Butterfly Weed for Clay

Butterfly Weed is rabbit and deer resistant. It might not hurt to protect it as well as the others, just to be safe, but generally rabbits and deer do not like  Butterfly Weed. 

Newly installed plants should be watered thoroughly. For the first few weeks in the ground, check the new transplants daily, especially if the weather is starting to get hot, and water them when the soil becomes dry. We do recommend mulching newly installed plants. Cover the area around your new transplants with 1-3 inches of mulch. This will insulate the plants and preserve valuable soil moisture while the plants become established. When mulching, leave a circle of bare soil, about 2 inches in diameter, around the stem of the plant so water can flow directly to the roots.

Butterfly weed plants should not be cut back or trimmed during the growing season. The leaves of Butterfly Weed provide food for the caterpillars of monarch butterflies. Adult female monarch butterflies will lay their eggs on the leaves after the blooms are spent, so it is important not to cut-back the plants after flowering. In late fall you may decide to cut-back the plants. This will depend upon your gardening style. We recommend leaving your native plants standing through the winter, not only for the winter beauty of snow-covered plants, but because the spent plant material tends to attract more winter birds into the garden.

The following spring, before the ground is soft, is a good time to cut back the spent plant material. The spent plant material can be used as mulch, rather than purchasing mulch. This creates a wasteless cycle that is healthy for the plants and the environment.

Butterfly Weed will typically grow very slowly during the first season but then have a big growth surge in it's second year. 

Often there will be some flowering on the new transplants during the first summer, but it will not be a full display.  A mature and well established Butterfly Weed plant begins blooming in early summer. What this means is that new spring transplants don't have quite enough time to get well established and fully bloom in their first summer. Butterfly Weed is a very long-lived plant. The display will increase with each year.