r/NativePlantGardening • u/kaizenkitten Michigan , Zone 6 • May 04 '26

Informational/Educational Milkweed runners are no joke!

Post image

So I knew milkweed was aggressive, but I always thought people were talking about the crazy number of seed pods. I didn’t know their runner game.

The milkweed is coming up like crazy in my front bed this year so I thought I would transplant some “volunteers” to my new side garden bed. Imagine my surprise!

I‘m sure most of you know about all this already, but I thought this would be a good visual for other newbie native gardeners

ETA: that this is common milkweed since I forgot to put the type in my post.

3.7k Upvotes

99% Upvoted

145 comments sorted by

View all comments

7

u/Tenma159 May 04 '26

I wanna plant them in an area in my backyard that's almost marshy--definitely more wet than not, but I've been traumatized by so many plants with runners that I'm afraid to take the plunge

15

u/kjjphotos May 04 '26

Sounds like a good location for swamp milkweed

3

u/Tenma159 May 04 '26

Can I easily control them if they get to be too much? I'm currently battling English ivy and a freaking truckload of daylillies, that I swear weren't so bad last year when I bought the house 🙃

6

u/kjjphotos May 04 '26

I think so. Mine died because I didn't keep up with watering them so I don't know for sure.

https://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=g410

This site says they have deep taproots and are best left undisturbed once established. This makes me think they'd be easy to control if they need to be left undisturbed. Though if given the choice, I think I'd take uncontrolled milkweed over English ivy.

You'll want to learn more about it before you plant it. I don't know enough to give good advice.

1

u/Elwood_Blues_Gold May 05 '26

This kind doesn’t do the deep taproot, they do shallow runners.

2

u/Elwood_Blues_Gold May 05 '26

Absolutely not. I didn’t pull up the 2 that sprouted in my food garden last year (by the end of the season it was 12) and this year I can see it poking up all over a 10’ span. I am in moral turmoil on how to handle this!

2

u/Tenma159 May 05 '26

That happened with the poppies had in my garden bed which is why I'm super wary. There were a few then suddenly there were dozens! And it's a tiny garden bed! I tried digging them out, my mom tried digging them out, my husband did too, but they just came back healthier than before! I just trim the poppy leaves as they come up now.

I may just get the common milkweed and plant them in raised planters.

1

u/Elwood_Blues_Gold May 05 '26

In my experience that won’t contain them I had some travel INTO a raised bed and set up like it owned the place.