Monarch caterpillars
August 23, 2025
wildlife, lepidoptera, observations, milkweed | permalink
I checked (though I can't say too thoroughly) the milkweeds on the patio and in front today and found four monarch caterpillars. Two chunky ones near the patio, this time on the butterfly milkweeds, which is interesting because previously there were 13 on the plants here but 12 were on the common milkweed and only one was on the butterfly. Out front I finally found some (and had once again earlier seen a Monarch butterfly on them, I assume to lay eggs): a small one and a medium one.
A bunch of Monarch caterpillars
August 16, 2025
wildlife, lepidoptera, observations, milkweed | permalink
My daughter alerted me to a butterfly on our back patio and told me to come see it. It was a Monarch, flitting around the milkweeds planted there. I'd also seen it there not too long ago, when I thought it might be laying eggs. I don't know how soon Monarch eggs hatch, but decided to check the plants for any sign of caterpillars, and counted 13 of them, a bit smaller (I'd say between 1/4 and 3/4 of an inch long) than the first one I saw just over a week before. I haven't yet checked the front patch again, where there are many more plants, but so far I haven't found any out there.
Monarch caterpillar
August 7, 2025
wildlife, lepidoptera, observations, milkweed | permalink
I was just about to come inside for the night and I thought I'd check the milkweeds for signs of monarch caterpillars. First I saw what looked like some leaf munching, and then I found the culprit (or one of them at least). Very happy to see the work to get some colonies of milkweed started has begun to pay off. And looks like I was right a couple weeks ago when I thought a butterfly I saw was a monarch.
Possible monarch butterfly
July 26, 2025
wildlife, observations, lepidoptera, milkweed | permalink
One of the things I wrote down to do today was to go out and look for Monarch caterpillars, since I've seen a few people on the fediverse post pictures of them recently. Well, no caterpillars, but I'm about 90% sure I saw a butterfly around the milkweeds in the front yard. There's a slim chance that it was the eastern tiger swallowtail I saw yesterday, but I don't think so: this one seemed more orange than yellow and its behavior was definitely different. I couldn't get within five feet of it to take a picture - it would just flit away, sometimes pretty high in the air, and the circle back around. Hopefully it laid some eggs!
Milkweed propagation
May 3, 2025
milkweed, herbaceous | permalink
During evenings from February 27 to March 7, I planted, among other things, 45 common milkweed seeds - that I'd saved in the fall and then cold stratified (some moist and some dry) in the fridge for a couple months - in pots in my basement. Just one came up about three weeks later. But I left all the pots where they were for a while and kept watering them. Then I mostly gave up and reused the soil for other things, except for one pot, which I moved up to the living room and put in a windowsill there. That was probably three weeks ago. And I kept watering it every few days, though I figured it was a lost cause. Wouldn't you know it, though? One came up. So 2 out of 45, given the conditions I put them in. I'm assuming it was temperature related. If I try this again next year, I'll try them in a warmer spot, probably in late March or early April. At the same time, they spread well on their own, so maybe I'll just dig up some new ones that come up if I want to give them away.
Milkweed propagation
March 16, 2025
herbaceous, milkweed, observations | permalink
Three butterfly milkweeds have sprouted, each from a separate pot, but all from the ones planted on Feb 27 or 28. Three beebalms have also come up.
Flower seeds started
March 5, 2025
herbaceous, milkweed | permalink
Over the past week, I started a bunch of flower seeds. Roughly:
- 45 common milkweed (from my yard)
- 45 butterfly milkweed (from my yard)
- 7 swamp milkweed (from local nature center seed library)
- 66 bee balm (from my mom)
- 130 columbine (from my mom)
- 40 obedient plant (from my mom)
- 20 daisy (from my yard)
- 80 blue-eyed grass (from local nature center seed library)
- 13 swamp rose mallow (from local nature center seed library)
- 8 unknown (from a seed pod I'd snagged while traveling in central PA; curious to identify it)
That's 450 seeds in all! For most of them, I only used half of what I have, and I'm going to directly sow the remaining ones outside in the next few weeks. (Except for the common and butterfuly milkweeds - I probably have 1000 of those.)
All except the bee balm were cold stratified in the fridge for two months, which I think is cutting it close. The columbine I did only dry, but all the rest were half dry and half moist. For the moist stratification, I used unbleached coffee filters (which held up very well). I'd first moisten a filter on a plate with a thin layer of water on it, hold it up to let the excess water drip off, and then put it on another plate before adding seeds and wrapping it up to about the size of a half a roll of pennies. Then the filter went into a ziplock bag, labelled, and finally when they were all done, they went into a small plastic container. Similar thing for the dry stratification, just minus the coffee filters. Both containers then went into the back of the fridge, where I patiently waited for them to do their thing. And now I'm waiting for them to do their next thing.
Soon I'll need to figure out where I'm going to start the vegetable seeds, because there's not a hell of a lot of space left under grow lights. I'm hoping I can move the flowers to windowsills once they start to come up to make way for the veggies.
