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What better way to start a butterfly
garden than to raise your own butterflies
for it? This can be an activity that the whole
family can enjoy and learn from. You will
first want to design and start your butterfly
garden. Then you will need to either learn how
to gather and raise butterflies from eggs, or
you can purchase a butterfly
kit and follow the instructions. This is
the easier way to go, and with the
instructions you shouldn’t have any problem
raising healthy butterflies. Then release them
into your garden and you have a ready-made
butterfly habitat.
To start your garden, you will need to know
what kind of butterflies you will be raising.
Find out what kinds of plant
nectar they like to feed on, as well as
what kinds of plants they lay their eggs on
and what their caterpillars like to eat. The
caterpillars will eat the plant that they
hatch on, but they tend to be picky and if
they won’t eat it, they won’t survive, so
it is important to have the right kinds of
food for them. The host
plants (caterpillar plants) are for the
adult butterflies to breed once you have
released them into the garden. If you want
more types of butterflies, simply plant more
types of host and nectar plants in your
garden.
Once your garden begins to flourish, you
can order your butterfly kit. The kit will
come with everything you need to begin raising
your butterflies, including live
caterpillars and all of the instructions you
need to keep them healthy. You and your family
can enjoy watching the life
cycle of the butterfly as it happens. The
caterpillars will feed, and then form their
cocoons, and they will complete their
metamorphosis into butterflies right in the
provided butterfly observation house that you
get with the kit.
Once your butterflies have emerged and are
in flight, you will want to release them soon
into your butterfly garden. Some will fly
away, perhaps all of them will, but many will
either stay or return because you have
provided them with a perfect habitat with your
butterfly garden.
Some butterflies migrate for the colder
months, so they won’t stay forever. The ones
that don’t migrate only live for a few
weeks. This is why you will want to provide a
place for them to breed, so that you will have
new butterflies naturally the next season. And
if it takes a while for the wild butterflies
to find your habitat and begin to breed there,
you can always order more live caterpillars
and raise more
butterflies to release into your garden
for the next season.
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credit for the article.
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