Milkweeds – place orders now

Greetings: I need to get milkweeds off my mind (all that latex is messing up my brain) and into the ground.

I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to build a market for milkweeds and it’s going slowly – poco a poco as they in Spanish speaking countries. We need to make more progress. Our impact is still too small. We have some long range plans but they are still long range and we need to ramp up the milkweed plantings in the near term.

Thanks to many of you, we have seed – lots of it for most of the northeast (from MN to MA) and Texas and now we need orders for plugs. That’s where you can help.

We are working with a grower who produces terrific milkweed plugs, mostly for delivery in May but, we are going to try to have some ready for April. The plugs come in flats of 32 and are generally 3-4″ high, although incarnata (swamp milkweed is taller) and will cost about $1.80 each delivered (i.e., $57.60/flat with shipping included). The minimum order is one flat. Smaller plants in 72 unit cell trays (flats) will be available for some early April orders for a lower cost per plant. The shipping boxes hold two flats. So, it is a little less costly to order two flats at a minimum.

To have plants of optimal size for shipping in April and May, they need to be started in January and we need to have orders by December.

The question is: can you help us with these orders? We are trying to connect with native plant societies, nature centers, zoos and botanical gardens, master naturalists, master gardeners, and restoration projects – just about anybody that would be interested in distributing milkweeds through plant fundraisers or other means.

We use geographically-appropriate seed sources for the production of plugs and we do not supply tropical milkweeds.

For most of the northeast we have A. syriaca (common), A. incarnata (swamp), and A. tuberosa (butterflyweed) and for Texas we have A. viridis (green antelope horn) and A. asperula (antelope horn) and possibly A. oenotheroides (zizotes). We have seeds for some other species and regions as well. Please contact us if you have questions.

If you can connect us with buyers, that would be very helpful. Please send all inquiries, comments, or suggestions to us via Monarch Watch’s Bring Back the Monarchs campaign at bbtm@monarchwatch.org

Thank you for your help.

Chip
P.S. Monarch Watch does not benefit financially from these arrangements.
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Chip Taylor
Director, Monarch Watch