Seeds: Starting the Butterfly Garden, NOW!

Posted by Katie Elzer-Peters
February 6th, 2009
Filed in Seed Starting
Tags: butterfly garden, flower, seeds

You might think I am crazy for telling you that now is the time to start thinking about seeds for your organic garden.  There is still snow on the ground for most everyone reading this blog.  It is not too early to think about seeds for the butterfly garden.  Chris and I have an exciting butterfly project in the works, and we are excited to roll it out.  In the meantime, here are some plants you should start from seed to provide food for the first stage of butterflies-the larvae, or caterpillars.  You are going to want to grow a bunch of these plants because the caterpillars will devour them like penny candy.  It is especially important to grow butterfly plants organically because they will be eaten by the butterflies and their larvae.  Anything treated heavily with insecticides is not good for the butterflies, obviously!

Best Book For Butterfly Gardeners

If you want to see adult butterflies, you need to plant nectar plants.  To witness the entire butterfly life cycle right in your own garden, you need to plant larval food.  While in Key West this week, I went to the Key West Butterfly Conservatory, which was beautiful.  While there, I picked up a great book to help me with my new butterfly project.  I have considered purchasing a lot of butterfly books in the past, but I keep coming back to this one.  So, finally, I bought it. The Life Cycles of Butterflies: From Egg to Maturity, a Visual Guide to 23 Common Garden Butterflies It has lots of great information on 23 common butterflies in North America.  Pictures of the entire life cycle, nectar plants and larval host plants makes it easy to identify your butterflies when they arrive.  Which plants will lure larvae to your garden?  Let’s take a look.

Butterfly Plants that Lure Larva to your Garden

Each butterfly larva has favorite plants.  Some plants attract several different types of larva to your yard.  Others are more specific.  These are the plants you can start most easily from seed for your butterfly garden.

Dill Antheum graveolens

Dill pretty much grows itself.  It is host plant to the Eastern Black Swallowtail butterfly larvae.  It can grow up to four feet tall, so be certain to plant it in amongst other plants or near a support system.

Fennel Foeniculum vulgare

Eastern Black Swallowtails also love Fennel.  The leaves of this plant smell like licorice.  It grows up to six feet tall!  If you plant fennel in your garden, you are almost guaranteed to have swallowtail larvae.

Asters

Lots of butterflies like asters-both to eat and drink.  In particular, this plant hosts larvae of the earl Crescent butterfly.

Milkweeds Asclepias spp.

Milkweed is like a drug to monarchs.  If you plant milkweed, you will have monarchs in your garden.  The caterpillars love the leaves and the adults swoon (metaphorically speaking, in butterfly terms) when they drink the nectar.  The toxins in milkweed sap are what make monarchs poisonous to birds.  The Viceroy butterfly camouflages itself by looking like the Monarch.  Birds do not eat them, because they think the viceroys are monarchs, and poisonous.

Hollyhocks  Alcea spp.

Painted ladies love hollyhocks.  You can definitely grow these from seed-either indoors, to get a head start on summer, or outdoors.  They are biennial, so they will only bloom in the second year.  The caterpillars love the leaves, though, so planting these will help attract painted ladies to the yard. Growing your own butterfly “host” plants to lure caterpillars to your organic garden will ensure that you have lots of butterflies to watch this summer!

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