They're out of luck if they flat out kill the plant. I never again bother with anything killed by insects. In fact I'm online right now looking for something to grow over Lady Margaret and she's not even dead yet lol.

I'm considering a passiflora vitifolia as the ones I've seen in my neighborhood seem unbothered, very vigorous and long lived. Not to mention that their blooms are larger, showier, and they can even produce somewhat edible fruit I hear.

Or maybe I'll go with a completely different type of vine and just give up on passies all together. I've had several varieties of passies eaten to death by one thing or another already. It's too bad though because lady Margaret was carefree and bloomed all throughout the year.

Wow, what luck to have so many of those caterpillars! They are beautiful butterflies and wonderful pollinators!

PS: Might I suggest checking out A New Garden Ethic by Benjamin Vogt?

Hi Mistiaggie, I don't battle the caterpillars. I'm leaving them be. I'm just not going to bother with replanting non-resilient plants that are that easily killed.

I've been incorporating native plants throughout my yard, and using permaculture and biointensive gardening techniques for a while now.

There's caterpillars in my yard year round and the caterpillars are free to feed on plants just as the birds and lizards are free to feed on them. It's just that I've never seen so many cats on one plant at one time.

Thanks for the book suggestion. I'll look into it. Two of my favorite books on gardening are mycelium running by Paul Stamets and Teaming With Microbes by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis

So lady Margaret is back with a vengeance. She has fully leafed out and is again blooming. But ever since she was stripped of all of her leaves she begun to aggressively send out underground runners in everywhich direction, some of which are already blooming themselves. I've pulled several up that were choking out other plants but they just resprout. I discovered one today that is 20' away from the original plant, growing up a citrus. I also found a runner from my passiflora caerulea coming up 10' away from the mother plant.

They are very aggressive vines. I could not keep up with it and eventually cut it down. I was hoping the Caterpillars would kill it and save me the trouble but no such luck!

I just didn't have the energy to keep it in check.

Jane

Lol Jane, understandable. I practice "chop and drop" (more like "shred and mulch" in my case ) and I love to cut things back so I guess I don't mind too much at this point in time as it gives me more stuff for mulching and composting