Are your Overwintering Plants Growing... BUGS❓🕷🐞 🐜

🛑 the Winter Infestation from Getting Out of Control

January 10, 2026

Greetings Good GROWer and a belated Happy New Year 🥳

I hope this January 2026 finds you healthy and hopeful…

Last year (fall), I shared a few tips about overwintering plants indoors to avoid hosting Winter BUGAPALOOZA! 🪰🪰🪰🪰🙃

January is a good time for a reminder to make sure an infestation isn’t brewing inside your home…

How To Overwinter Plants...without BUGS 🪴🤔

We were doing fine through Thanksgiving, but December brought a new wave of invaders NOT from the plants we brought in to overwinter, but from the…poinsettias!

This has happened before and is making me think twice about keeping these until Valentine’s Day. Unfortunately, poinsettias have too much foliage and provide many hiding places for bugs (fungus gnats) to survive and…THRIVE❗️😱

So, this weekend, we’re throwing out our large poinsettia and fighting back the fungus gnat brats with tip #9 inside this post:


Meanwhile, here’s a quick update on the black swallowtail we are overwintering OUTDOORS…

Rough Raising Report 

In late September, we spied 10 tiny black swallowtail caterpillars in our potted parsley. 5 quickly disappeared (wasps or birds) so we brought in the remaining 5 inside their potted parsley container and kept it in our outdoor enclosure, which we periodically rolled indoors (while they were in caterpillar stage) when temps plunged to freezing.

As of January 2026, this is the only overwintering chrysalis ⬅️ I can see outside on our deck:

Sleeping Outside in Minnesota Winter

2 caterpillars disappeared, 2 died, and just 1 survived to chrysalis stage 😓 I’m pretty sure the two that disappeared formed a chrysalis SOMEWHERE…hopefully in the large outdoor enclosure and not inside the house. But I literally have NO IDEA where they are after an extensive fall search. The two that died just stopped eating…

While I know this set up sounds like a complete failure, there is ONE thing I could have done that would have at least saved 3 of the 5. More info below…

Outdoor Raising Setup

Unlike Monarchs, swallowtails are serious about hiding their chrysalides, so I literally have no idea where they are inside this massive enclosure except when they hide in plain sight, like the one on the stick pictured above.

Too many places to hide inside

This would have been much simpler if I used parsley cuttings and put them in one or two indoor mesh cages to place inside the outdoor enclosure like this:

For more info on this evolving outdoor set up, check out:

Whatever you do, don’t make the same ‘free range’ mistake I made in 2026…happy raising! 🌿🐛


Coming Up Next: NEWsletter❓

Grow the Migration is transforming and we’ll focus on a wider range of precious pollinators (which I have always done in this newsletter anyway.) Be on the lookout for your NEWsletter, coming soon to your email inbox…


Until next time,

Tony your Butterfly Guide