Mr. Lund - my husband started beekeeping this spring in SE Michigan. To support him and the honeybees, I planted a pollinator garden. I then discovered your videos on the monarch butterfly decline which emboldened me to order 3 packs of milkweed seeds (which I stratified beginning in early April and planted in June.). I am so happy to report that I found 3 large caterpillars today in one of my new milkweed beds and also additional ones from mature plants that we have in our field. I am now raising them according to your video series and am hopeful they achieve chrysalis stage within a week or so. They are voracious little eaters! I see that I am indeed making a difference by planting the new milkweed, and for that I am so happy. Thank you Mr. Lund for your terrific videos!

Absolutely! I live in an urban setting, not many green spaces around me, but I used an abandoned, empty tree pit (6’x6’) in the sidewalk in front of my house to make a pollinator garden. In that garden I planted 3 milkweed plants along with some other flowering natives. This year is the first year that I’ve had milkweed and I have had numerous caterpillars on my plants. I wasn’t expecting to see any in the first year, but I decided to help raise them in an outdoor cage. I currently have 4 five instars, 4 three instars, and 6 eggs. I am also saving the seeds that my milkweeds are producing to help “spread the love” throughout my urban landscape.

yes, they do come!!! my school planted a native schoolyard habitat with plenty of narrow leaved milkweed (southern CA species) , and there are about 18 caterpillars out there as of Monday. LOVE your milkweed and monarch video series, especially music choices. I'm germinating seeds now... thanks for excellent teaching experiment

Discovered your videos, planted milkweed and we found 4 eggs the next day! My babies are all in crysalis stage as of today. My 7 year old and I have enjoyed this so much. Oh, and planted parsley and yesterday we found 4 Swallowtail eggs! So exciting!

Hey rich

It definitely helps, first year i had 1 puny plant and a monarch caterpillar was munching on it, those plants have grown, i had 7 caterpillars in the Fall, and 7-9 more in March. Very pleased!

Awesome!!! I have Milkweed growing in my yard so I am going to transplant those little buggers to my garden! Blast the naysayers!

Hi, milkweed is the key. I always noticed the tons of butterflies we were getting and I continued building my perennial garden w/ alot of native and attractive flowers for them. A few miklweed plants showed up so we cultivated them as well, receiving a lot of attention from the Monarchs and other species.

I planted milkweeds last year and have been surprised at how many eggs and caterpillars I've seen on them. Due to low apparent survival rates I've started removing the eggs and raising them indoors. Your Monarch series are really great. You have such a dedication.

I transplanted some swamp milkweed seedlings into my far backyard because the seedlings were taking over a flower bed. I just ripped them out - the seedlings come out intact.

Thanks so much for sharing your knowledge of these magnificent creatures with all of us. I ventured out to my local butterfly farm today called Idlewild Butterfly farm here in Kentucky and got my first milkweed plant, it's fairly large and had two Monarch butterfly eggs on it that I've found so far, complete with two ladybugs and numerous ladybug eggs. After watching your videos, I cut the two eggs from the leaves as you instructed, placed them in a container and am hoping to raise these guys. Great thing you and your family do for these tiny beings.

Right on! I absolutely love your videos! If you plant it, they will come!

what i do is i have a bunch of 309 milkweed in my garden and in my butterflyhouse i have 167 plants for them to eat fresh and i still collect leaves but i found out that putting it on a fresh plant protected from predators is the best method.

In a follow up to my comment that Monarchs prefer young plants, have found a study conducted by Michigan State University indicating that the amount of eggs laid on young fresh plants as opposed to older mature plants with rougher leaves is as much as ten times greater.

I’ve planted 10 milkweed plants last year in my yard to help the monarchs and also raise the monarchs.. last year may 2017 through Jan 2018 I raised and released 50ish monarch butterflies. Since I live in North Florida I found some really late eggs in what I had left of my milkweed in mid winter here. We had a really bad cold spell for about 5 days straight of freezing temps in December 2017 I just looked at my milkweed plants and found 2 caterpillars. 1 In 3rd Instar and 2 in second instar.. am happy to say they both survived but I didn’t have enough milkweed to feed them.i had an emergency as my milkweed outside turned brown and died but my nursery up the road from me was able to keep 2 milkweed plants alive from the 5 days of freezing temperatures. I purchased 1 plant and luckily it had enough fresh milkweed leaves to get both caterpillars to Chrysalis form and both were released on our warmest days in mid January and am sure they’ve survived as we have not had another freezing temp since before 1st was released! Looking forward to this new year and how many healthy monarchs I can raise and release

Thank you so much for making this. That person is still posting lies to so many articles. This helps!

Lo l love that last statement...

Bought seeds last year and this Spring we had terrible late frost and really cold nights through June. (🇨🇦Zone5) My attempt to grow from seeds was a fail 🥺 HOWEVER I've been rewatching your videos over the past 2 days since Monarchs are in the news again. Started to look around our property edges and found some but the biggest healthiest plants were wedged behind the rain barrel between our shed and wood pile. For sure shady for most of the day. I decided to look under the leaves and I'm pretty sure I have eggs!!!!! Smart Monarch found the shady spot during these awful heatwaves. I'm going to hopefully banned and save seed and get a whole bunch more going next year. I think it's time for some gorilla seed sowing out around my community 😉

Monarchs seem to show some preference for young fresh milkweed plants for some reason.

Nice