Help! What bug is eating my parsley?
 (Read 500+ times)
By Peter roy
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Parsley problems are nothing to sweat about as they are normally overcome rather easily. There are three main bugs that lurk in your garden, just waiting to pounce on your parsley the very second that you back is turned. They mainly engage in their murderous attacks late at night under the cover of darkness. These three dastardly villains that cause so much of the problems on parsley are aphids, thrips and caterpillars. Let's dive in and see if we can find the kryptonite to these super scoundrels.
Aphids.
Aphids are a very common parsley problem. There are three main types that will love loitering in your corner of paradise. These are the black aphid, the white aphid and the yellow aphid. All of which are as ugly looking as each other. Luckily these rascals are one of the easier bugs to kill. A bit of luke warm, soapy water is like a double barreled shot gun to an aphid. One spray will most likely not be enough however. You may need to spray your parsley once every couple of days for a few weeks.
Caterpillars.
Got holes in your leaves? Then there's a good chance you have caterpillars bunkering in your beds. Nothing gives me more pleasure than when I happen to find one of these intolerable invaders. I stamp on them so hard that you would think I was trying to stomp a hole so deep that it went through to China. The real problem is that you almost never will be able to find them. It is much more effective to spray your plants. A good spray to use is neem tree oil as it is one that is considered safe to use on plants that you are planning to eat. An even better tactic is put up bird netting when you plant your parsley as this will prevent the moths from landing on your herbs and laying their eggs.
Thrips.
This bad bug is less well known than some of his partners in crime. Left unchecked he can cause a lot of parsley problems. The way you can tell you have thrips is by the color of your parsley leaves. If they have turned silver then you probably have thrips. They typically live on the under side of the leaves and are approximately half the size of an aphid. Neem tree oil works well on these hoodlums. Make sure you use a sprayer with a wand on it so that you can spray the underside of the parsley leaves. Doing this three times over the period of two weeks is normally enough to cause mass genocide to the thrips population.
Parsley bug prevention.
If you feed your parsley with a liquid fertilizer once a week and water regularly over the warmer months then you will find that they will have far less problems. It is also a great idea to spray them with neem tree oil, (or any other organic insecticide) every couple of weeks even if you can't see any parsley bugs, prevention is always better than a cure.
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Author Bio Box: Peter roy
Peter Roy is a garden center manager and has worked in the gardening industry for close to a decade. He has a strong desire to share his herb growing knowledge with as many people as possible. If you have any questions then please feel free to contact him below.
Auckland landscape design
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