Robust Plants

I like plants that can stand up by themselves. I have been impressed with an Ironweed plant that I got a few years ago at a local plant sale. It is called ironweed because it stands tall and steady. I have ordered seeds to increase my planting of this beautiful "weed".

Another one that stands at attention is Autumn Joy sedum. I typically do not find sedum that appealing but this variety stays standing even after the weather turns cold providing some “winter interest” when most other plants crumble to a soggy mess.

Obviously, the bumble bees love it

For some otherwise desirable plants I will provide some help to stand up. This year I bought three “dinner plate dahlia” plants. They are spectacular and just keep producing. My favorite is this deep purple variety called “Thomas Edison”.

Unfortunately these plants are too big for their stems. Add some rain weight to the huge blooms and the stems split at the axils. I will plant these again next year but I will be quicker to add support stakes.

Pre-Flight Preparation

If you only expect to have 2 or 3 pupas, you can just take the shoebox cover outside when the pupas start to get dark. Mount it securely with nothing below the pupas to obstruct their normal coming out party.

There have been years when I did not see a single monarch butterfly or an egg on my plants. But this year has been crazy productive. I have already seen 15 of my babies fly away. Now I have 17 more pupas waiting to become butterflies.

In order to mount them on this simple dowel rack I carefully tie a piece of dental floss around the black stalk (called the "cremaster") from which they hang, slowly and carefully pull the pupa away from the shoebox top, and then simply tie them on this dowel rod.

I place the rack inside a mesh enclosure that I purchased for about $30. Target has a laundry hamper  for only $7 which can be used also.

Each morning I check to see if any are dark and look like they will emerge. I actually keep them locked in for at least two hours after emerging to help prevent any early departures before they are quite ready to go. Then I open just the top of the door so they have to do some walking to get to the exit.

Monarch Watch more fully describes all this and has all the other info you will need if you really get into raising monarch butterflies.

Raising Monarch Butterflies in the House

I have never seen a large monarch caterpillar in my swamp milkweed garden. One or another predator gets them early; sometimes when they are still an egg. In a tiny effort to help the numbers grow, I raise them inside away from most dangers.

Monarch females lay eggs on the underside of a swamp milkweed leaf. Periodically I examine these sites either by carefully turning over a leaf or using a mirror. When I use the mirror, I go out at dusk with a miner's head lamp so that the sky brightness does not overwhelm my view.

When I find a stem with several eggs I cut the entire stem (not just a leaf) and place it in a vase olive jar on my kitchen windowsill. This is the preferred method rather than bringing in just a leaf since an individual leaf will dry out in the 5 days the egg develops. When I do bring in just a leaf I watch carefully for hatching and then place the dry leaf on a fresh one.

The first thing a caterpillar does upon hatching is eat its protein-rich egg shell. Just by chance, I captured a new caterpillar doing this recently.

But I digress...

After the eggs hatch in the vase, I may let the caterpillars grow for a few days until the droppings are making a mess on our kitchen counter. They then go into a plastic shoe box were I continually add fresh leaves.

My use of plastic shoe boxes is imperfect because of the lack of ventilation. To overcome this shortcoming I open the boxes a few times during the day to get a change of air and release moisture.
Perhaps I will install screens next year.

When the poop gets heavy in the bottom, I carefully place the caterpillars (by lifting the leaves they are on) into a clean box and add more leaves as required.

To help with cleanliness, I have been keeping no more than 4 caterpillars in each box when they get beyond the tiny stage.

If someone is not home during the day, be sure there are plenty of leaves in the box before going to work.

So you just add leaves and clean out the boxes when they need it and wait. You may see them crawl up the side of the box and molt.

When the caterpillars get fully grown, they will go to the top of the box and attach themselves to the top, They will hang in a "J" form a a day or so before their final molt into a pupa.

Pupation goes very fast when it happens. A clue will be when the "antennae' hang haphazardly. Immediately before pupation the caterpillar will squirm and writhe.

Monarch Health Update

Whatever was killing my caterpillars has apparently moved on. I did see some mites in one box one day. I have been keeping things clean and ventilated and all seems well. I have at least 16 cats in six boxes right now. Many are about to pupate. I wonder if any will be going to Mexico.

The Black Death

I was planning my next post to describe how I raise the caterpillars inside my house. Unfortunately my charges have been hit by some noxious element. I have to keep in mind that already this summer I have seen 12 new monarchs fly from my "nursery". It is a setback but I am trying to ascertain what happened.

This photo shows the simplest case of caterpillar death. They look like a railroad car that has fallen off the track. They just flop over. I have seen black ones and failed chrysalises.


