The Trouble with Weevils!

Here is another contribution to Matron's Worldwide Veggie Show 2009, you can see here a lovely row of peas.. a picture of pea perfection... almost. For something weevil lurks beneath the pods. The scourge of gardeners everywhere..

It's the dreaded pea weevil! You will most probably find something like this in one or two of your pea pods. On closer inspection you will find a little weevil. This is the larval stage of the pea moth who lays her eggs in the developing pea pods. The eggs hatch into little larvae which munch their way through your lovely peas inside the pod.

These are some of my Golden Sweet peas, I have plenty of seed left over in the packet for next year so I won't save any of these.

Here is one of my Great Wall of China tomatoes just ripening in the greenhouse. I was thrilled to see that Cath from A Gardener in Progress had some of these growing in her garden too. I swapped some seed when I visited the SAGBUTT (Seattle Area Garden Bloggers United to Talk) back in March. I 'liberated' the seed from a plant in the greenhouse at West Dean gardens in Sussex last year. They had been donated to the garden from someone who found them growing on the Great Wall of China.

My potted pineapple is just loving this hot weather inside the greenhouse. When I visited the Azores last year I saw pineapples growing in greenhouses. They just love it hot and steamy!

My early new potatoes International Kidney are getting a bit big now, and because there is a possible threat of potato blight at the moment, I have chopped all the foliage off and just left stalks showing above the ground. Blight develops from spores in the soil when the weather has been both damp and warm for a consecutive number of days allowing the fungus to take hold. The other potatoes you see on the left of the picture are a blight resistant maincrop variety called Sarpo Axona. I have not grown them before, but let's see what happens.

My pumpkins and sweetcorn are just loving this hot weather. I am particularly pleased with these Queensland Blue squash seeds which were sent to me by Scarecrow in Australia!

Anyway, here is my first Rouge Vif D'Etamps pumpkin. Not big enough to make a pumpkin pie yet, but I wish all Americans everywhere a Happy 4th July!