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Comment by iaw | Hacker News Reader

> Gardeners, for one, can plant milkweed to support the surviving monarchs. And towns could help local habitats thrive by planting new trees now so that in 20 years, generations of monarchs have new places to winter.

Highlighting this for anyone that didn't catch it in the article.

Edit: Link to artursapek's comment on a seed supplier (in this thread but buried under a low voted parent) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18912699

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Sure we should all do our part. But farmers could reduce their use of herbicides SLIGHTLY so that milk weed could go on the fringes of farmland like it used to and the problem would go away in very quickly.

I raised this with the Sierra Club of Illinois and they said that Archer Daniels was too powerful and there was no point. But the herbicides are a huge contributor to the problem. We are a democracy, no?

Since a few years ago, I stopped using pesticides and herbicides altogether and just let my weeds grow where they like. I live in the Bay Area and once spring comes along my lawn and the sides along my footpaths bloom with clover flowers, dandelions, and other flowers that I don't know. Bees love them and it honestly looks great. I did notice some nightshade plants come up around my back yard, but my pets seem to know instinctively to avoid them, so I'm not taking them down. I recommend it to anyone who is not forced by their neighborhood association or landlord to kill them.

Any pics you can share?

I started doing the same thing with my front lawn in Oakland, California due mainly to the last drought. It is now socially more acceptable to have a dry, dead lawn in the summer than a green one, so not watering it doesn't make you look like a poor person or a weirdo. Greens up with the first rains and has a lot of different grasses and flowering plants in it from natural seeding. I like it.

The main problem is getting rid of the tall dry fire-hazard stalks when it completely drys out, a few months after the last rain of the season. Mowing leaves lots of straw to track into the house for months. Burning is out of the question in an urban area plus it kills the insect population. Can't keep a goat year round. If I could rent one goat for a weekend, that would be great.

http://citygrazing.org/

Cautionary note for seed selection:

>Tropical milkweed available at many retail nurseries is not native to the U.S. However it has naturalized in the Southeastern U.S. Science is discovering that its long bloom time may have some detrimental effects on monarch migration and possibly be a source to spread disease within monarch populations.

https://www.nwf.org/Garden-For-Wildlife/About/Native-Plants/...

I keep planting milkweed at my house but apparently the bunnies and deer in my neighborhood love the stuff... and I've had three years of dead milkweed at the end of the season.

Will try again this year, with a higher chicken wire fence around the plant area. Many local organizations provide free milkweed seeds and/or plants to get you started (we have the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis which provides seeds every year).

TL;DR Do your part and plant some plants, people.

I'm surprised there aren't collective coordination apps for things like this.

Meetup.com probably has groups for those sort of things.

I thought Meetup is more so for physical meetings.

I'm finding that libraries in Colorado and upstate NY are receptive to playing an expanded role.

It turns out that providing seeds one may 'check out' for a season, and maintaining gardens of native plants as a teaching platform is generally compatible with their traditional role as stewards of knowledge.

Hope to one day buy a bunch of land in the middle of nowhere Texas and blanket it in milkweed and other supporting plants.

I bought a few packets of seeds as salad greens this year, with a pack of sunflowers (nice to eat as young shoots apparently), chervil (not a fan) and something else; I've now got about 30-40 big sunflowers in my little garden plot, the honey bees and bumble bees are having a field day with them (and I assume the birds will with the seeds afterwards). Little crickets (relaxing songs at night), ladybugs etc have all moved in, and they look great.

Onto milkweeds next I guess, and something for the native Aussie bees too.

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