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Milkweed seed

glennster

glennster

Well-known Member
Talking to a nursery buddy of mine today, he tells me milkweed seed is the new hot item. He sells out as soon as he gets them in. Common milkweed seed goes for 3.95 for a packet of about 40 seeds. Hmmm.....i think i found a new money makin scheme. I have lots of milkweed along the creek and at the edge of the timber. They are planting it because the monarch butterfly is becoming an endangered species. Wonder if milkweed can go thru a combine?????
 
Every year I try to do my hay before the milkweed goes to seed to help cut down on that weed. Guess maybe I should start cutting the seed head off and keep them to sell
 
2 years ago I baled hay for a couple and got to keep 300 of about 370 bales. They mowed their grass and went around milkweed, so I followed suit and where I could,I went around them just to show respect for what they obviously thought was important enough to mow around.

Donovan from Wisconsin
 
Here in south jersey I have both milkweed and butterfly weed out in the back field. Milkweed usually likes pretty crappy soil. A lack of milkweed is harmful but the population of butterflys was pretty low last year.
 
When I was growing up there would be patches of it in the fields, especially in the oats. In the pastures the cattle would just eat around it. I haven't seen any here for many years. Wouldn't mind getting some growing again.
 
According to weed management papers I have from UK Extension Service,milkweed is poisonous green or dried in hay.I never knew about the hay part,and have baled it in hay before,but I won't be again!Mark
 
I wonder about birdox, apparently the root is an astringent. I had a 2 year plant of it grow in my compost pile, which was loaded with nitrogen. I cut it when it headed out, big healthy plant, dried it on tarp to avoid dropping seed, and shook a food storage bag full of high quality seed out of it, nice grain to it at least LOL !Fennel or anisette like. I remember cutting thick patches of it here way back when, got rid of all of it, rarely does one mature, at least its one plant you can knock back easily by mowing on time, but also spreads rapidly if you don't.

I've got some milkweed coming back, used to be able to control it just by hand in each small field, and it does not always do so well, dry spells will stunt it, no pods etc. Lately, just best to cut before it seeds. Can't imagine cleaning the fuzz off it, chaff would be extremely flammable, I'd not want to be near any great quantity of that.
 
When I was a kid, dad used to pay us to walk the bean fields and pull milkweeds. Who would have thunk it's worth something?
 

According to 2 vets and a professor from Cornell, SOME types of milkweed is poisonous to sheep. Mostly that's supposed to be out west. The common eastern milkweed isn't supposed to be bad for livestock of any class, or so I'm told. I think it can be if they get enough of it.

I have one field with a persistent milkweed patch. I try to mow it young. I may have to spray eventually.

Burdock we gets lots of. The root contains digitalis and works very well for heart issues. But be real care since it's a medicine. My late MIL was taking digitalis AND fresh burdock root tea. Screwed her up pretty good for a while.
 
OK, kiddies, here's the real scoop on milkweed uses. During WW II (the big one) we were given sacks at school and asked to pick milkweed pods just before they were ready to pop and bring them back to school. They were somehow used to make life jackets for our fighting folks overseas.

No brag, just fact.

Stan
 
We harvest the flower heads just before they bloom and steam them. They are very similar to Broccolli in tast and you cook and season the milkweed the same way. We also freeze some for later consumption. They don't even require space in our vegi garden HeHe.
Loren, the Acg.
 
Its a noxious weed in my state, you are required to control it.

Mom talked about harvesting it in the War Years as well.

Paul
 
All milkweed, almost 20 acres of the junk. Started about 10 years ago contaminated from another farmers dirty equipment but no butterflys. Just ants and earwigs. Lots and lots of them.

I can confirm milkweed won't hurt horses because they won't touch it alive or dry in hay. The sheep are out in it too but they will only pull leaves off the stalks when the better weeds like golden rod are cleaned up.

Spot spraying barely slows it down even when you get 95% of the plants in the group.
a190135.jpg
 
Funny on the other post about the Monarch some time back. One commenter said that MW is all they use for food. Baloney. I sat one afternoon and watched a flock migrating and they were loading up on nectar, and none of it was milkweed. Now maybe it was because there was no MW around my farm, but none the less they DO consume nectar from other sources. Course they could have controlled themselves and dined on down the road where it's prevalent on non owner occupied waste land.

So if you are a MW lover and don't mind offending your neighbors trying to keep clean fields then grow all you want. But you won't find much if any on my farm and it'll remain that way. Why? Ask your neighbor that is trying to eradicate it.

Mark
 
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