Hah, well a couple years ago me and the kids decided to grow some milkweed to help support the local Monarch butterfly population and to watch and learn about the life cycle of these insects. It's also a fairly drought tolerant plant.
And anything I can do to help offset my considerable carbon footprint...
We started with eight 6" plants from the local nursery and they've ballooned up to 4' high plants - they sort of really do grow like a weed... the past two years we've collected the seed pods and germinated them in little pots and then transplanted them and once they're large and hearty enough to plant in the yard we will.
It's taught the kids about conservatorship, gardening, water conservation, caring for bugs, and watching the lifecycle - we've seen butterflies actually land and lay eggs, we've seen teeny tiny caterpillars, medium ones, and huge 'ol fat ones - we've seen one chrysalis with a pupa inside and several empty ones. We've also been (unintentionally) feeding caterpillars to the scrub jays in the yard too...
We've probably got 50+ little plants ready to go into the yard in the next little while.
I gotta say, it's cool to see the bright hugger orange with black trim buggers fluttering around, we like to just sit and watch sometimes. It's been a great hobby to share with the kids; they love it.
At the beginning, when the butterflies almost immediately showed up, the kids asked how they knew we planted some for them, and I said they can smell it... then they asked how they found it, I likened it to being able to smell a neighbor grilling and that if you were hungry you could probably follow the smell and find the backyard with the burgers.
One interesting thing I noticed right away is that this plant looks NOTHING like the milkweed I grew up with in SW Ontario... nothing. It does have white sap, but that's where the similarity ends... but the butterflies love it here, and once a year there's millions and millions of them locally - more down south in San Juan Capistrano than here though; a favorite stop on their way to / from Mexico.
Anyway, that's why I need the (cheap, but USA made) pots.
Cheers all!
Anthony
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