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Old 26-07-2003, 08:02 PM
David Hill
 
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Default Banned Herbicides & Pesticides

"..... I've read that the real culprit in the Vine Weevil Explosion was the
widespread adoption of peat-based composts instead of real soil for potting,
though I can't assess the validity of this observation. ...."

Once again you hit the nail on the head.

Vine weevil have been around for the last 100 years and more, but in those
days plants from nurseries were sold in natural soil, sometimes in John
Innes compost where the soil was sterilised by heating or in the case of
trees, shrubs and many perennial plants, bare rooted in the Autumn and
Winter, so it wasn't very easy to spread the pest around, and the bulk of
sales were "local".

With the advent of peat based compost (In the early days referred to as U.C.
compost after the University of California who formulated the first peat
compost) this was followed by Fisons Levington compost and then everyone had
their own brands.
This was the time when container plants started to boom, so any infestation
was shifter all round the UK easily and quickly.
At this time Aldrin was banned so there was nothing to dose the consignments
with to kill weevil, and it was not really till the introduction of Suscon
Green that anything effective was available to the trade, a gap of nearly 30
years in which time our favourite pest had a population explosion.
We have always grown plants that weevil love, Strawberries, Polyanthus (When
I worked on the parks in the early 60's we used thousands of them in winter
bedding, but propagated our own, mostly by division. The plants being lifted
after flowering and being divided and planted out into holding beds for the
summer) Hosta and many more, cyclamen were grown by the thousand but in soil
based compost and in those days were grown cool and took 15 months to
produce a finished plant.
Also in those days we used to have a lot more Primula varieties used as
house plants, Obconica, Malacoides, Senensis etc all of which can be hit by
weevil
--
David Hill
Abacus nurseries
www.abacus-nurseries.co.uk