Parsley - So Much More Than a Garnish!

Published in Detodo/La Optimista, Ibiza’s good news only newspaper.

Quite apart from it being a rather nice accompaniment to salads or in cooking, parsley is just the thing you need in your garden to repel harmful insects and attract useful ones. Sprinkling plants with parsley leaves, or tea brewed from the same, deters crop destroying beetles. If you let your parsley flower go to seed, it will also attract wasps and hoverflies that will obliterate caterpillars and other pests threatening your coveted yield. Tomatoes in particular benefit from being planted near parsley, as it attracts wasps that kill the tomato hornworm – something so often responsible for pitiful tomato crops. Apparently, parsley planted near rose bushes will actually make your roses more fragrant too. However, the one thing that this otherwise harmonious herb doesn’t get along with is mint – so never plant mint and parsley together!