Fall Planting and Transplanting + Garden Flags 🧐

Happy weekend good GROWer,

I hope you’re enjoying the first full month of fall 🍁🎃

Someone turned off the ‘faucet’ here in September and we’ve gone from overly saturated to abnormally dry.

On October 2nd, we had seven new migrators in our garden stocking up for the long migration ahead. I’m not sure we’ve ever had that many monarchs so late in our Minnesota garden. But next week’s forecast calls for more unseasonable 80’s!

Any final stragglers have a glorious stretch of late-summer weather to stop in, fuel up, and join the masses of monarchs that have already headed south...I think our resident hummingbird has left for warmer winters too. 🦋🐦

What remains is a bounty of bees still sipping nectar nourishment from our annuals and their favorite native, New England Asters. 🌺🐝 

As the last monarchs leave, we turn our attention to fall planting/transplanting before cold weather sets in...

Fall Planting List? 🧑‍🌾🌿👨‍🌾

Mid-September through mid-October is prime time to add plants to our Minnesota butterfly garden for a head start on next season. Wherever you live, it's a good idea to give transplants a couple months to get their roots acclimated before the ground freezes. 🥶

I’ve already started removing annuals, which gives us more room to start planting and transplanting these perennials:

1. TRANSPLANTING Milkweed (and other caterpillar host plants)

Since milkweed is the cornerstone to a monarch butterfly garden, it’s important to tweak your patches, if they’re underperforming in their current location for reasons including: too many predators, slow growth, crowded out by other perennial plants

example: This fall, I’m moving a poke milkweed and showy milkweed from a shadier spot in our back yard garden, to a space (just a few feet over) that receives more sunlight.

Click here for more TRANSPLANTING info ⬅️

2. DIVIDING large plants

Fall is also good time to divide plants. Division involves separating one large plant into multiple smaller ones, each with its own root system. You can use a spade or sharp knife to do this…sometimes you won’t need a tool to pull the plants apart.

example: our liatris patch had a few large plants that did not thrive this season, so I will be dividing and replanting smaller plants for 2025. Many people also divide their hostas. Hostas are not a favorite butterfly plant (but bees and butterflies still use for nectar), but we’ve found they divert 🦌🦌 attention away from other prized pollinator plants.

3. REMOVING underperforming plants

In your last newsletter, I said we were removing all the goldenrod from one of our back gardens…I removed MOST of it but left a couple for next year’s pollinators and a contrasting burst of sunny yellow flowers

4. Transplant Milkweed Experiment UPDATE

If you remember from past newsletters, we transplanted a Swamp Milkweed plant inside our water feature in July 2023 and left it there over winter.

It grew into a thriving plant that flowered in 2024 and even hosted caterpillars! (see photo at the bottom of your newsletter) However, with deep water below and two resident frogs that will feed on butterflies and their caterpillar kids, we will move the swamp milkweed back into the garden this fall.

For more info on fall planting plants click here ⬅️

NEW Garden Flags

I had one of our most popular garden shirt designs ‘garden for life’ reimagined and put on to a garden flag that will look beautiful in your 2025 garden, or make a great gift for the upcoming holiday season. They’re available now and you can check out the design here:

Garden for Life 🦋 Garden Flags ⬅️

Coming Up Next Week❓

Plants to consider overwintering indoors (or in a protected area) for a jump start on next season...

Until Next time,

Tony G