[adriancole]

I've managed to get some photos of the nasty little critters eating the roots of my plants and killing everything on my patch.

Can anyone identify these from the photos and advise what I can do?

They just look like lave to me, but I suspect them of taking all my broccoli so far plus potential damage to a blackberry and French beans!

Help!

[simond9383]

Look like vine weevil to me.

Have a lok at this.

http://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profiles0600/vineweevil.asp

There are various chemical treatments on sale but these are mainly designed for containers so they may be prohibitively expensive to treat a whole allotment!

[gobs]

Look like chaffeur grubs tome(whatever that's spelt like). How big are they?

Expose them to birds. :x

[muntjac]

sorry but they common  maggots to me ..... i suspect ya got a dead summat in there to aquirany chance of a size scale on them .i suspect just under half inch   .

[adriancole]

ok, here's some more photos.

I think I have the Chafer grub in other parts of the garden , they are much bigger than these little things. They look smaller than normal maggots - the kind people use for fishing are the only ones I've seen before. The stub you can see is whats left of my cauliflower. I said Broccoli earlier, going crazy I am !

Larger scale picture:


and this one is out of focus but it shows the scale too.

[gobs]

Cabbage root fly springs to mind. :roll:

[muntjac]

to big id think , they still look like maggots ,,,, certainly not chafer..

[WG.]

Cabbage root fly springs to mind. :roll:

That's what I reckoned to start with but AC says damage to blackberry and French beans too.  Please confirm AC.

[muntjac]

they are maggots ,cabbage maggots   :roll:

[muntjac]

missed the bit about the cauli not brocoli bit ................... :roll:

[WG.]

Organically, cabbage root fly is about prevention rather than cure - too late now.  Use brassica collars or fleece the whole patch next year.

[gobs]

Yes, it was confusing, that's why I thought grubs, but now AC says, those are also present, so possible these crops are chewed by dif culprits.

[muntjac]

put some lime downa round the plants now it will be to hot for them .... rake it in as best you can
 

[adriancole]

Yes, I lost a blackberry cutting too and one of my 4 otherwise completely healthy french bean plants has died too.

I have found chafer elsewhere I'm sure, they are much bigger, and that could have been what affected the other plants? It's just the symptoms were similar:

Healthy plant, lots of good green growth, some fruit (in the case of beans and blackberry) and then in the space of a week it dies. Plant can't take up water, looses turgor, goes brown the vegetation dies back and when I examine the roots they are all gone.

This was the first time I actually caught site of them in the act so I took a photo.

I'm going to dig up the next cauli in the line tomorrow as its started to die too and see if its affected in the same way.

[muntjac]

they will be ,, just put a load lime around em .this sometimes helps them * off