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I've got the caterpillars taking up residence in the oddest of herb pots. Thyme and winter savory preferred, but will settle for oregano and mint. They are brownish, yellowish stripes. One doesn't notice until the webby thing appears on the leaves and stems. I was picking today for market and cut out some stems with them, tossing out to pavement and deck, some in a container.

My next move is to get serious. As they are hard to detect until too late poses a minor problem. I am thinking to soap/water spray the thyme and savories. I also have a pyrethrin spray on hand. I will try that on a few of these.

Anyone else have herbs ate up with these things?! I am thinking these are the things that hatched and tried to take over my one head of broccoli earlier. Sigh

In thinking about these crawly and nesting things, I have not noticed leaves eaten, holes in leaves, stripped stems.
I did have a few last summer, as I recall, but this season's odd weather pattern may be more to their liking.

I know I'm not the only one with these caterpillars tasking up residence in the herbs. Here are a couple more hints and clues. If you see some light strands of stuff, take notice. I ignored thinking lint in the air, stuff blowing from blooms/trees etc, dryer lint, whatever! These strands just get more and thicker. Another way to see them is spray your plant, especially thyme, savory with water, windex style fine spray. The webs show up! Also check your oregano. Some take up housekeeping down towards the base, and some at the stem tips with tender new leaves.

Update! Ready for Full fledged Warfare!

As I was picking today for market, tried to figure possibilities for warfare. Bt has been suggested. Is that sprayed on leaves/plants? caterpillars ingest and go bye-bye?

I am losing the battle of picking out bad stems in the mint KY Col 4 x 4 space. The root system must be fine, new sprouts showing.
Next is the thyme pots. They love the lemon thyme, leaving me no good stems without webby things, and will gladly settle for regular thyme.
Winter savory?! I pulled out one plant that was in the ground, just ate up with these things. I am hoping to save a couple of potted ones.
They are in the oregano, but so far I am trying to cut the bad stems out.

I wish I could help! I can't think of anything like what you are describing, which I suppose in itself could be a clue that this one lives in warmer climates than mine. How big is the biggest caterpillar you have seen?

Are your oregano and mints blooming? Do you have hover flies, robber flies and other little beneficial wasps flying around? Any spiders or praying mantids you could bring in to patrol? You can introduce centipedes into the surrounding soil. They are soil organism predators. Look into predatory beneficial nematodes for pest eggs, larvae, and pupae overwintering in the soil -- there are several species and best application time varies depending on soil temperature.

How is the Bt working? Are you seeing any effects? If your herbs are in containers and can be lifted, you may want to try holding the container upside down and plunging and swishing the entire plant in a tub of plain or soapy water. When I harvest large volume of herbs, I see all kinds of bugs, slugs and caterpillar types come floating out of what I thought was vacant foliage. After the soil surface dries, you could try surrounding/covering the base of the plant stems with DE in case adult form is moth that crawls out of/around the soil.

Hmm I had swallow tail butterfly caterpillars https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Black ... loseup.jpg

attack my fennel and celery a while back but haven't seen anything on my rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil or tarragon. I've seen a few yellow and blackbutterfile flying around now its very cool knowing my garden helped to give them a place to live

Update. I stopped at my garden center Monday and got some Bt. The fellow advised to spray the leaves well, repeat in a few days to catch the next bunch of babies hatching. I sprayed yesterday (Tues) AM. It may be Sunday before I get back to them to cut out any webby stuff, spray again. It seems the webby stuff is protection from soap spray, pyrethryns (sp?) and predators. Hopefully I can knock down this infestation!