[SJANSELL]

Thank you very much for all the useful advice and links. We do grow quite a few of the vulnerable plants, so I think I need to compile a list of alternatives. There is now a more weevil resistant strawberry apparently (Florence).

And as a cautionary tale - I had some unused drench stuff in the shed and thought I'd just use it on just a few of my favourite but vulnerable container plants and then use nematodes (although I think they work best in late summer/early autumn). Without thinking (I am pretty brain dead at the mo due to medication) I tipped some in one of my blueberry containers. After running around like a headless chicken cursing for a few minutes I dug out the top few centimetres of soil (luckily I hadn't put much in) and poured gallons of rainwater through it. Probably I shouldn't risk eating them, although my husband did point out that we only ever eat a small amount at a time. We do have two other blueberries so maybe I'll stick to those.

So - no more drench - organic all the way I think!! Just ordered my nematodes for slugs and weevils as well as some of this shocka matting to see if it deters the slugs.

I think that learning to put the right plants for the right place and conditions etc is probably the hardest lesson I've learned over the last couple of years! Sarah