I love, love, love fennel, every part of it. It does self seed very enthusiastically, but nothing that regular weeding can't take care of. My primary problem is the Black Swallowtail butterfly which uses fennel as a host plant.

The stunning caterpillars, which appear in large numbers every year, soon strip the foliage. The birds don't seem to have a taste for the larvae and the wasps can't keep up with them, and since I can't make myself kill them yet, I don't get to enjoy the pretty foliage.

I don't even bother with dill any more. It goes to seed rapidly as soon as the weather gets warm. If it didn't, the same butterfly larvae swarm the dill plants, too.

I've seen the butterflies already, visiting the flowers of my Halesia tetraprera. My fennel is doomed, lol.

I'm in Huntsville.

Thank you. I'll give them both a try. I know the dill is an annual, but the fennel is suppose to be perennial. If the caterpillars eat all of the foliage of the fennel, does the plant recover and come back the following year?

Rae

For me, fennel comes back only to be devoured again. I guess that I could make big cages to put over their location before the plants come up, but I don't think I want to get into that. I already use row covers over much of the garden.