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Apr 18, 2024

Sonoma garden is a monarch nursery and way station

Plant the right kind of milkweed: Milkweed is the only plant monarchs will lay eggs on. But you must plant the right kind for Sonoma County. There are three. Heart-leaf milkweed (Asclepias

Plant the right kind of milkweed:

Milkweed is the only plant monarchs will lay eggs on. But you must plant the right kind for Sonoma County. There are three. Heart-leaf milkweed (Asclepias cordifolia), narrow leaf milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis) and showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa). Avoid tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica).

Organic pest control

Use only at dusk when bees aren’t around and avoid using when ladybugs are present. They will eat the aphids. Don’t use either of these products from July through October on native milkweed when Monarch butterfly eggs or caterpillars could be on the leaves.

Insecticidal soap – Put 3 to 5 drops of a mild soap such as Dr. Bronner’s Castile in a spray bottle, and shake slightly to stir bubbles. Avoid Dawn or a dish soap that strips oil off leaves. Spray directly on aphids and leave on for several minutes, then lightly wash off with a hose or watering can. You also can rub aphids off lightly with your fingers, while rinsing with water.

Neem oil – Available in spray bottles at nurseries and Friedman’s Home Improvement. Spray directly onto pests. Read the bottle. It works on many pests and other plant problems.

Good nectar plants for monarch butterflies

Tithonia (Mexican Sunflower), Joe Pye weed, asters, Calamentha nepeta, zinnias, cosmos, Queen Anne’s Lace and verbena bonariensis, sunflowers, yarrow, ceanothus, sage, goldenrod, horse mint, coyote mint.

Where to buy plants for butterflies

California Flora Nursery : 2990 Somers St., Fulton. 707-528-8813.

Sonoma Garden Park Native Plant Nursery: Open for plant sales noon to 3 p.m. Fridays, 19996 7th St. E, Sonoma. 707-996-4883.

California Native Plant Society Milo Baker Chapter Fall Plant Sale: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 14. At the native plant nursery at The Laguna Foundation, 900 Sanford Road, Santa Rosa. Free. cnps.org.

For monarch information: Xerces.org.

It’s an early evening in late August and Bonnie Brown is eagerly awaiting visitors. She has done everything possible to be a good host. The milkweed is full and inviting and she has stocked up on good forage for her famished guests, who will have traveled a long distance to get to this tiny way station near the historic Vallejo Home in Sonoma.

“Oh, there she is!“ Brown announces after spotting a single early arrival. ”I’m so excited. She’s checking out where she’s going to lay her eggs.“

“She” is a monarch butterfly, whose bright orange-red wings catch the lowering sun as she flutters about among a profusion of densely packed and colorful annuals and perennials appealing to butterflies, particularly monarchs.

The high season is just getting underway here at the Monarch Pollinator Garden, a project of the Valley of the Moon Garden Club. At 1,200 square feet, it is only the size of a small house, but it is jammed with three types of milkweed and a multitude of nectar plants from asters to zinnias. These flowers will help the butterflies make it to their next stop or perhaps even to their final destination where they will spend the winter where it is not freezing cold.

Open garden days: 9 a.m. to noon through September for drop-in visitors. 252 W. Spain St., Sonoma. Private tours may be arranged by emailing [email protected] or calling Bonnie Brown at 707-721-6927.

But the club is also hoping that some females stay to lay their eggs on milkweed, the only plant on which they do so. September and October are prime months for monarchs in the area, both as a stop on their southern migration and a place to reproduce.

“Oh, she’s a beautiful one,” Brown exclaims, predicting that by the next day she will have laid her eggs.

It will take only four days for an egg to turn into a tiny caterpillar. The larvae will spend two weeks gorging on the milkweed and multiplying in size, shedding its skin over and over, before finding a fence or another plant on which to attach to undergo metamorphosis. After about two weeks in the chrysalis, a beautiful monarch emerges and unfolds its wings.

Few eggs make it to the butterfly stage, but Brown and a small group of club volunteers will do everything they can to support the monarch life cycle in this garden.

Brown and two other club members started the garden five years ago when the number of monarchs became alarmingly low, dropping 95% over 20 years. Some scientists were predicting the species was headed toward possible extinction.

The Xerces Society, an international nonprofit dedicated to preserving invertebrates and their habitats, conducts an annual count of the western monarch butterfly. In 2020, they counted only 2,000 at 272 overwintering spots in California and Arizona. But a year later the population had rebounded to 250,000 and last year it went even higher, with 335,479 butterflies recorded. Even at that, the numbers are still far below the low millions seen in the 1980s. According to the society, the monarch remains vulnerable to pesticides, climate change and habitat loss.

So people like Brown remain vigilant. She sees the monarch garden both as a functional habitat for migrating monarchs and as a demonstration garden where people might see what they could plant to support monarchs and other butterflies and pollinators.

Every Sunday morning in September between 9 a.m. and noon, the club is holding open garden days. Anyone may stop by to browse through the exuberant garden, which sits on the far edge of the parking lot of the First Congregational Church (252 W. Spain St.).

Brown and her volunteers have handouts on monarch conservation, the Xerces Society and lists of various butterfly host plants to hand out and will be available to answer questions.

For instance, painted ladies are drawn to thistles, anise swallowtails to fennel and parsleys, and the pipevine swallowtail depends on the Dutch pipevine as a food source for larvae.

