Growing Milkweed for Bast Fiber

Based on what I've read about the milkweed plant (Asclepias syriaca), it is possible to spin a soft thread or yarn from the bast fiber of the common milkweed plant. I have seed one blog documenting this process (http://inconsequentialblogger.blogspot.com/2014/04/processing-spinning-and-knitting.html?m=1) as well as an agricultural joural paper (https://www.jstor.org/stable/4251941?seq=1) and information from the Native American Ethobotany database documenting the plant's use for cordage and rope by American Indians (http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=Asclepias+syriaca)

As far as I know, this species requires cold, moist stratification to sprout. I have not gotten high germination rates when I tried to stratify the seeds in my refrigerator so it might be best to sow the seeds in fall.

This plant is native to much of the northeastern US and in addition to its use for fiber, it is an important food source for monarch butterflies. I have often found it growing in abandoned fields and prairie remanents where I live in Dayton, OH.

I would like to know if anyone else on this forum has any experience growing milkweed for cloth, rope, or even just to attract butterflies. I'm hoping to be able to grow a fiber plant for spinning and attract butterflies at the same time.

Hi Ryan! I live in Minnesota and milkweed grows in my garden, well, like a weed. I never planted it, it just appeared one year and has spread everywhere on it's own. It does need cold stratification in order to germinate. I am not certain how cold it gets in Dayton, but you may want to try sowing it outdoors in fall. It seems to prefer full sun and a loose sandy/loamy soil. A friend of mine has clay soil and has tried to grow milkweed a number of times without much success.

I'm pretty new to all this, but I just learned a few months ago about making cordage from milkweed and managed to save some from the garden before it went all moldy from the snow. It turns out to be a messy undertaking to process the stalks for the fiber so I have only done one because I have nowhere to work in winter other than my house. But I did get about a foot of really strong cordage from it. I, too, am interested in seeing if I can get some soft fiber from it, but in my researches it seems I might have more luck with nettle. Still going to try though! I have also learned that the milkweed fluff from the seeds provides better insulation than wool. Next fall I plan on saving all I can of the fluff (along with the stalks) and experiment using it to stuff a lining to make extra warm mittens.

And the butterflies really love it! I get lots of monarch caterpillars and butterflies every year. Harvesting for fiber happens at the end of the season when the plant has gone dormant so it doesn't impact caterpillars or butterflies.

Hope some of this helps! Good luck!

Hi Ryan and Stefanie! I also grow milkweed (specifically common milkweed Asclepias syriaca) here in central Ohio (zone 5) as a monarch host plant, for the wonderful spicy-sweet fragrance of the blooms, and for limited bast fiber. I too have gotten relatively thick and stiff cordage rather than soft linen-type fibers, but I plan to keep playing with it. The seed fluff is supposed to be spinnable as well, and was also collected during WW2 as a filler for life jackets. The leaves of the plant yield a lovely butter yellow dye on wool with alum as a mordant that seems to be light and wash fast, but I hesitate to use it since I'd rather have the monarch caterpillars eat it.

In my garden it seems to be a relatively short lived perennial, preferring full sun, and reasonable soils. It doesn't do well in heavy clays that stay cold and hold lots of water.....But does quite well everywhere else as long as there's sun. For me at least it seems to do best in soils that produce good corn--so fertile, loamy, and with plenty of light.

Hope this helps.

I live in Massachusetts and we've made several visits to Plimoth Plantation where we have seen the Native American interpreters using milkweed bast fibres to make various items.  The texture is much like hemp, rather than flax, which is considerably softer.  There were several lovely bags and small mats made from it.  The silk is supposed to be an excellent insulator, as long as it is kept dry.  We have quite a lot of it here on our farm, and were delighted by the significant increase in monarchs last season.  We've not tried using the fibre as yet, but perhaps if this year allows us some time...

I haven't been able to do much gardening for the past two years, but one of my neighbors is currently growing swamp milkweed (Asclepias incarnata) so I collected some plant stems from him while he was cleaning out his wildflower garden this week. I will be buying an antique flax brake in a few weeks to help process the fibers since splitting the stems by hand would take too long.

I think you are right to harvest now. I'd say don't wait too long or they will have decomposed and over-retted but those stalks look very beautiful for fiber processing. I have been working with milkweed fibers for six--maybe even seven?--years at this point and only this year feeling like I am figuring it out.

Some milkweed is wiry and hempy, other milkweeds are extremely soft like pure white shining cotton, and many are in between. The wiry milkweed is milkweed that is still full of the resilient gum, the "milk", and this milk is decomposed by various sorts of bacterial action, or sunlight. But it seems like it has to be exposed to the air as far as I understand. (Maybe that isn't right--I should try water retting again with some dried unretted milkweed. All I know is that fresh stalks tend to unhelpfully retain their rubbery bark when water retted.) Many milkweeds are also subject to a sort of fungus that decomposes the bark but can leave some grey patches on the fiber. Maybe these can be bleached naturally? As far as I understand it, the longer the milkweed is exposed to the sun and the rain, the less black staining it gets, and the bark and rubber are decomposed in a way that leaves it especially soft and fluffy. Well retted milkweed is shorter than length than other bast fibers, and very soft.

I had some success with a technique called "wind retting": https://permies.com/t/264445/Wind-retting

But harvesting late winter or early spring spring (i.e. right now) should also have good results for a bit less work.

I think that milkweed should also soften with use as time goes on. It might be prudent to make sure there is enough twist in the fiber.

One question to ask is do you need to cultivate milkweed at all? In my region I am guessing that enough fiber is growing wild, that everyone could wear milkweed and nettle clothing without much cultivation of any fiber plants. And since there aren't likely many other people making milkweed textiles, you may not have much competition with your harvesting.

I also have some doubts about a flax break for milkweed, but no harm trying. The fibers tend to be short, so they might break apart with the stalk too, and you could end up having a mess of broken stem and fiber where it's difficult to extricate the broken pieces of stem--much thicker than flax--from the fiber. It is well worth crushing, and then peeling by hand, and the yield of fiber from each stem is much more substantial than from flax. In my experience it hasn't been a hassle at all.

With wild fibers, but also working with fibers on a small scale in general, some of the main lessons are patience and consistency, but also knowing when something is good enough, and finding a balance between those. It is worth asking: 1) how fine/soft/white/etc does this actually need to be, to be a decent item of clothing? (and how will it wear with use to become softer?) and 2) will these expedient techniques of make it easier as a whole, or will they make one task easier while sacrificing the quality in a way that makes it so I will have to work harder in the future?

I've decided for instance that with the textile technique I am using now I don't need to pre-spin the milkweed at all, just twist it a bit as I go along, and splice on another strip of bark when I need to, which saves a lot of work. The result is not bedsheet cloth, but it's thick-ish and comfortable and beautiful, which is what I want after all. But I am taking the effort to finger weave the milkweed (with nettle as weft), which I feel is worthwhile in the case of wild fibers and actually saves time and effort by skipping the conventional steps like spinning or loom setup. I also feel like a lot of care is beneficial in the peeling stage, to get a nice, tidy strip of bark that can be rubbed and then woven with the rest.

This is all my opinion and experience but feel free to experiment too! I haven't figured out everything. It's always good to find your own way when you feel you can see something good.