"Rupert (W.Yorkshire)" wrote in message
Well it's war with me and the vine weevils. One or more has/have chewed
the leaves of a very precious banana plant that has taken ages to
germinate.
Can you give me an approximate time of night when the little darlings
appear? :-)

You have my sympathy. They are horrible things and just multiply and
decimate everything in pots.We used to keep lots of plants in pots back in
England and usually the first sign of a problem was wilting leaves, which
upon further inspection revealed a complete lack of roots. If you have one
or more adult beetles roaming around eating leaves I'd guess they are just
the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. If I were you, and the plant is
precious, I'd do an exploratory dig looking for the grubs in the soil and if
necessary lift the plant, wash all the compost off the roots and re-pot in
fresh compost, then to be on the safe side water it with some of that
wine-weevil killer. I think the adult beetle lays its eggs on the leaves or
the stem and the grubs hatch out and work their way down into the soil. At
least there is a soil-drench / pesticide nowadays that you can buy, albeit
expensive. Not so many years ago it was a case of just too bad! I once asked
an expert for advice about what to do about vineweevils - his advice was
simple but drastic - "Move House!".
--
David
.... Email address on website http://www.avisoft.co.uk
.... Blog at http://dlts-french-adventures.blogspot.com/