Now is the perfect time of year to collect and to plant milkweed seeds, either from pods that are just splitting open or from pods that have already split and are showing their silky fluff.
There are several different methods of propagating milkweed and the following is by far the simplest. Gather milkweed seeds and store in a paper bag. At the location in your garden where you are planning a milkweed patch, lightly scratch the soil with a rake. Scatter the seeds over the soil. Sprinkle a thin layer of soil over the seeds, just enough to keep them from blowing away. That’s it! Next spring, by mid-May, you will have a patch of milkweed seedlings. This super simple method works for Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) and Marsh Milkweed (Asclpeias incarnata).
Note ~ when collecting seeds from wildflowers, never remove the plant from its location, and never take all the seeds.
If you’d like to learn more about this beautiful plant species, and how growing milkweed in your own garden directly benefits the Monarch Butterfly, there are over several dozen posts covering milkweed on Good Morning Gloucester; too numerous to list here. Type milkweed in the search box in the upper right hand corner of my home page to see all.
Where Are All the Monarchs?
Cape Ann Milkweed Project
How Exactly is Monsanto’s Roundup Ravaging the Monarch Butterfly Population?
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