That's great that you're finally getting some cats. I have lots of fennel and rue, and no cats. I did just see what looks like a baby wooly bear cat on the fennel. Glad to see something's eating it.

Crossing my fingers for you!

Here's the crazy thing: I have exactly one rue plant in the ground and it's only about a foot tall. I lost my other ones earlier in the year, not sure why. (I have a second rue that's still in a pot, deciding where to plant it.) Then I have two anemic looking dill plants that have mostly gone to seed. The rest of my yard is honestly in bad shape - one lone small hydrangea and a sad looking daisy. So not even a bunch of flowers to attract them! Neighbors have no flowers either. I'm amazed they can find my sad little buffet!

Woohoo!! The organic parsley is working!!! All of my babies are munching away :)

I emailed the company listed on the label to ask if they used Bt. They responded quickly, and said while they don't use Bt, there might be other organic pesticides and they didn't recommend me feeding them to my caterpillars. I responded that I had no choice, because without food they were going to die, and that so far, they were doing great on the parsley. They were probably doing a little CYA with "we don't recommend".

The brand I bought is Cal-Organic. I used it last year too. I re-tested this year because you never know what might change. I used to have luck with Whole Foods organic parsley, then one year my cats died eating it, so whoever they sourced it from must have started using Bt.

In case anyone is going to try Cal-Organic parsley: Buy the curly kind. The Italian flatleaf doesn't hold up well. So, what I did with the curly parsley: I soaked it in a bowl of water, changed the water, then soaked again. Then I gave it a final rinse under the faucet. I snipped the stems before I put them in water, and I used a short fat olive jar I'd saved as the 'vase'. That way I could put the entire bunch of parsley in one container and have a good sized caterpillar buffet :)

Here is the label on the parsley:

Here is a pic showing my "Catsplosion" I couldn't even get them all in the pic... I have a "nursery" with the babies in another cage :)

They are looking great!

Thanks! A dozen or so have already purged and are making their slings :) :) :)

Congratulations to you! It's so wonderful that you have all those cats, and I'm so glad the organic parsley is working!

Sherry

That's terrific, weed! The Cal-Organic curled leaf parsley is exactly what I fed my cats last month when my fennel/dill bushes were regenerating. I'm done w/ indoor EBST for the moment and concentrating on monarchs. But I've netted a couple of pots of fennel outside where EBST cats are munching away.