As a master gardener and master naturalist volunteer, I recently had the pleasure of teaching preschool classes about the Monarch butterfly’s lifecycle.

While I kept things simple to make them easy to understand, as part and parcel of that teaching, they learned many things. They learned that the female Monarch butterfly will only lay her eggs on native milkweed plants. Usually, she will only lay one tiny egg on each plant, so when the caterpillar hatches, it will have plenty of food.

Milkweed is not only the preferred food of the Monarch caterpillar, but it is the ONLY food it will eat. One can easily see that many milkweed plants are needed for her 300 to 500 eggs and caterpillars.

Luckily, there are lovely native milkweeds such as common milkweed, swamp/rose milkweed, and butterfly milkweed that she can choose from.

The caterpillar eats the milkweed voraciously and increases in size by 2,000 times! Once the caterpillar reaches its largest size, or fifth instar, it will find a suitable, sturdy surface away from the milkweed and create a chrysalis. The chrysalis is light green with gold dots on it.

The caterpillar will stay in that chrysalis for nine to 14 days, undergoing metamorphosis (a complete change). When it emerges, it will be a fully formed Monarch butterfly.

The adult Monarch butterfly uses its proboscis (a straw-like tube) to drink nectar and water. While it can drink nectar from the milkweed flowers, it does not have to. It can drink nectar from many different species of flowers, but generally prefers native plants such as blazing star, obedient plant, leadplant, purple coneflower, goldenrod, black-eyed Susans, blue mistflower, rosinweed, New England asters, and boneset.

Next, we talked about how to provide those wonderful plants for next year’s Monarchs. This led us to make seed bombs/balls. The simple process involved mixing potting soil with a little water to make it moist enough to hold together firmly when rolled into a one-inch ball (about the size of a quarter). Then we flattened that ball patty-cake style into a two-inch disk.

We added a pinch of the milkweed seeds and/or other Monarch-preferred native flower seeds in the center of the disk and re-rolled it into a ball with the seeds in the center. The greatest fun came when we took those seed bombs/balls and tossed them in amongst the native grasses, such as big bluestem and Indian grass, growing on the property.

There, the seed bombs/balls will hold the seeds until autumn rains slowly soften the bombs/balls, winter snow and cold incubate and stratify the seeds, and spring rains and warmth encourage the seeds to germinate and grow into new plants. This fun activity and simple process is best done after a few frosts, but we have high hopes for seeing our seeds grow into plants to support the next generations of Monarch butterflies for years to come.

A small amount of clay or all-purpose flour can be added to the soil mixture to make it stickier and easier to roll into balls. Seeds for Illinois native milkweeds and native flowers can be ordered from reputable Midwest nurseries.

Make sure to buy individual seed packets for each plant desired, not a seed mix. Many native plants need a few years to get established when growing from seeds, but your patience will be amply rewarded with beautiful, hardy plants that will give years of pleasure (and food for Monarch butterflies and other pollinators).

Have a question for the Master Gardeners? Residents can contact the Kendall County Master Gardener volunteers during the growing season on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. by calling 630-553-5823, stopping in at 7775B Illinois Route 47, Yorkville, or emailing uiemg-kendall@illinois.edu. For helpful hints on what to include in your email, please visit go.illinois.edu/HelpDeskMGdkk.

B. Tryon is a certified master gardener and master naturalist volunteer with University of Illinois Extension serving DuPage, Kane, and Kendall counties.