Over-run with vine weevil: fruit plants & shrubs

PhGage

Following a burst water main and the subsequent flooding, we purchased strawberry runners, tomato plants, pepper plants and some fruit shrubs from a well-known discount supermarket chain.

Although I'm the gardener in the family, I had to leave it up to my OH to plant the above as I was heavily involved in cleaning up etc. after the flood. Unfortunately, I'm now wondering if all of these were infested by vine weevil as these plants are now crawling with them.

I can't use Provado to attempt to control them because it's not suited to food crops. I'm out every night to collect them (along with the wretched slugs and snails) but the leaves are so shredded that I'm obviously failing to get on top of them despite collecting 12-30 per night. They're crawling surprising distances.

My garden's such a mess that I occasionally day dream about taking a flame thrower to it. More seriously, should I just throw them all away before the contamination gets out of hand in the remainder of the garden or is there anything else I can do? All of the plants are in containers or raised beds - the volume of compost/soil that I would have to discard is considerable and I've have no idea whether it's possible to 'sterilise' the raised beds.

absfabs

We lost a wisteria as well as strawberry plants to vine weevil a couple of years ago. Been using nematodes since, a small pack to be watered in ideally both in spring and again early autumn. Not cheap, we got ours from harrods (if you google it's a garden stuff mail order company, not THE harrods). This year we haven't used any, so far strawberries are fine. Look for the grubs when you plant out new plants.
Good luck,
Abs

ellie14

What a shame don't give up.Its the pots they go for.I am a fan of Jeyes fluid no good on food,but at the year end you could sterilise the soil with it,then buy the nematodes for spring.

cootambear

this year is a wash out, unless we get 4 weeks of pretty uniterupted sun

leave it till next year

dont fret it happens

edit to say I`m going on the Eco forum to demand my money back on their promise of global warming

PhGage

Thank you to all of you. I've been stupidly despondent about this because my garden was so messed up by the flood. Every time I see the spotted body of the weevils a red mist descends.

I didn't know that I could 'sterilise' the soil with Jeyes Fluid although it's my preferred cleaner for pots.

[Deleted User]

I use nematodes as a precaution after seeing vine weavil attack a neighbours plants. I don`t think I have it as they would mostly have to travel over gravel, which they don`t do.

Re your soil, what about dipping the roots in jeyes fluid solution and sterilising soil in the microwave

I hate the darn things

PhGage

My raised beds are roughly 1x1m and there are 6 of them (all quite high because they're more like big boxes because they're on hard standing rather than soil) so it's a very large volume of soil that I need to sterilise or treat.

Again, I didn't know that I could treat the roots of some plants with a solution of Jeyes Fluid so I'll certainly look at doing that.

Those of you who use nematodes, am I correct in thinking I need to wait for Autumn to do this now?

Thank you so much for your help with this.

absfabs

You are right, the nematodes are recommended for autumn and spring, to kill the grubs in the soil. I think I read that the autumn treatment is the most important one, getting the little blighters while they are small and before they have been munching on plant roots all winter/early spring.