Growing common milkweed in a pot.

[Keith Petrosky]

I recently potted a small common milkweed plant. Every year I tried this the plant would turn yellow and die from the shock of being in sunlight. But this year I put the plant in a large pot, kept it in the shade for a week, and now have it placed in an area that gets direct sunlight.

Its doing very good, but I have a quick question. It has sprouted 3 new shoots already, totalling to 4 seperate stems in the pot. Are they from my plants roots? Will it keep growing new shoots, or will it eventually stop? What should I do, if they grow straight it seems they will fit fine in the pot I have them in, but I dont want any more than 4 growing.

[Keith Petrosky]

Has anyone ever grown common milkweed in a pot???

[psi_chemie]

I actually did try that last month. I collected cuttings of vine and common milkweed, and then potted both. The common died, the vine is much more willing but produces less leaf mass. I don't know what I did wrong with the common. I've never tried from seed.

[Keith Petrosky]

Mine used to die..the secret is they like the shade outside and to be watered every day.

[John Beaulieu]

Last summer I transplanted several plants of common milkweed from the wild. I used pots that were about 10 in. in diameter and about 10 in. deep. I selected plants that were already growing in small clumps. Most were transplanted into the wilder part of the garden. When digging the clumps I cut with the shovel a section of ground to match the pot size. One of the plants was left in the pot, as I wanted to use it in a cage with a captive female monarch for eggs. The plant wintered outside (zone 4) and resprouted in the spring. This year I use it inside our screen tent, where it sits in the sunny side.

I had also put samples of my various swamp milkweed cultivars in pots last fall, because we were supposed to be moving.... that did not happen and I repotted them in the ground this spring. They survived wintering in the pots too.

John

[Bugsy]

I've grown milkweed in pots too. Have to remember to water them like any other container plants. They survive winter, too. Got roots growing out of the holes in the bottom of the pots now.

[James Price]

Your new shoots are certainly offshoots from the original plant. Common milkweed is extremely clever at putting out these underground shoots from what are called "rhizomes." There is no way to know how many a single plant will create in a given size of pot. But this is a plant that wants to spread. Sometimes in the wild (or in a garden, for that matter), common milkweed will put up shoots 10 feet away from the original plant. In fact, when you see a large patch of milkweed growing in a pasture, chances are it is all one huge genetic clone growing from a single original source (and this is why farmers hate it so).

Just nip back the shoots you don't want. They'll keep trying to grow, but eventually they'll get discouraged.

[Keith Petrosky]

So far it has not sprouted any new shoots, and the old shoots are now getting taller and thicker, mabye it realizes it cant spread anymore.

[milkweedman]

Ive grown common milkweed here in New Zealand for a few years and it takes over the soil pretty damn quick if the pot isnt very big. I only transplant it when dormant cos otherwise it goes yellow and wont grow again till next summer.

[ButterflyLdy]

I planted some common milkweed last year and I'm so excited to see it coming back! They are putting up shoots all over the place. I also collected seeds last year from the pods and stratified them in my refrigerator over the winter. I planted them last week and it looks like they are popping up. I also tend to use a variety of milkweed, tropical, common, butterfly weed, etc. The Monarchs like them all, but I think they prefer the common milkweed most.
bec

[Waystation #635]

We've had success with showy milkweed in pots here in NM. You have to water plants in containers more often than plants in the ground. That is any plant, not just milkweed.

[freda]

We transplanted common milkweed from the roadside in Manitoba in August '06. Not a great time to be moving plants. But it came up in the spring and in May Mrs. Monarch visited. The plants have now taken over a good portion of our garden. It comes up in the echinacea, the monarda, the lilies but hey! what a great place for the mature cats to live next to. I have purchased some hybrid asclepias and pretty though they may be, and attractive as nectar plants, they just don't have the leaf mass to support a thriving Waystation. Without exception, eggs hatched and larvae grown on the hybrids (non-invasive varieties) have to be moved to the common milkweed for maturing.

I have found there is a very small window for potting up common milkweed. In the spring when all plants want to propagate, you can dig it up and plant it anywhere with some certainty of success. Two weeks past that window and the root hairs seem to have disappeared and it just ain't gonna work. I have potted up many plants, in fairly smallish pots, and while they do survive, they don't seem to thrive. BIG pots are the answer. I dig up a newly emerged plant, track it back to a longer root and literally wrap it around inside the pot, fill it with earth and wait for the shoots to pop up. They STILL don't seem to grow with wild abandon as the plants directly in the garden, but they're great for 'baiting' the Monarchs. The leaves on these potted plants remain smaller and tender, attracting the female Monarch depositing her eggs. I then cut a small portion of the leaf, move it inside and let her continue to deposit more eggs. The garden-grown plants have leaves by now that are hard and leathery, NOT attractive to the Monarchs. It seems that they only deposit eggs on tender plants which the newly emerged larvae can eat through. The potted plants provide that texture of leaf.

Southern Ontario, Manitoba, and northern Minnesota have an abundance of roadside common milkweed. In our little pocket of northwestern Ontario, we don't or didn't until we moved ours in. Our growing season just doesn't seem to be conducive to produce the beautiful pods of blowing, whispy seeds with their sparkling umbrellas. So it's a bit of a surprise to find new plants 40' from the original plants. I do believe James Price when he said the new shoots can surface 10’ from the original plant. My garden proves that.

I’m going to set up a Picasa web album and share some photos of our garden and the striped creatures which have taken over our lives! I had no idea this could become such an obsession and SO labour intensive!