Parsley problems They are nothing to break a sweat about, as they are usually overcome quite easily. There are three main insects lurking in your garden, waiting to pounce on your parsley the moment your back is turned. They mainly engage in their murderous attacks late at night under the cover of darkness. These three cowardly villains that cause a lot of the problems with parsley are aphids, thrips, and caterpillars. Let’s dive in and see if we can find the kryptonite of these super scoundrels.

Aphids

Aphids are a very common parsley problem. There are three main guys who will love lazing around in their corner of paradise. These are the black aphid, the white aphid and the yellow aphid. All of which look just as ugly as the others. Fortunately, these scoundrels are one of the easiest insects to kill. A little warm soapy water is like a double barreled shotgun for an aphid. However, one spray is most likely not enough. You may need to spray your parsley once every other day for a few weeks.

Caterpillars

Do you have holes in the leaves? So there is a good chance that there are caterpillars in their beds. Nothing gives me more pleasure than when I meet one of these intolerable invaders. I stomped on them so hard you’d think I was trying to drive a hole so deep that it reached into China. The real problem is that you will hardly ever 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 considered safe to use on the plants you plan to eat. An even better tactic is to place bird nets when planting parsley, as this will prevent the moths from landing on your herbs and laying their eggs.

Trips.

This bad bug is less known than some of his partners in crime. Left unchecked, it can cause a lot of problems with parsley. The way you can tell you have thrips is by the color of your parsley leaves. If they have turned silver, you probably have thrips. They usually live on the underside of leaves and are about half the size of an aphid. Neem tree oil works well on these bullies. Be sure to use a sprinkler with a wand so you can spray the underside of the parsley leaves. Doing this three times over a two week period is usually enough to cause mass genocide to the thrips population.

Parsley bug prevention.

If you feed your parsley a liquid fertilizer once a week and water it regularly during the warmer months, you will find that you will have a lot less trouble. It’s also a great idea to spray them with neem tree oil (or any other organic insecticide) every two weeks, even if you can’t see any parsley bugs, prevention is always better than cure.