Summer Friends

They will continue to eat until a predator gets them, they run out of food or metamorphose. I suggest that you choose option one and use that old organic grubicide: treadonem.

David

Nah; nearest I can come to I.D. is black swallowtail, a native North American flutterby. I don't begrudge them a grocery store parsley, which will recover unless they just eat it all. Guess I need to study the life cycle to determine whether they're going to pupate in the container soil.

What sort of catepillar is that? It's quite a pretty wee beasty, but I think I'd prefer the parsley to them so would end up squashing them.

We grow rue for the swallowtails.

Yeah, definitely a swallowtail. I'd suggest relocating it to a sacrificial parsley plant away from the main garden.

--S.

...but it's the _only_ parsley! LOL Earlier today, I saw five. Now three, although, I didn't exactly conduct a thorough search. They've moved to the adjacent rosemary. They never made it down to the parsley's crown so there's still lots of vigorous new growth. I'll prune it back when I'm certain the beasties are gone. It's not exactly a close family friend just a produce department plant that I stuck in the container with some rosemary last October. I'm no photographer but for the idly curious:

Well for someone who claims not to be a photographer, 3 of those snaps were very good. Sure is a pretty wee beastie.

And it is such fun watching the ants eat them alive.

Indeed; you should have seen its mother. LOL

Yes, that was bit off-putting. However given that I would have squashed them for eating the parsley in the first place, I'd be a hypocrite to complain about their imminent demise.

Yes, there is that. I just stumbled onto the carnage already well in progress. Although, I'm sure I played no small part in their being there in the first place, I wouldn't have tried to interfere. It helps to think of "them" as organic clockwork; LOL! ...and ain't that just the way of the world....