Pea Weavils

[happyskunk]

A pea weavil in every single pea. WTF!

[raymondo]

Damn! Are/were they for seed?

[mnjrutherford]

That would be horrible! I've got a bunch of teensy weensy bugs showing up lately. They look like rhinoceros beetles and they are about the size of a pin head.

[happyskunk]

Yep, all my pea seeds are loaded with them - 90%+. It looks like any peas I grow will need no be covered and I'm not sure if even that will work. I wonder if it is because there used to be a pea plant less than a mile away.

Anyone try to protect peas from pea weavils?

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jan 1, 2011 19:34:50 GMT -5 happyskunk said:

Yep, all my pea seeds are loaded with them - 90%+. It looks like any peas I grow will need
...
Anyone try to protect peas from pea weavils?

When did the pea weevils damage the seeds?

I ask, wondering if it is a growing issue or a storage issue? For example, were the peas fine the day they were picked and sometime later eggs hatched and larva grew and pupated? If they were fine when they were picked then that's easy to take care of... Pick the peas, dry them well, and put them in the freezer for a week or two. If you are only eating the seeds you could pasteurize them.

I freeze both pea seeds and corn seeds to kill off bugs. And then store them in containers that are not easily re-infected.

[grunt]

I go with Joseph on this one. It's good practice with any of the seeds that are prone to weevil damage. If I have seen any sign of insect damage on any of the hard seed, I put all of my seeds through a freezer visit. If I see anything on the dried seeds later, everything gets two trips through the freezer, about ten days apart = just in case.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Grunt: How long do you figure seeds need to be left in the freezer to kill most bugs?

My biggest seed storage pest has always been mice. Glass jars with steel lids have so far been immune to mice, but they are only convenient for bulk seeds, not for stuff in packets.

This summer my sister saved seeds for me from the second earliest cantaloupe to ripen in my garden. (A very valuable cantaloupe in my breeding program.) I put the seeds in my truck and forgot about them for a week. When I went to retrieve them 2/3 of them had been eaten, I presume by a mouse. What the heck!!!! How do mice live in a truck? On the farmer's seeds, thank you very much.

On a happier note, I found seeds today from 1999, that somehow managed to survive at least two total mice disasters. They are from an extra high beta-carotene carrot. They were in the same compartment of my truck as the cantaloupe seeds, so I guess that means they survived two mice devastations and one or more mice invasions.

Regards,
Joseph
Wondering what the chances are of actually germinating carrot seeds that have been kicked around for so long.

[grunt]

I generally let them sit in the freezer for a week or so. Likely a day would do the trick in a freezer, as it is somewhat colder there than they would likely experience in nature. I generally leave them at least a week, and will sometimes cycle them through again ten days later, in the off chance that the first shot didn't do the trick, and they have started hatching. I figure some bug eggs likely have the ability to withstand the stratification process, so try to allow for it.

[happyskunk]

Thanks for the tips. I think the peas were fine when I picked them. Now they all have big weavils in them. I remember seeing a couple weavils crawling around on the flowers but didn't realize they were pea weavils at the time and would get all of them. I guess I ate a bunch of weavil eggs last spring. These adult weavils are tough guys because I put them outside for a week when it got -1 and it did not hurt them.

[robertb]

It probably depends on the volume you're sterilising, but it takes two days to reliably kill bee larvae or wax worms. I wouldn't leave it for less.