Critters Feed and Seed

04/25/2026

If you planted milkw**d and you live in the northern states, generation three of the monarch relay is looking for it this week.

Their grandmother left Mexico in March. She made it to Texas and died there after laying eggs. Their mother — generation two — hatched in Texas, grew up, flew to the Midwest, laid eggs, and died there two weeks ago.

Generation three is the one that reaches your yard. They're emerging as adults in Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois right now. Within days of emerging, they fly north. They're crossing into Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, and the lower Great Lakes this week.

They don't know where they're going. They've never been to your yard. They navigate by sun angle and magnetic field, flying north until they find milkw**d. When they find it, they stop, lay eggs, and die. Their children — generation four — are the super generation that flies three thousand miles back to Mexico in the fall.

🦋 What this means for your milkw**d:

- If milkw**d is sprouting in your garden right now, it's visible to a monarch that's actively searching this week.
- Common milkw**d, swamp milkw**d, and butterfly w**d all work. Any native milkw**d species in your region.
- A single plant is enough to get eggs. A patch of three to five plants supports the caterpillar through its full development.
- If you see a monarch landing on milkw**d repeatedly and curling its abdomen under a leaf — she's laying. Each landing is one egg.

The grandmother that left Mexico will never see your garden. But right now, her granddaughter is looking for it from the sky.

She navigates by magnetic field. She's never been here before. Your milkw**d is the signal 🦋

**d

04/25/2026

Dragonflies are among the most effective flying predators in a US garden — but the "100 mosquitoes a day" headline needs a footnote.

Under laboratory conditions, a single adult dragonfly can eat 30 to 100 mosquitoes in a day. The National Park Service notes the real-world number is usually closer to the low end of that range, and Maine mosquito control trials found that adding dragonfly nymphs did not meaningfully reduce local mosquito populations. Dragonflies are helpful. They are not a mosquito solution on their own.

What they do reliably: eat flies, gnats, midges, mayflies, and yes, mosquitoes. One yard with dragonflies has noticeably fewer small flying pests than one without.

🌿 Two things bring dragonflies into a yard, and plants are only the second one.

- Water comes first. Dragonflies spend 1 to 3 years as aquatic nymphs before emerging as adults. Without accessible water, no amount of planting will hold them. A small pond of at least 2 feet deep at the center, with sloped edges and a few emergent stems for nymphs to climb out on, turns a yard into dragonfly habitat. A birdbath refilled frequently is not enough for reproduction but does provide drinking and hunting perches
- Native flowers come second. Dragonflies do not feed on nectar. The plants help by attracting the small flying insects dragonflies hunt, and by providing sturdy vertical stems for perching between sorties

Native plants that build dragonfly-friendly structure:

- Black-eyed Susan, Rudbeckia hirta. Sturdy stems, summer-long insect traffic, tough across most of the US
- Purple coneflower, Echinacea purpurea. Upright flower heads double as perching points above open ground
- Swamp milkw**d, Asclepias incarnata. Moisture-loving and the single best insect magnet on this list. Feeds monarchs as a host plant too
- Marsh marigold, Caltha palustris. Early spring bloom at pond edges, draws the first emerging insects of the season
- Yarrow, Achillea millefolium. Long flowering period, flat umbels crowded with small pollinators — exactly what dragonflies hunt
- Joe-Pye w**d, Eutrochium maculatum. Tall, strong-stemmed, late summer bloom. Acts as a structural perch for adult dragonflies
- Blue flag iris, Iris versicolor. Native wet-edge iris ideal for pond borders. Use this instead of yellow flag iris (Iris pseudacorus), which is invasive in many US states
- Meadow blazing star, Liatris ligulistylis. Vertical purple spikes that pull in huge numbers of pollinators, feeding the dragonfly food chain

🌱 Two cautions worth knowing:

- If you add a pond, treat it with Bti (Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis) mosquito dunks or keep water moving. Otherwise the pond breeds more mosquitoes than the dragonflies eat
- Skip the bug zapper. It kills dragonflies, fireflies, beetles, and moths alongside any mosquitoes, and the net result is a yard with fewer predators and roughly the same mosquito pressure

A dragonfly-friendly yard is mosquito-lighter, not mosquito-free. Combine habitat with standing-water cleanup — empty saucers, gutters, and tarps weekly — and the two strategies work better together than either alone.

04/12/2026

I'm planning a trip to Princeton MN to Prairie Restorations for a few things. I have been trying to help out the Monarch to recover, so I have been working in the The Unique Back Yard to make my Pond and yard to a place that will produce a few. I figure, if I can do it in my small yard on Hwy 10 in Dilworth, I can maybe find someone I can by some swamp land and help them get on their wings again. Well, we have successfully over the years done it, you'd be surprised. If anyone would like some Swamp milk w**d, or of the flowers they like let me know, I'll see what I can do, but it doesn't come cheap.

