Deth

A couple of summers ago, I collected a whole bag of seeds from our white swamp milkweed. Late winter I stuck them in the fridge for a month and then planted them in pots. It took them forever to sprout. I think it was a couple of months. I just stuck them outside to see if anything happened, after nothing happened.

I had all but given up on it, figuring I messed up or something, until one day I noticed green sprouting. The green was a maple seed sprouting, but noticed tiny seedlings, so we left them there. Shortly after, it became clear that they were milkweed.

We had a couple of large flower pots that we weren’t using, so I thought I’d plant them in there after we had some left. They grew pretty good that summer, but I don’t think they ever bloomed. The summer after that they bloomed pretty well with about six plants per pot coming up.

This year they’re growing like crazy with twenty plus plants per pot. We’ll probably have to thin them next year if we don’t transplant them into the ground. It evidently seeded itself in other pots that were nearby with other plants in them last fall.

It seems to be doing extremely well in the pots for us. The plants out back in the pots are a good month ahead of the same milkweed we have out in the ground in our front yard, from which I gathered the seeds in the first place. The stuff in the front planted directly in the ground is just now sprouting a few inches, while the potted stuff is beginning to bloom now.

I don’t know why the stuff out back does so much better. I have two theories, though. One is maybe it getting more sun earlier in the spring heats the soil sooner, so it grows earlier. It gets a lot of shade in the summer from our tree but will be gone in a few weeks, so it’ll be interesting to see how well it does in mostly sunny conditions.

My other theory is perhaps it’s possible the salt from the road messes with it. Our neighbors seem to feel the need to use their snow blowers to clear the street and tend to throw all the black salty shit into our front yards. Why anyone needs a snow blower that doesn’t even have a drive I don’t understand, but I’m not any of my business nor am I judging.

If you were ever wondering if swamp milkweed will grow in pots on a patio, our answer would be a definite yes! I do water it daily because it won’t get any from the ground, but that’s all we’ve done.