Date: 04/14/2017

Number: 1

For the past couple of years my wife and I have collected Monarch eggs and caterpillars that we find in the wild and on the milkweed plants that we grow in our home garden. Those that we find, we put on potted milkweeds that we raise inside to protect the caterpillars from predators. Last year we started a number of new plants from seed, with the intention of planting them around our house. Unfortunately, that never got accomplished, so as winter approached and the plants were going dormant, I brought them inside and placed them in trays in the closet under our basement stairs, temperature averaged in the mid 60s, watered every couple of weeks, with a couple of fluorescent lights timed for 8 hours of illumination per day. About a month ago, new little sprouts began to appear, unfortunately many covered by bright yellow oleander aphids. With increased light, and aphids removed, we've had about 45% of the "closeted" plants revive thus far. This past week we began moving them outside. The temperature got down to 39ºF a couple of nights, but everyone as come through okay, as you can see in the photo above. It looks like we'll have a number of potted milkweeds ready to go when the butterflies arrive.

I keep looking everyday for sprouts from the milkweeds (mostly swamp milkweeds) that we have growing outside in our garden, but no sprouts as yet.

Bellefonte, PA

Latitude: 40.9 Longitude: -77.8

Observed by: R. Timothy
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