11/04/2025

To further this thought. What I want to do next is do a little redesigning of the farmland, for the way that it is, it suffers for a lack of design. There is much that is not very well thought out. Plowing is a blite, and we're losing our topsoil. Wind breaks are called for here. The big thing that needs to be done is putting trees along the highways etc. This does not mean we right off plowing, it just means we put more into trees as a crop per say. Water is also an issue. Our water level is slowly drying up; we need to re-establish the swamps and lakes a little bit better. We need to put in under passes under the highways for animals to use to stop the problems with chronic wasting, and inbreeding. We are losing so much for the lack of simple imagination and thinking ahead for more than just the next year. There are so many ways to make money and protect land. I leave so much out, but if our government can't get it right, it's time to do it ourselves. No matter your age, start it now, the future is in our hands, the government has never thought of anything but themselves.

10/29/2025

CRITTERS FEED AND SEED was a business for many years in this area, but many large businesses started offering "Wild Bird Seed" in this area. The fact is, most other businesses didn't do their homework and supplied product that the birds around here did not eat, in other words the cheap seed. The birds lost out, half the seed they sold ended up on the ground. Needless to say, most of the average consumers did not do their homework either and stopped feeding, but there were a few businesses that did. At that time I had Created "The Unique Back Yard" a hobby business that I did and still do out of love for Koi. I do not run this as a business anymore, but as a hobby, I still have to sell some koi as size can be an issue. I took over "CRITTERS FEED AND SEED", I write it this way because the original owner capitalized it when they took out the business license. My sister took it over when I was near my 3rd year with "The Unique Back Yard", TUBY for short, and that goes back near 20 years now. My back yard is "The Unique Back Yard"
and all animals are welcome here. We still have ponds and bird feeders, and we are working on both, but we put more money out then we bring in, and that's okay, because we love them both. Don't get involved in these things for the love of money, do it for the love of Right, it is right to help wildlife of all kinds. My next project is turning some farmland back to the wildlife once again.

09/25/2025

I'm going to be looking to sell some Koi, drop me a line if you're interested.

Send a message to learn more

09/16/2025

I have no interest in opinions other than making nature what it used to be. Please come here to enjoy what can be and should be, not what should stay opinions, I put that away. We need to fix the world, not our opinions of it.

09/08/2025

Yesterday I looked out my back door and saw a big bird sitting on the head of one of my statues the one of a boy fishing, normally this is where my Koi are swimming. I had the pond over half covered with Lettuce and other floating plants. I find that Koi don't like to eat the lettuce as much as the other plants. Being a fisher, Grebe's popped into my head, but when my wife looked it up, we realized it was a young one that had not changed its colors. I stepped out on the deck, and he looked at me immediately, but stayed in place. I told him, what I told all who come to my backyard he is welcome, but not to my fish. If he wants my fish, I will kill him. He got really fidgety at that point and as I moved towards him, he jumped up and flew to the lath on the other side of the pond and looked at me again. Then he gave me a feeling of understanding and turned and flew away. On one hand, I was worried, but on the other hand, I had to think that here we were in the middle of Dilworth on Highway 10, less than a 100ft from it, he stopped at a pond that is not more than 12x9 ft. Should I take that as a complement? That is yet to be seen.

05/23/2025

What really holds things up is this need to have individual owned possessions to prove our worth and the money that we have to show our worth with. It is not good enough to just exist, we have to prove our worth. To die is often our only way to claim our fame and in truth, is it the only way we have. Many after living as time passes, are forgotten as their pictures fade become nothing but a tombstone in the eyes who live. Even the smartest of all who have lived, are forgotten as time passes and other's take their credit.

10/25/2024

I have a problem, I sense things, and I always know when it is negative. I rarely know what it is, and it is not always about me, or mine, I just know it's going to happen. The biggest problem is, often, though bad, the outcome is often good in the end. It is hard to know when to say things, and when to say nothing, for most don't listen any way.

10/10/2024

I want to say good job to those who joined me doing what had to be done in the South. I feel you all, no matter where you are. To understand that space does not matter, and energy is what matters, is all that matters. Until the next time.

09/26/2024

Critters Feed and Seed has been closed for more than two years and has no intention of reopening under the current business environment. The phone number is and has been turned to a private number for reasons to stop its use as a business phone. This site is clearly marked as closed, but the site can be viewed if you want to do so, there is many years tied to it. But Critters Feed and Seed is Closed.