You only have enough milkweed when your supply = demand.

Since you're in Zone 9 it's like the milkweed cafeteria is always open so you need to plant as much as your landscape can hold.

Usually predators keep things in check, but if they're in short supply, you'll need to keep increasing your number of plants until you have enough.

I may have 150 plants, and my neighbors have plants also so there is generally no supply problem in Missouri.

OKey dokey and thank you. I guess I need to buy quite a few plants and get them going.

Do you figure that 2 weeks is long enough to hold them to make sure they are free from any pesticides, or should I hold them longer?

Thank you again.

Boy you are lucky to have so many monarchs. I have many wasps that
prey upon them. I got mad, so I raised some in my sunroom. I now
have 4 cocoons. Plenty of milkweed in my backyard. I wish I could send
you some.

The monarchs do pretty well against the wasps. The orange sulphurs on the cassia, not so well. About the time they are big enough to "J", the wasps move in.

Thanks for thinking of me with the milkweed. I guess I just wasn't thinking "big" enough with the butterfly garden. Now I have to test the salt-tolerance of the plants and see if I can expand even further.

I'm still waiting for any butterfly activity around my milkweed. I have at least 20 mature clumps of several varieties and hundreds of new volunteers, but I've yet to see a single butterfly in my yard. It's still early in the season, but I feel bad that there are cats starving farther south when I have a feast waiting here for them! My time will come.

Martha