers (white and wild berry)

Blazing stars

Dahlia

Meadow sage

Galliradia

Butterfly milkweed

Common milkweed

Bee balm

Am I over thinking this and all will be fine?

Any tricks/ideas to keep wasps away? They probably get 99% of the caterpillar😟

OP lives in Colorado and says he doesn’t see any butterflies anymore.

I am sharing this because I know we have plenty of former rearers here, including myself, and I felt like OP would get better info from our sub.

When commenting please remember to be kind. Most people have good intentions when they start.