DO YOUR PART- grow milkweed

[jcec1]

I had no idea they were found outside the Americas.

[Fuerte Rav]

from wiki:
In the Americas, the monarch ranges from southern Canada through northern South America.[4] It has also been found in Bermuda, Cook Islands,[34] Hawaii,[35][36] Cuba,[37] and other Caribbean islands[10]p18) the Solomons, New Caledonia, New Zealand,[38] Papua New Guinea,[39] Australia, the Azores, the Canary Islands, Madeira, Gibraltar,[40] the Philippines, and North Africa.[41] It appears in the UK in some years as an accidental migrant.[42]

I don't think I'll be investing in one of Subrosa's water snowball plants - anywhere less like a swamp/wetland is hard to imagine in my location!

My Monarchs are partial to the nectar of Rosemary (horizontalis, not ordinary!) and of bottlebrush.

[SouthPark]

And in online sources ------- the Monarch also has a synonym name of milkweed butterfly. So milkweed is very closely tied to Monarch butterflies.

True! The Monarch did make it out to Australia after being introduced from USA maybe towards the late 1800's. No complaints about it hehehe

[Fuerte Rav]

My Milkweeds, both orange and yellow flowered, opened a new crop of blooms today and a female butterfly was right there, sipping nectar in the morning and laying eggs in the afternoon. If all goes to normal timescales I should have more butterflies ready to take to the skies at Christmas!

[Fuerte Rav]

Found that most of my milkweed plants have been infested with Oleander Bug. It's appeared within the last 48 hours. I've had it many times before and the only way I can clear it without harming the caterpillars is squashing each one by hand, a slow and laborious task that needs repeating on successive days for about a week.
I've tried all the natural remedies I can find on the internet and nothing has done the slightest good - anyone got any tried and trusted methods?
Nothing involving Neem or pesticide please - the whole purpose of these plants is to raise the caterpillars.

[Dollythehun]

They look amazingly like aphids. Can you take a paintbrush and knock them into a cup full of soapy water?

[Fuerte Rav]

I'll certainly give it a try Dolly, thanks for the suggestion. If I accidentally knock off some caterpillars hopefully I can rescue them before they drown! Save my fingers getting stained yellow - it would make good dye, hard to shift.
Aphids, yep, I call them yellow greenfly normally cos I have to scratch my head to remember 'Oleander' bug. They also get on my oleanders but I don't mind a bit of pesticide on them.

[DirtyCoconuts]

Take qtip or cotton swab, really wet with ISO alcohol. Dab em away

Also, lady beetles are great

[Keysguy]

One of the great annual grade school projects our kids did was the Monarch hatch. I don't remember which grade and it might have actually been kindergarten.

Around Labor Day just as school was starting the kids all collected caterpillars from the milkweed. They had a bunch of old glass aquariums set up at school with screened covers and the caterpillars went in with some milkweed. The kids did all kinds of projects around the whole transformation process and when they had all hatched out, they had a big ceremony on the schoolyard and released them.

I tried to get the teachers to go all in and have the kids develop and implant a gps microchip into the butterflies so they could track them to Mexico. For some reason I was never invited to school again....

[estación seca]

Are there ladybeetles/ladybugs in Europe? Larvae and adults eat aphids/oleander bugs. Live bugs are sold here to put in gardens.