We have about 50 monarch larvae and another 40 black swallowtail larvae growing like mad. They should be "J"ing up and forming pupae in the next day or two. It is just unbelievable, for even me, to see how much they eat! They just devour plants. The monarchs will eat all the leaves off a 5 gallon bucket of milkweed in a day. These plants that I have been growing since the middle of March disappear in a day...
With the next generation of both monarchs and swallowtails, I will be out of plants that I have grown for their consumption. I will have to revert to using fresh cut, wild plants. This is what I have done in prior years and works fine, but is time consuming and fussy. We have also deduced that the larvae don't quite grow as big on cut milkweed as they do on live plants. Guess I will have to devote more greenhouse space to butterflies next year!
So far we have tagged and released 11 monarchs. Pictures tomorrow I promise!
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