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Hey everyone, I just woke up and went to water my plants, and I noticed 3 caterpillars on my parsley. I dont want to unnecessarily kill them, but also I don't want them to wreak havoc on my little garden, so what should I do?
Update: when i tried to move them i only found one. I moved it outside, but i read that this species feeds in groups. Not sure what the implications of that are. Hope itll be ok
It depends on your priorities. These appear to be black swallowtail butterfly caterpillars, which are amazingly beautiful and which a lot of people would prefer having more than parsley.
There's not much you can do without killing them. You maybe could try buying a bunch of parsley at the store (it's cheap) and seeing if you can move them to it. You can deter them from eating your parsley by mixing some dish soap with water and spraying the plant, but those caterpillars apparently only eat certain things, so they'll die if you prevent them from eating your parsley without giving them an alternative. But people kill caterpillars all the time, so again, whatever your priorities are.
Can't you just move them somewhere else, like a bush somewhere?
Ill try to without hurting them. If theyre harmless though I thought it better to leave them be
harmless to you and bigger plants for sure, but maybe not for the small plants you have.
My personal pest spray is 1 gallon of water, 1 tablespoonish of dish soap, and one cuppish of isopropyl alcohol. I'm yet to see it damage a plant and it kills most arthropods on contact through various scientific things that are complicated and thrilling. I've not tried it on caterpillars but I'd have to imagine it would work to at least some degree.
That's pretty much exactly my recipe too. I put it in old window spray bottles