As an avid vegetable and flower gardener, I love to have a lot of butterflies in the flower portions of my gardens. One of the plants that I grow is Milkweed. That is to attract and also help to maintain our Monarch Butterfly population as well as to make my gardens a little-bit-o-heaven as much as possible.

As a result of growing the Milkweed, I of course have all of these pods from them at the end of the season.

When I was a little boy, I remember my dad bringing Milkweed pods home for us to decorate for the Christmas season. I don't remember where he got them from. All I remember is painting them and then putting all sorts of other decorative stuff on them.

What I am asking is, how do you dry them and prepare them for decorating? Do you use an oven or some other means of drying them? Or, do you need to dry them before decorating them at all?

Thank you! :)

Hi there! I have gone to the woods in search of items to place in dried flower arrangements. I have a very tall pottery vase, about 3/4 of my height. I have found sage plentiful and cattails and added other treasures from the woods, some being milkweed pods. When I go in search of my treasures, most things of this nature are already dried and have formed magnificent shapes. Some look like insects, others like exotic tropical flowers when painted bright colors, others quite dressy in a black vase with pods painted with Emperors Gold acrylic paint. If they are not dried, pop them open, clean them out and let dry in a warm room or put in a dehydrator. My knowledge of working with milkweed pods is very limited. I will see if I have some here and make sure they are the milkweed pods I am describing but I am pretty sure that is what they are called. Do you have any photos of the pods your family decorated for Christmas. I would love to see you post those photos. I love original decorations and the older, the more interesting to me.

We use to make poinsettas with Milkweed pods, but all we did to dry them was bring them in the house in a warm locations and let them dry out for about 1 week, they can also be hung like strung up to dry out, although the dehydrator sounds like a really quick solution too!

Thank you so much for the answers above! Does anyone else have any thoughts on this subject?