Wild Kingdom – Monarch Butterflies
Landscaping for the Wild Kingdom- Here’s a small segment on how to attract monarch butterlies to you garden. We’ll worry about attracting hummingbirds, snakes, rodents, and mountain lions at a later date. To attract monarchs you have to have something they like and something the caterpillars can eat so they can fatten up making it to both the chrysalis stage and then on to the butterfly. They love milkweed and there are several types. The one they seem to like the best is the narrow leaf milkweed or Asclepias facicularis. This type of milkweed won’t normally help you win a garden contest unless monarchs are doing the judging. And you can’t buy just 1 plant. You need to buy an amount equal to “critical mass”, like 6 or so and plant them in a sunny location or it won’t work.
The monarchs will start coming to your garden in April and you’ll have several generations in your garden ending in late fall. That’s when the last generation flys down to Mexico. Here are a few pictures of what you will be seeing:
These are pretty much the 4 stages of live action: 1) monarch laying eggs 2) caterpiller eating the milkweed 3) chrysalis 4) chrysalis about the hatch-not the outline of the wings becoming clear. For more info. please go to : http://www.monarch-butterfly.com/
or see our own video “caterpillar vs milkweed” on youtube:
