COLD, Late Boneset, Giant Hyssop, Mexican sunflower

Happy Sunday Good GROWer,

it’s been a quiet week in the garden with unseasonably cold weather through Saturday. But even with temps under 60°F, the monarchs have still been stocking up on nectar when the sun made momentary appearances.

Today, that all changes for the foreseeable future with sun and mid sixties, followed by a string of seventies all week.

So, if there’s still migrators coming through, there’ll be plenty to report inside your next newsletter.

But for now….

With cool temps and still more rain, the garden continues to thrive into September…

🌿 Garden PLANT Report 🌺

So what’s growing on in the garden this week?

• Eupatorium serotinum (late boneset)- native to the eastern half of the US and eastern Canada. This plant provides bright white blooms for late pollinators (smallinators including many types of bees and wasps) It add a stunning contrast to our New England asters, which I’ll be discussing in an upcoming newsletter.
  
  It does spread aggressively in our northern region, but we just pull plants throughout the season.
  

• Agastache (purple giant hyssop)- like anise hyssop on steroids. It attracts lots of bees, but also a bounty of butterflies including swallowtails and monarchs.

I had planned to include video of Mexican sunflower and purple giant hyssop for this newsletter, but next time will be better for that update, as the pollinators should be back in full force this week.

Below, a quick update on Raise The Migration 2025, but first….

September SHOP Farewell 👋

This is the final month to buy raising supplies from our shop. As you might have noticed, most of the supplies are sold out but you can still buy these supplies while the shop is still up ands running. We pay shipping on all shop orders $50+

1. Little hole lids ⬅️ only buy these IF you already own our ‘fat cat’ floral tubes, which are already sold out. These alternative lids are for thin-stemmed cuttings to prevent baby caterpillar drownings

2. Garden for Life Pollinator Garden Flags ⬅️ (20% OFF and a good gift idea for the upcoming holidays!)

3. Raising Butterfly and Milkweed Quickstart Guides ⬅️ (instant PDF downloads: save an extra 15% when you bundle with lids or flag)

Thank you for all your support over the past decade. 😍 Don’t worry, I’m not giving up on supporting monarchs and other beneficial pollinators and will still publish a newsletter and the monarch butterfly garden blog to help you achieve these goals.

In fact, during this first weekend of September, I’m still raising 14 monarchs to release for the great fall migration and will be sharing our 2025 raising experience with you (in this newsletter) sometime toward the end of September.

I know many of you are still raising your migration generation butterflies, or perhaps, just about to start?

If you've gone through the all raise the migration info, and released your final butterflies for 2025, please check out the following info...

COLD Raising Report 🥶

We currently still have 11 caterpillars and 3 chrysalides.

We were raising half of the monarchs outdoors and half inside my office. The office monarchs are being raised indoors with the window open (during the day) to expose them to natural heat, light, and humidity so they know it’s time to migrate when they’re released.

With this cold stretch of weather, the outdoor caterpillars have been moved inside and will be moved back out today…

Thursday morning, I checked the outdoor monarchs and found the first J caterpillar contorted (almost looked like it had parasites) and another looked frozen in place on a milkweed leaf. I brought them inside. Within 10 minutes the j caterpillar transformed back to regular j shape and, within half an hour, the frozen caterpillar had resumed munching its milkweed meal. 🌿🐛

If we still had a 3-season porch, we could have just closed the windows, but to prevent the life cycle slow-down cold weather brings, we still might have still opted to bring them indoors…

As of Sunday, all 14 monarchs appear to be thriving 🤞

More updates to come when we share our 2025 raising experience…

If you’ve raised butterflies in ‘25…

This is an opportunity to post what you've learned this season, what raising challenges you faced, and anything new you'll be doing to improve your raising process in 2026.

You can fill out the comment box at the bottom of the linked page below.

Please do not post questions in the comment box as blog comments are not a good platform for ongoing discussions. This is specifically to share your 2025 raising experience including any helpful tips you think will benefit others in the community. Thanks in advance for sharing! 😊

You can share your experience here:

Share YOUR 2025 Raising Results and Experience ⬅️

Coming Up Next?

A report on late-season pollinators and fall planting plants for a huge head start on next season…

Until next time,

Tony your Butterfly Guide