Re: Question about milkweed

[Linda Barsalou]

I always have milkweed in my own garden and also volunteer in a local butterfly house where we grow milkweed inside to feed the caterpillars of our Monarchs. Inside the covered butterfly house where there is no natural predation, we do get so many caterpillars that they can completely denude the plants. We usually move a lot of them outside to other milkweed plants. However, outside, the plants never get that denuded and we do not see nearly as many caterpillars on the plants. I believe that outside, the eggs are more likely to get eaten and the caterpillars are eaten by birds and attacked by wasps and some just wander away.

I guess I would just wait and see how many caterpillars actually appear on your plants. It is most likely that your plants will be somewhat eaten on but not too badly.

Linda A long time grower of a number of varieties of milkweed.

[e-mail] wrote:

> I've started a butterfly garden here in zone 10b, and planted 5 milkweed > plants. It's great to finally see monarchs in the yard and it looks like > hundreds of eggs are now on the plants. If all of these eggs hatch, I'll > evidently have hundreds of caterpillars on these 5 plants. My question is: > should some of these eggs be eliminated or should I just leave them alone? > Thnx > > Barbara C.