Cyclamen pests

[Maren]

Hi,

my lovely bowls of gardencentre cyclamens keeled over a week ago, having flowered all through the winter in my pleione store.  I thought it was lack of watering as temperatures have risen quite a bit. But they did not revive so I tipped them out of their bowls and discovered a complete absence of roots and lots of these grubs.

Sadly said cyclamens are now in the bin, they were nothing special, just very showy and I was sad to lose them.

The scale is in millimetres, so each grub is about 10mm long. when I brought them into the house for taking their picture they became very lively and tried to escape. No such luck.

What are these little beggars and how can I avoid them in future?

[David Nicholson]

Vine weevil?

[David Pilling]

Vine weevil. Cyclamen are in my experience their favourite, followed by primulas and lilies.

You can apply Provado vine weevil killer, or vine weevil killing nematodes.

Then there are daft ideas, currently my collection of begonias is in a bag with a couple of moth balls.

They are also partial to trees, I've lost yew and monkey puzzle seedlings to them.

[Diane Clement]

What are these little beggars and how can I avoid them in future?  

As David says, they are vine weevil grubs and the way to avoid is to use Provado (the version you dilute) as a soil drench as per the instructions, 2 or 3 times a year.  I treat all my plants in pots that I think might be susceptible: all cyclamen, primulas, sempervivum, plus any woodland type plants with juicy roots etc

[Maren]

Hi,
thank you all for your advice. I shall trip to the garden centre and get some Provado for soil drench. I've lots of the aerosol type, but I'll keep that for flying pests.
 

[Palustris]

Do be careful, even the new Provado has been shown to be very unhealthy for bees.

[Maren]

That's alright, Palustris, I am only using it indoors. No bees there. But thanks for the thought

[Lesley Cox]

The little brutes are also partial to Saxifraga roots. All Saxifragaceae in fact, Tiarella, Heuchera etc.

[David Pilling]

It might be easier to list what they don't like. Perhaps I will take up growing pleiones if they're immune...

[Maren]

Ah, David, interesting you should say that. A very early flowering pleione, about 3 ft distance from the poor cyclamens, had a hole in the side of it's bud. I took it to Ian for identification. He opened the flower and in it was a fat caterpillar, which ended up under his boot.

So even pleiones aren't safe. Not sure how to prevent caterpillar invasions in future. Any thoughts (sorry, this has somewhat digressed from cyclamen) ?

[Lesley Cox]

With potted plants I think prevention is better than cure - which is often too late anyway. I would therefore add a little of a granular-type repellant when potting, mixed into the compost. I myself use suscon green which is a rather nasty stuff and needs to be used with great care and discretion and in fact we can't buy it now unless we are a registered agricultural contractor, to be which, one has to sit an examination. But it is totally effective against vine weevil, narcissus fly and others of their like.

[Maren]

Hello Lesley,
thank you for the tip. I have found that Fargro in the UK are distributors for Suscon green, I'll get on to them tomorrow to see if I can buy some from them.