I searched the internet and found this useful site. There are a lot of different dangers that confront monarch raisers. One way to get an initial grip on remedial steps to take is to see what suggestions appear under each ailment. There are two to keep in mind: air circulation and... I forgot the other one. Oh, I guess it was cleanliness. Actually they both go together.

The linked site mentioned the source of milkweed plants. I recently bought 4 more from a trusted nursery. I need to check with them to see if they used pesticides in their plant production process.

In my case I am concerned about chemicals in the plastic boxes I just bought. Perhaps they need to be aired out well before use. I borrowed an old trick from my aerospace days: I outgassed them.

Early in the space program in the early 1960's, one of the astronauts reported some gunk on his window. It turns out that if parts have some volatile compounds on them when launched into space, the high vacuum of space causes the gasses from these compounds to come out or outgas. Then they can deposit themselves on nearby surfaces like windows and camera lenses. In the building I worked in at Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Alabama, they had a house-sized vacuum chamber. Any incoming parts for spacecraft built there at Marshall were first put into this chamber under a hard vacuum for several hours in expectation of ridding the parts of volatile compounds.

In the case of my plastic shoe boxes, I put them in the oven at 160 degrees F for a couple hours.

A Monarch Butterfly Garden

There are two types of plants to consider: Nectaring plants and host plants.

Nectaring Plants

Invite the monarchs to lunch. Monarch butterflies sip nectar from many popular flowers. You may have some favorites in your garden already. Start by checking listings of plants for your part of the country. This site has a selection of plant lists for different parts of the country. I live in the Detroit Metropolitan area and have several of the plants from the Great Lakes list.

I have noticed that monarchs and other butterflies really like the coneflowers (Echinacea). Also in my garden are Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia), Joe Pye Weed (Eutrochium), and Swamp Milkweed (Asclepias) which is also the main monarch host plant.

Monarch Watch has plant information as well as everything else you will ever want to know about monarchs.

Host Plants

The only plants that monarchs lay eggs on are in the milkweed family. Swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) is the preferred plant for anyone who wants to raise monarchs. It is a very attractive plant and has an attractive flower head. I have a link to photos and other information in the first post to this blog.

Common milkweed is another possible host plant for your garden but it is no beauty. Also it tends to spread unlike the swamp milkweed which stays where you plant it.

The final member of the family that I have seen listed as a host plant is the butterfly [milk]weed (Asclepias tuberosa) but I have never seen any sign of eggs or caterpillars on my butterfly weed and I have been reluctant to offer it to my protected caterpillars.

Once you have some established swamp milkweed you can save the seeds in the fall and start your own plants in the spring. The seeds need to be exposed to cold conditions for successful germination. You can just put them in your freezer for a month to accomplish that hardening.

Raising Monarch Butterflies

Some years ago I learned about rain gardens. The logic is that instead of directing rainwater into sewer systems, why not put it to work growing things and give the infrastructure a break. One of the plants that does well in wet conditions is the swamp milkweed, Asclepias incarnata. For a plant with a questionable sounding name, it is very pretty. See here. It is not at all like common milkweed.

Both common milkweed and swamp milkweed are host plants for Monarch butterflies. That is they lay their eggs on it and the resultant caterpillars eat it and grow up to be big, strong caterpillars.

The female Monarch lays a single egg on the underside of a leaf. They are very small white globes.

Monarch populations rise and fall but this seems to be an especially good year. I cut off this stem because it got broken off by my clumsiness and there was an egg.

Only about 2 out of every hundred eggs develop into an adult Monarch butterfly. They are preyed upon by ants, spiders, and birds. So I bring them inside and raise them in a plastic shoe box. It is best if you find just-hatched caterpillars because I am not sure how long the leaves remain viable before they dry out too much.

When they are very small caterpillars it takes them quite a while to get going but once they get to be, say, 3/4 inch long you have to check on them a couple times a day to see if more leaves are needed. The amount of leaves in the above photo is actually more than is typical.

If you find several eggs near the end of a stem, cut a few inches of it and put it in a vase inside.

By the way, I will expand on certain points of caterpillar husbandry in later posts but, for now, I just what to present the basics.

So to raise these guys you just add leaves each day as needed. Keep the box covered (it is nice to use a box with a clear lid) because when they are ready to pupate they will climb to the top and do it there. As they grow they produce a lot of poop (called fras). You will need to clean this out but I will cover that in a later post.

Again, I'm just providing the basics here... After they pupate it will take 10 to 14 days to develop. When they are within a day of emerging the pupa will begin to look transparent (darker). Make sure you take the box lid outside and support it with a clamp or something that leaves the underside clear for them to fly away. My videos, below, will give an example of this.