When you design a butterfly garden, monarchs are likely a big draw at least to start with. There is so much out there about their declining populations and your will see a lot of initiatives to help save the monarch.
It is not always easy to figure out how to properly take care of your caterpillars and emerging butterflies if you keep them out in the garden. This article is meant to help give you a solid background on things to watch out for.
One of the first things we noticed is it can be really hard to find the chrysalises in your garden. These little guys will travel far. One crossed our backyard then up the wall of the house to form a chrysalis. Another went for our bird bath. Many head across the garden, as far away from the Milk Weed stashes as they can. This article from monarchbutterflygarden.net is really fascinating to read about the places they will go to start their big transformation .
Sometimes these caterpillars make really odd choices, like that article describes and you have to move them. Here is information on how to do that from saveourmonarchs.org .
Sometimes during the chrysalis stage, things look off. That can mean that your monarch is infected with a parasite. Unfortunately we have found a few of these butterflies in our garden over the last couple of years. Project Monarch Health describes what is happening really well in this article.
Here is a tip if you see some Monarchs emerge with deformed wings to try and prevent the spread of this parasite thanks to the Monarch Joint Venture involving taking care of your milkweed supply .
And speaking of Milkweed, it can be confusing what kind you really should plant in your garden, to actually help your Monarch friends! We will do a separate article on this as well, but here’s a quick summary: The yellow and red Milkweed you buy at nurseries may actually not be very good for your butterflies. The trouble is finding “the good stuff” can be very tricky. It took me several years to figure out how, so I am going to share the secret with you right away! Native wildflower nurseries. Here is a handy guide to ask for the type that grows in your area from the National Wildlife Federation.
The biggest takeaway we’ve had so far is no matter how much Milkweed we plant and no matter how hard we try and make our garden a real butterfly host and nectar paradise, you will loose a lot of caterpillars. Some cannot bare it and rescue chrysalises by rehanging in their porch etc. In our case, we have let our little eco system play out. But that could change depending on what experts say about declining populations.
