Glad to hear you got the bulb fly problem licked. Did you use something specific to treat the bulbs? And did you treat the actual bulbs or the folliage? Can't wait to see pictures of this massive amount of blooming amaryllis down the road.

I'm not sure it's licked - that'll depend on weather or not last year was unusual of not. I've had the lesser narcissus bulb fly pretty well every year, but they don't cause nearly as much damage as the big ones. Last year was the first year I've had the regular narcissus bulb fly.

What I did was (if I thought the bulb was salvageable), cleaned every bit of dead or dying tissue away, found the entry hole for the grub, firmly got a grip on any squemishness, and poked and prodded it out with a bamboo skewer. The grub is really big, so it wasn't that hard to get it out, it was just heebie-jeebie inducing! I then let the bulb dry for about two weeks, then I put it in a hot water bath to kill any remaining grubs I might have missed, and to kill any mites that are a major cause of a fungal infection (these were weakened bulbs and would be really hard hit by stagonospora if I wasn't careful). Then I dusted them really well with sulfur (and I made a solution with water and squirted it inside the hole). And hoped.

Including all the babies and offsets I only have about 30 left, out of over 100. Kind of sad, but it's still enough to put on a nice show. If I don't have another infestation then in about three or four years I might have something to write home about :-)

BP

Wow - huge investment in time, but worth it for the investment to save those expensive bulbs though. I liked the surgical precision you wrote about to a tee - when reading it, it was like watching an episode of those medical documentaries in my minds eye. Being a bare handed finger squeezing red lily beetle & slug eraticator - you're 'grab a grub on a poker' technique was just my style!

Hehe. Are slugs even squishable? I go after them with a pair of chopsticks - pick them up and drop them in a tin of soapy water. I find their slime is almost impossible to remove from your hands short of sandblasting. I prefer to make most of my pickable pest bugs go swim with the fishies - so to speak. Maybe I'll start shewering slugs though... It sounds a bit more satisfying :-)

I'm not really a bug-a-phobe - it's not easy to be a gardener and be afraid of bugs! I find most bugs, even the bad ones kind of pretty (even slugs have those cool antennae). I'm not bothered at all by the usual bad creepy crawlies: centepedes, bees, wasps. I used to be the run-screaming-away kind of afraid of spiders, but it got to the point where I had to do something about it - I couldn't put shoes on without shining a flashlight in them, gloves had to be stored in plastic bags, and every room I entered had a quick scan around the ceiling for them before I did anything else. Kind of ridiculous! So last year I found a garden spider and let him live in my window unmolested (I called him George). Just knowing he was there behind the blind was pretty bad, and after a month I was able to look at him. Eventually he died, and by that time I was able to watch him spin his web and catch flies, and even get a really close look at him - he was really quite pretty. I'm still not too fond of those grass spiders and their irritating huge webs that form a huge sheet over everything, but they don't make me want to craw out of my skin if they crawl on me anymore. I have a new George outside this year and I visit him every day, I've even brought him a few houseflies I caught. I can always hope he caught any narcissus bulb flies that might have been snooping about!

BP