Vine weevil!

boo hoo!

Was just looking at some heuchera and noticed they seemed a bit loose jn the container....pulled one out and noticed wine weevil grubs! Argh!

Plan is to empty the containers and inspect the heucheras-will try split some for fresh plants if possible. That should grt rod of them right?!

 

Bless you

Have you got a pet mouse to put the roots in with? They love em

 

Lol

No-had a chinchilla who liked chasing spiders but bless her, she's not here anymore

 

Snorky, vine weevils love heucheras. Yep, the test is if they wobble and feel loose the blighters are there at the roots
No problem....dig up your heucheras and wash them thoroughly. Cut off the foliage. Pot into fresh compost or replant elsewhere. Although the roots look lifeless they will quickly make new growth....as a matter of fact I divide mine regularly
Where they were just excavate the soil and remove larvae you see. Plant something else there.
I grow lots of heucheras. My regime is to use nematodes or Provado. They are not compatable with each other...one or other. Nematodes are not effective now but are in spring. One dose in early spring and another during August will prevent vine weevils.
In comtainers use john innes instead of mpc. Vine weevils are far less attracted to JI. Plus a mulch of grit and I think you will find very few if any weevils next year

 

The mulch of grit needs to be at least one inch deep. The adult will only lay her eggs if she can reach the soil at the base of the plants.

 

Good point palustris

 

Thank you for the brilliant advice. I was so annoyed! They had got one of my trailing heucheras. Luckily theyre all in containers/troughs. For now I've stripped out the bits thats were badly affected...some of the grubs had gone right up into the plant!!! I've potted them up in some fresh compost (mpc-all I've got in at the minute-will do as advised later in the week)' sprayed them with provado and watered with a feed of organic seaweed. For the trailing heuchera i gave the hanging basket lining a real good spraying of provado.

I didn't wash them @Verdun ?! I gave them a thorough checking over though and removed practically all of the compost. Luckily some sections had root growth so hoping it wont be long til theyre growing well again. A few weeks ago i popped a bit of snapped off lime marmalade heuchera and stuck it in the soil....its a really healthy new plant now



What would u recommend I do with the compost from the troughs that have the weevil grubs in?

 

@Snorky85 I've for the first year ever have had a problem- not sure whether it's the weather or I've brought in a plant with it in - if you have a plant in a pot that you don't want to disturb you can also plunge the entire pot standing up covering all the soil into a bucket of water, leave for 48hrs and that will drown the grubs - i had to do this with pots of Fuchsia and Heuchera early-mid summer as they were in full bloom and i didn't want to disturb the plants- after the 48hrs i then removed them from the buckets then covered as Paulistruis said with the required amount of grit and allowed them to drain thoroughly- i will now in the Autumn check the soil for any grubs but fingers crossed their gone

 

Ha ha, some suggest laying them out on a sheet of plastic....old compost bag?.....and let the birds get them. It does work. Or, you could squash them.
Have to disagree about drowning them.....not effective at all in my opinion. They are survivors. Besides eggs are likely to be there and they will be unaffected
More likely too to damage plants by attempting to drown vine weevil larvae if left too long!

 

Well good luck with that method beehappy, i hope it works for you! I've heard how devastating vine weevil can be so didnt want to risk it!

Ha ha, too many of the blighters to squish. There's a big field out the back...might sneak round witht he wheel barrow later and top up the mud in the field lol.

 

Hi,

Interesting that no one has mentioned 'drenching/ dipping' pots in a bucket/container full of Provado solution of as their instructions suggests.

Wonder if Bug Clear Vine Weevil Killer is just the same stuff as Provado ?

Palustris, you mention using a 1" deep layer of grit, but cannot the adult just not bury down the crown of the plant ?

 

Ricky, it is expensive stuff to make a bucket of drench. Not how I ise it at all.
I guess vine weevils could bury deeper down but, like all of us, they want the easy life and will simply move on to the soft mpc elsewhere. As far as I know Bug Clear is not a vine weevil killer.
A method I have not employed is a garlic drench. Supppsedly this does work ??

 

I use vine weevil killer on my begonia corms , as Verdun said it is a bit pricey.

 

Scotts do a Bug Clear Vine Weevil killer.
BugClear Ultra Vine Weevil Killer Concentrate 480ML: Amazon.co.uk: Garden & Outdoors
And the adults can only dig a short distance down through grit. If they can find soil at the crown of the plant then they will lay their eggs.
On single stem plants you can use the same sort of system as is used to keep root flies away from Brassicas.

 

Really sorry to hear that @Snorky85

I discovered some vine weevil grubs in one of my strawberry pots early last year. I took the plant out, shook off all the soil, put my glasses on and picked out any of the blighters I could find. The soil I put in a freezer bag do deal with later. Once I was sure they had all been evicted, the plant, looking very pathetic, was potted on in fresh compost. *This* is the strawberry plant which has not only thrived, but thrown out lots of babies which I spoke about last week

Now to the compost in the (extra) large freezer bag, which still had the grubs wiggling around in it ...














I microwaved it ... in batches.

Clearly, it wasn't any good for plants after that, but, it fed my compost bin very nicely, thank you, without any worries that the grubs would do any damage after being nuked


If it is a large amount of compost, one of my steam cleaners has a "plate" attachment which can be used to "sterilise" compost. Just saying