Concerned that croplands including vineyards have replaced habitat and nectar sources for pollinators, the club is hoping to inspire enough people to create a swath of nectar and host-plant gardens throughout Sonoma Valley and Sonoma County.

The Earth Care Alliance, a group from the Congregational Church, helped secure the plot seed money to start the garden, which is completely enclosed by wire fences to discourage deer, and adjoins a redwood fairy ring.

Brown said the best nectar plants for bees, butterflies and other insects are umbel shaped, like an umbrella. That allows the butterfly wings to be free and not entangled in a multipetaled, frilly flower. Nectar and pollen are easy for them to get at.

Some good nectar plants include Tithonia (Mexican sunflower), Joe Pye weed, asters, Calamentha nepeta, zinnias, cosmos, Queen Anne’s Lace and Verbena bonariensis.

Monarchs come through Sonoma County in late August and into October on their way to overwintering sites, mostly along the coast, like at Pismo Beach. Brown said they need to arrive by Nov. 1 to beat the arrival of freezing temperatures.

It can take as many as four generations of monarchs to make the complete trip from the Pacific Northwest. Monarchs live only two to four weeks and the females die after laying their eggs on native milkweed. The next generation takes one month to grow from egg to butterfly and fly on to another way station. That last generation is longer-lived, surviving in diapause (hibernation) in clusters on trees. They then start the northerly migration, thought to be up California’s Central Valley.

To help the struggling monarch, it’s essential to plant milkweed. But Brown said it must be the right kind of milkweed, native to this region. Some area nurseries and garden centers sell tropical milkweed, which people mistakenly bring home in hopes of attracting monarchs. Unfortunately, tropical milkweed, which is native to Southern California and Mexico, lives longer than the Northern California varieties, Brown explained. That can prolong the monarch’s migration to safe wintering spots and spread a pathogen to the scales of its wings, which it then spreads to other monarchs during hibernation.

Gardeners instead should look for and plant three types to keep a supply going. The good local varieties are the heart-leaf milkweed (Asclepias cordifolia), which produces dark, reddish-purple flowers and blooms from March to July; the showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa), with large, pale-pink flowers that bloom in June and July, and the narrow leaf milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis), a late bloomer that produces white-pink flowers from May to October.

Brown is watchful, scouring the milkweed with her eyes looking for eggs. When she spots them she will take measures to protect them and the growing caterpillars. That means removing all the seeds from the sunflowers, which attract big birds like jays that like to feed on the larvae. Females will die after laying eggs, but the new monarchs will replace them, continuing the journey south like a multigenerational tag team.

Brown finds these delicate creatures whose existence is so fleeting rather amazing. Only 1 in 100 eggs will become a butterfly, and a female may only lay 20 eggs. So the odds are long. And their migration is exhausting.

“It’s painful when you think about it,” she said. “They float on the jet stream at night. One came down from Washington State University to UC Davis in five days. It’s hard to believe.”

You can reach Staff Writer Meg McConahey at 707-521-5204 or [email protected].

Plant the right kind of milkweed:

Milkweed is the only plant monarchs will lay eggs on. But you must plant the right kind for Sonoma County. There are three. Heart-leaf milkweed (Asclepias cordifolia), narrow leaf milkweed (Asclepias fascicularis) and showy milkweed (Asclepias speciosa). Avoid tropical milkweed (Asclepias curassavica).

Organic pest control

Use only at dusk when bees aren’t around and avoid using when ladybugs are present. They will eat the aphids. Don’t use either of these products from July through October on native milkweed when Monarch butterfly eggs or caterpillars could be on the leaves.

Insecticidal soap – Put 3 to 5 drops of a mild soap such as Dr. Bronner’s Castile in a spray bottle, and shake slightly to stir bubbles. Avoid Dawn or a dish soap that strips oil off leaves. Spray directly on aphids and leave on for several minutes, then lightly wash off with a hose or watering can. You also can rub aphids off lightly with your fingers, while rinsing with water.

Neem oil – Available in spray bottles at nurseries and Friedman’s Home Improvement. Spray directly onto pests. Read the bottle. It works on many pests and other plant problems.

Good nectar plants for monarch butterflies

Tithonia (Mexican Sunflower), Joe Pye weed, asters, Calamentha nepeta, zinnias, cosmos, Queen Anne’s Lace and verbena bonariensis, sunflowers, yarrow, ceanothus, sage, goldenrod, horse mint, coyote mint.

Where to buy plants for butterflies

California Flora Nursery : 2990 Somers St., Fulton. 707-528-8813.

Sonoma Garden Park Native Plant Nursery: Open for plant sales noon to 3 p.m. Fridays, 19996 7th St. E, Sonoma. 707-996-4883.

California Native Plant Society Milo Baker Chapter Fall Plant Sale: 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Oct. 14. At the native plant nursery at The Laguna Foundation, 900 Sanford Road, Santa Rosa. Free. cnps.org.

For monarch information: Xerces.org.

Features, The Press Democrat

Like most everyone, I love a good feature story that takes me somewhere I’ve never been or tells me something I don’t know. Where can I take you? Who in Sonoma County would you like to know better? I cover the people, places and ideas that make up Sonoma County, with general features, people profiles and home and garden, interior design and architecture stories. Hit me up with your tips, ideas and burning questions.