Weevil is a small bug that is a pest of garden and indoor plants. He got his name thanks to the characteristic long proboscis. Most often this insect affects strawberries, strawberries , raspberries, blackberries, apple and apricot, as well as pear, plum, cherry, peach. To effectively protect and fight against weevil we should know how it damages plants.
For some time before flowering, the weevil lays its larvae in flower buds (up to 40 larvae, one in each bud). They feed on the contents of the bud, which soon turns brown and withers (you will not get any berries and fruits), and by June the bugs leave their cocoon and go in search of food (flower ovaries and foliage).
Weevil lives for 1 year, so in the autumn he hides for the winter. Cold season, these bugs spend under the fallen leaves and clods of earth. As soon as the air temperature begins to rise, weevils leave their shelters in order to bring out a new generation. They feed insects on young foliage, shoots and cuttings. They gnaw the tips of the leaves, damage the young buds and their pedicels, in a word, they do enormous damage to the horticultural crops.
Control measures against weevil
As practice shows, getting rid of a weevil beetle is realistic, but it takes a lot of effort. There are several ways, combining which, you can achieve the desired result. Let's find out how you can fight the weevil.
- Initially, try to plant raspberries, strawberries and other crops prone to attacks of weevils, in different parts of the garden, so that it would be more difficult for pests to move from one bush and tree to another.
- As prevention, there is such a folk remedy for weevil, as the processing of buds of flowering plants with an aqueous solution of laundry soap, wood ash or powdered mustard. The treatment should be carried out using an atomizer.
- Also, one of the folk methods for combating the weevil is the planting of a "protective strip" of onions and garlic : plant these plants with a pungent odor around the affected crops in order to scare away the insects, and for best effect you can also regularly cut the arrows of the onion.
- If there are already weevils in your garden, it is necessary to fight them with more radical methods. Use for spraying such insecticides as inta-vir, metaphos, gardon. Try to get the solution on the buds (this treatment should be done one week before flowering and then repeated several times during the summer). The same applies to houseplants that are infected with weevils, when in summer the flower pots are exposed to fresh air. However, keep in mind that if the plants are already in bloom, spraying will not bring the expected effect.
- "Manual" way of exterminating insects: shake the bugs on a bed sheet or newspapers and destroy them. Do this best in the morning, when the pest is still asleep. The fact is that weevils are able to fly, and, not yet awake after a night coolness, they are somewhat inhibited. Therefore, morning is the best time for mechanical destruction of these insects.
- In the fall, when cleaning in the garden, collect and burn all the remains of plants damaged by the pest, in order to destroy the bug weevils hibernating in them. As for the trees, it is necessary to dig a good ground around them and clear the trunks from the dry bark and moss where the weevils of the weevils can also hide.
Do not forget that any treatment with insecticides leads to the fact that the bees do not fly to the plant either, to pollinate it - they are insects too! Therefore, try to carry out preventive maintenance of pest infestation in time, so as not to lose the crop afterwards.