Milkweed seeds???

[mframe]

I have a question about when the seeds are ready. My youngest son pulled off several pods that weren't open yet, I have them sitting on the counter. Do the pods need to open while on the plant for the seeds to be ready or can I dry them out in the house and plant the seeds when they open?? The pods were starting to dry out as a third of them was brown, but I don't know if the seeds are good or not.

[Mona Miller]

I pulled some milkweed pods when the pods were yellow. It was good that I did because they mowed the rest of them down yesterday. I placed them in a paper bag to finish drying. When they have finished drying the pod will open and the seeds should be ready to plant. If you pull them while they are still green, then the seeds are not ready. The best time to pull them is when the pods starts to split. Then take them outside, open the pods (down the bag is best so you don't lose seeds), then close the top and give them a good shake. The seeds will relocate to the bottom of the bag.

[mframe]

Oh, that is frustrating, all of the seeds I have are not good....there must be several hundred of them...guess I will watch for the rest of them to start to open and collect them.

Bummer.

[Mona Miller]

I'd still throw them down in an area you want milkweed. They may have been mature enough. Good luck!

[GBMonarch]

I usually wait till I see the pod has started to split and then I harvest them. For common milkweed it needs to be cold stratified, so I put it in a baggie and leave it in the garage over the winter. It works fine here in Wisconsin. Some folks put theirs in the fridge. The swamp milkweed seeds I leave in the house, since they don't need the cold. All of the seeds I treat this way are fine and produce plants each year.

I must say I have seen more milkweed around this year along the highways and in fields. I think there are more folks now who realize it's value to the butterflies and that makes me happy.

Shelter from the Storm
Monarch Waystation 2116
Green Bay, WI

[Mona Miller]

I was very disappointed to see the field of milkweed that I was waiting to harvest more seeds from mowed. I'll have to go searching along the roadways to find more maturing pods that haven't met their maker with the mower blade.

[mframe]

I have been harvesting and drying milkweed seeds for weeks, I have a whole container full of them. What can I do with all of these seeds, can they be planted on public land, or stored till next spring.

Any advice?

Thank you

[Mona Miller]

I have a friend who puts them into a large plastic container and keeps them in her garage. She is in an area that gets very cold in the winter. This gives the seeds the cold treatment that they need. Then she plants them in the spring. You could be like Johnny Apple Seed, but with milkweed.

[mframe]

That sounds like a good plan. It would be fun to plant milkweed everywhere, think I just might have to do that Is it better to plant them in groups or doesn't it matter?

Thank you!

[Mona Miller]

I think it takes many seeds for at least one to take hold. My father used to say one for the worm, one for the bird, and one for us.

[Paul Cherubini]

A huge problem that occurs when trying to get milkweed established along roadsides, vacant fields, etc. is that the milkweed seedlings are so slow growing they get crowded out by other weeds and so end up dying.

[Mona Miller]

There is a field in Chevy Chase, Maryland where many summer camps of kids blew milkweed seeds, it is filled with milkweed plants.

[Paul Cherubini]

Did you personally witness this? If so, that's very interesting. Can you provide more details? Most fields in the eastern USA are covered with grass and other plants. So how did the milkweed seeds insert themselves into the soil if they were simply "blown" into the air? Or was the soil tilled or cultivated in some way first? What time of the year were the seeds blown into the air? Thanks.

[Mona Miller]

I have witnessed the meadows at the Audubon Naturalist Society in Chevy Chase, Maryland. I asked my teacher (spring/summer wildflower identification) how did all those milkweeds get into the meadow. She said it was from years of letting the summer camp kids release seeds into the meadow. The meadow is covered with grasses and other wildflowers. The deer freely roam the property, they don't eat the milkweeds, but they do eat the other plants.

Are you basing your information on the west, mid-west? This is an east coast meadow.

[Paul Cherubini]

Sounds more like circumstantial evidence that the blown seeds became established rather than direct evidence that has was carefully documented.

In my experience, it has been a very difficult task to establish a wild patch of milkweed (starting from seed) even in my own backyard with water sprinklers on timers, using a rototiller, etc. due to competing weed problems. But if there are proven methods that have worked either in the eastern or western USA, it would be highly valuable if this information became widely known.

There is alot of talk about large scale "milkweed restoration" but I'm not aware of any website or other source that provides instructions on how to establish milkweed along a roadside or crop margin, for example, either in the East or West.

[Mona Miller]

I do a lot of gardening with kids, they have magic fingers. If my teacher said that over time the introduction of seeds being blown into a meadow by kids was responsible for seeding the meadow, you had better believe it. This lady knows her plants--she is a botanist. She is also president of the Maryland Native Plant Society. I can attest to the number of plants, I was not a participant of the summer camps. But, I have taken natural history classes at that location for several years and spend time walking the grounds.

This is my instructor who told me about the kids planting the seeds. She was the one who collected the seeds for them to spread:
Cris Fleming, Montgomery County
President, MNPS; field trip leader for MNPS, Virginia Native Plant Society, Audubon Naturalist Society, and The Nature Conservancy; instructor in the Natural History Field Studies Program, USDA/ANS; former Natural Heritage botanist/ecologist; principal author of Finding Wildflowers in the Washington/Baltimore Area; as President, member of all committes, and especially active on the Botany Committee.

Recently Fairfax County seeded a slope at an elementary school to create a wild meadow for the school. The area was graded, then seeded. This fall I noted that the common milkweed had germinated and was growing.