Milkweed Seeds

Milkweed Seeds for Planting: Native Plants for Monarchs and Pollinators

Few plants do as much for garden wildlife as milkweed. Our collection of milkweed seeds gives you hardy perennials that feed bees and butterflies with nectar and serve as the host plant monarch caterpillars depend on. Whether you want a pollinator strip beside the vegetable beds, a planting for a wet corner, or a monarch waystation, you'll find native milkweed seeds here to match your site and your region, and because they're perennials, one planting returns year after year.

Milkweed Seed Varieties: Butterfly, Swamp, and Narrowleaf

Butterfly Milkweed is the showy one, with flat clusters of bright orange flowers in summer and a deep taproot that shrugs off drought. It wants full sun and well-drained soil, and it's native across most of the continental United States. Swamp Milkweed is its opposite, happiest in moist to wet soil, with fragrant pink blooms on plants that can reach five feet, which makes it a natural fit for rain gardens, pond edges, and low spots. It's native across the central and eastern parts of the continent. Narrowleaf Milkweed brings slender, needle-like leaves and pale flower clusters, and it's a western native that copes well with dry, sunny sites. Matching the species to your region is the simplest way to give local butterflies the plant they already know.

Planting Milkweed from Seed: Give It a Cold Start

Milkweed seed is built to wait out winter, so most varieties germinate best after about 30 days of cold, moist conditions. You can sow outdoors in late fall and let the weather do the work, or mimic it by sealing seed in a bag with damp sand or a moist paper towel and chilling it in the refrigerator for a month before sowing in spring. Butterfly Milkweed generally needs less chilling than the others. After that, seed typically sprouts in about two to three weeks, and the long taproot means milkweed does best sown where it will stay, or started in biodegradable pots to limit root disturbance. With so many dates to remember, the Seedtime garden planning software builds a planting calendar around your frost dates, and the task list reminds you when to pull the seed out of the fridge and when to sow.

Buy Milkweed Seeds with One Shipping Charge

When you buy milkweed seeds here, you can add seeds from multiple suppliers to the same order and pay one flat shipping charge, or qualify for free standard shipping on Seedtime-fulfilled orders of $49 or more to the lower 48 states. Paid Seedtime members get 20% off seed packets marked "Fulfilled by Seedtime" and 5% off everything else in the store. You can start planning for free, and if you want unlimited calendars and layouts along with those store discounts, compare Seedtime's plans to find the right fit. Whether you want a few milkweed seed packets for a small pollinator patch or all three types for a larger planting, it all ships together.