I remember as a child being fascinated with monarch butterflies. Spotting those brightly striped caterpillars chomping through our swan plants, and then magically evolve into monarch butterflies, seemed to consume a lot of our time.
While monarch butterflies are around all year long, January is peak monarch season. If you’re wanting to entice monarchs to your garden this summer, you need to be thinking about planting swan plants now. You can grab your swan plant seedlings, (and more established plants) from Awapuni Nurseries online shop and have them delivered direct to your door.
Once you’ve got your seedlings, plant them around 70cm apart, as swan plants can grow up to 2m high, and really bush out. Plant in well-drained soil, that gets lots of sun. They’ll also benefit from some shelter as they won’t cope well in strong winds. If they are in an exposed spot, I recommend staking your plants, or tying to a fence.
Once established, swan plants produce impressive puffy seed pods, said to resemble – you guessed it – swans. These pods, around the size of a golf ball, are what you’d collect if you’re wanting to harvest the seeds and have go growing your own next year. Or letting the pods naturally burst will result in your own wild garden of swan seedlings.
Once they are established, swan plants are very low maintenance. Avoid any sprays or fertilisers on the leaves, as these can harm to caterpillars. Similarly, if you are buying established plants, and you’ve got caterpillars ready to be transferred on, you’ll need to hold off for 10 days. This is because any residual spray needs to disappear before putting any caterpillars on a swan plant, as it can harm the caterpillars. Then to be sure, test the plant with one caterpillar first.
Growing swan plants can be bitter-sweet. While it’s exciting when you find your plant covered with caterpillars, you’ve got to have enough leaves to feed them all. Caterpillars can literally eat themselves out of house and home. If you get to this stage, you can move caterpillars onto other swan plants, for more food. But initially picking off excess eggs can help this from occurring.
If you’re finding you’ve got the opposite problem of no caterpillars, wasps could be the problem. To keep the wasps away, cover your swan plant with a mesh net. The butterflies will still be able to lay their eggs on the leaves that are touching the mesh.
If you’ve been left with a baron-leaved plant, simply leave it to regrow more leaves. Swan plans can also last up to two years, so come early winter, give your plant a good prune back in preparation for next summer.
It’s also worth knowing that swan plants can be toxic if ingested. So (especially if you’re handling the caterpillars) think about wearing gloves or giving your hands an extra deep wash after your gardening session.
