Evil Weevils

Both my bush beans and my snap peas are getting ravaged. Grrr....

Using one of my favorite books "The Vegetable Herb Expert" by Dr. D. G. Hessayon. I figured out that I've got a serious weevil issue. (This book is the ultimate resource for diagnosis).

Also called "brown beetles" or "pea & bean weevil", it munches up the leaves of your snap peas and bush beans (bastards!).

These little $@!*ers have been chewing up the leaves on my plants so fast, the seedlings die.

After learning that they were nocturnal, I had to go out to the garden and see them with my own eyes.... I realized that I'm officially in need of a gardening 12-step program after crawling around in the garden with a mag-light at 12:30am.

With visions of one of my favorite crops disappearing for the year, I asked my father-in-law for assistance... he created two different sprays for me. One is a mixture of hot sauce, mouthwash, oil soap, and 'tobacco tea'. It's "for ground use only". I need to do more research, but it's my understanding that pretty much nothing survives that mixture.

Is this earth friendly? Um... I don't know, but I'm thinking that the probability leans towards 'NO' (research pending.... I want to nail this down). That said, it's now in the arsenal when desperate times call for desperate measures. The other spray bottle he hooked me up with is a bit more simple - a mixture of hot sauce and (bio-degradable) dish soap to be used on the leaves directly. I'm inclined to think that one is probably OK - but I still have to research that as well.

In any event - since I started using the sprays the new growth on the snap peas *does* look a whole lot better. I treated the ground (once) with the tobacco tea mixture, and I've been making sure the leaves always have a fresh coat of the chili sauch/soap mixture. I won't save this entire rotation of snap peas, but I think the damage control has been effective,