![\"Monarchs](\"\/images\/MonarchCaterpillar.jpg\")
<\/p>\nI visited a friend\u2019s garden on November 1, 2016 to look at his milkweed plants covered with Monarch caterpillars.<\/p>\n
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While there I collected milkweed seed pods. <\/p>\n
![\"Milkweed](\"\/images\/MilkweedPods_IMG_4078.jpg\")
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On November 3, 2016, I popped some of the seed in soil and today two of the plants are blooming.<\/p>\n
![\"Ants](\"\/images\/AntsOnMilkweed_IMG_2773.jpg\")
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Curious why there are ants. Need to take a better look. It doesn\u2019t appear that there is some other insect activity which is often the case. Ants are known for herding aphids for their honeydew.<\/p>\n
My hope is that the milkweed can help the Monarch population. Recently I saw a sign posted at a local nursery that stated the exotic milkweed should be cut to the ground in the fall to prevent protozoan infection by Ophryocystis elektroscirrha (OE). <\/p>\n
To read about the possibility of attempting to do something good that could have unwanted consequences, check out the Monarch Joint Venture<\/a> site.<\/p>\n Post Written on Day of Planting<\/a><\/p>\n I visited a friend\u2019s garden on November 1, 2016 to look at his milkweed plants covered with Monarch caterpillars. While there I collected milkweed seed pods. On November 3, 2016, I popped some of the seed in soil and today two of the plants are blooming. Curious why there are ants. Need to take a … Continue reading Milkweed and Ants<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,40,9,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gardens","category-insects","category-nature","category-plants"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5356"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5363,"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5356\/revisions\/5363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everythingisnotblackandwhite.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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