Plant milkweed seeds in the fall so you are ready for Monarch butterflies in the spring.

I love Monarch butterflies. Their caterpillars need milkweed plants to live. The fall is the perfect time to plant milkweed. There are four different species of native Milkweed— the Whorled, Common and Swamp Milkweeds, as well as Butterfly Weed (also a milkweed)— are found in most states from the eastern seaboard to the Rocky Mountains as well as in southern Canada, and will thrive in a wide range of garden and meadow habitats.

How to plant milkweed seeds in the fall from American Meadows:
If you want to start milkweeds from seed, the easiest way is to emulate Mother Nature and plant them in the fall! In the wild, milkweed plants scatter their seeds quite late in the season—at a time when the coming cold would kill any seedlings that germinated right away. But the seeds of milkweed (and other plants that flower late in the season) are cleverly programmed to delay their germination until after they have been exposed to winter’s cold followed by gradually rising temperatures in springtime—an adaptation known as stratification.

See my videos of butterflies and learn more about planting butterfly gardens here.

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