Biological warfare

Last year we had a big problem in the garden with shrub leaves being eaten - leaves looked like this:

and we think the same critters finished off the blueberry. Best guess they were vine weevils and it seems the best way to tackle them is with more critters - in this case microscopic nematode worms Steinernema kraussei - sold as NEMASYS:

You have this "cake" in the pack which you water down, then water down the watered-down mixture to put on the soil - we bought a 100m pack which looked like this in the bucket:

but dissolved fairly easily - have put it all over the borders, under the hedge and in the pots around the back so hopefully this year we won't have little squares taken from all our shrub leaves.

The mechanism of action is pretty awesome: the worms hatch and then infect the grubs of the vine weevil, which get infected in turn with bacteria which multiply and then kill the grub. The worms then eat the bacteria - so there are three levels of warfare going on here.

Let's hope they work. Have released 50 million of the blighters!