Re: [SG] HELP! Primula and the dread Vine Weevil??

I grow (try to grow) Primulas in a bed to which I have contributed my best
compost, manure etc. over the years. P. florindae, japonica.  polyneura
and some good old fashioned polyanthus. Its under/behind a couple of
rhododendrons and except for about an hour at noon, is shady. Also grow
Meconopsis in this bed. Its not naturally very damp, but I keep it damp by
watering etc. This is the bed which gets my tenderest, most loving care.

My primroses (carefully covered with fir branches, etc. etc.) barely hung
on through the winter. Of one bunch of three Meconopsis which did survive,
two died shortly into spring.  THe whole bed had few flowers, and plant
after plant giving up the ghost.

Immagine my irritation when this year (AGAIN!) my father, with no
pretensions to being a gardner, had the same plants (FROM SEED GROWN BY
ME!), in full sun, in a hot dry bed on the south side of his house, so
covered with bloom that one could hardly see any leaf (in the case of the
polyanthus).

This week, I decided there had to be more to it than beginners luck (My
dad did not garden until 4 years ago-). I dug up one of my recently
deceased primroses- it had few roots, some small brownish maggots (about
1/2 " long) some ditto white maggots, and right in the centre, some
mush!!!

Today I have dug up and had a look at all the rest. (On the theory that
they are dying anyway!) Some (not all) have mush. Some (not all) have
white maggots. All have one or two (at least that I have found) brown
maggots.

I looked in a little Kew Garden Series pamphlet about primroses and they
suggest either a) Diseased soil (I don't want it to be this but am worried
about the mush symptom) or b) The Dread Vine Weavil Maggot  (described as
a white maggot.)

I know we have Vine Weevils because we find their characteristic holes
chewed out of plant leaves sometimes. And occasionally the little
blighters themselves. My husband is ridiculously soft-harted and carries
them out to the middle of the road when he finds them. I know they beat
him back to the house and have warned that this practise must stop!!! I
have found the white maggots in Cyclamen tubers from time to time, but
never connected them to the adult bug before.

OK. This is serious! Anybody else have ever have a similar problem? What
did you do?

My local garden shop recommended sprinkling a powder called Bug-B-Gone,
active ingredient chlorpyrifos 0.5%

I have obviously been overwintering Vine Weevils in pot plants in house
and greenhouse and seem to have built up a population which isn't killed
by frost outside, or the watering with cygon which I give all my
houseplants before I bring them indoors for the winter.

Help!

Marlene Davis
Zone 6, Nova Scotia.
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