Q: Parsley caterpillars have just about eaten all my parsley. This is a good thing. I have four plants and 30 worms of different sizes/stages. My problem is the parsley is almost gone and I am not sure they are ready for the chrysalis stage. I don’t know what to do to make sure they have enough food. Is there anything else I can feed them? If they run out of food, will they go into the next stage or die? — Martha Thomas, Mayfield, KY
A: You can move parsley caterpillars to any other plant that’s a member of the carrot family: garden carrots, parsley, dill, fennel, Queen Anne’s lace (also called wild carrot), milkweed, phlox and rue. What about the leaves on a fresh bunch of organic carrots from the grocery store? Unfortunately, if a caterpillar doesn’t reach the right stage of growth and doesn’t have plenty of food stored to make a chrysalis and then to transform into a butterfly, it will die somewhere along the way.
Q: I am searching for information on allowing my centipede grass to put up seed heads which I could mow in hopes of thickening coverage of my lawn. I found information on planting seed, but nothing about how to increase the germination of the seed heads that are currently popping up. — Bill Lavender, email
A: Those flower spikes you see on your centipede grass don’t produce many viable seed. Centipede seed producers have all manner of fans and machines to separate the good seed from the bad seed. That’s one of the reasons why centipede seed is so expensive. As you have noticed, the seeds are produced in the fall, but centipede grass seeds are best planted in late spring. I think you would be better off to buy some TifBlair seed and plant them in May.
Q: Please help me with figuring out what is chewing on my hosta. It has big holes in the leaves, some of which are mostly eaten. Last year it was bug free and beautiful. — Judy Stoner, email
A: I’m surprised you went a year without your hosta being discovered by the local riffraff: snails or slugs (a slug is just a snail without a shell). They can chew numerous ragged holes in the leaves of hosta, impatiens and other perennial and annual landscape plants. They both travel on a trail of mucous. A silvery slime trail near a damaged plant is good evidence that a slug or snail is the culprit. You can make a spot attractive to slugs, and then handpick and destroy them each day. A board supported off the ground by small rocks will attract them. So will an empty half-cantaloupe rind. The collected slugs or snails can be drowned in soapy water.
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