better take a trip down to Austin for Lady Bird Johnson Park they have plant sales in the spring. it might be worth your while to look at wild seed farms there in Rusk Texas. then I have some local sources here if you're looking for some really unusual milkweeds or butterfly fodder. I'll go back and re-read your whole post cuz I skipped it about at the two third mark and missed something.
That's really easy grow nectar flowers for feeding the monarchs and other butterfly species there's so many good candidates it's hard to go wrong if you want to go ahead and plan up some hummingbird and butterfly flower patches. personally I think that tropical milkweeds pretty good except for has some moisture requirements that are probably a little high for your area. but any local nursery can probably point you in the right direction in my local hell I mean that spelling hour and a half away.
Look for your local Master gardeners club as well your agricultural extension officer in the county office can probably point you there.
I’m super glad for you too! I know what it is to be ready, no really needing for moisture to fall from the skies. I’m grateful for what we received last week. It’s still 30 degrees here and waiting for it to warm up several more degrees before I open up the coups and let that cold air in. Do need to finish a new but southern engineered nesting station for EEs. Will have to put long johns on I guess. Layering is the theme today. Somebody’s gotta gather those eggs. I look around and don’t see any one else about!
Yes sir, I definitely know all the plants and been learning some new ones even for up here. My problem is they arrive on their journey north before anything out here is in bloom for some time. And all my agastache, salvias, anisacanthus, are dormant. I have several flats of dianthus in the green house that’s getting planted this weekend. Hopefully it’s something. I’m zone 5 on border with zone 6 really and those dang monarchs arrive so early. By early summer all kinds of good nectar plants are blooming on into early fall. I am going to make a real effort to get my hands on tropical milk weed, Asclepius but it cannot be planted here until early June, late May.i do appreciate your advise and it’s well taken. I have programs on butterfly gardening In Dallas. I was giving at the nursery, garden clubs, and arboretum and such but nothing prepared me for the challenge of having nectar sources up this far north in a period which we are still having some freezes and most things aren’t about to break their dormancy. I’m hoping for dianthus helping some but also that the salvia May Knight comes into bloom early enough.
Yes some where out there and have ordered 100s of lbs for a rancher near Hico that I’ve landscaped many years for, of course everything is going to come up in fall and bloom in April-May for them and more for general butterflies . The last generation of monarchs that make it to Mexico from Texas a lot, under go a change in physiology that makes them temporarily non sexual and much stronger than the many predecessors. It over winters in Mexico only in a few same places that shouldn’t freeze.and then makes out for Texas and the south to start the migration north. It’s a timing thing to get to both nectar sources and milkweeds in Deep South to feed but also to lay eggs, because by the time their cycle begins the journey back they have morphed into sexual beings and ready to lost eggs. The Deep South is extremely important for their success.
Lay eggs.
I don’t but I do have light and dark Brahmas.
