Hello,

I live in Seattle, and for three years I've planted snow peas fairly early- as in early March. Under plastic, the seeds germinate well, but grow rather slowly until we get a few warmer days in April.

Every year my pea vines leaves get notched by pea leaf weevils (these are bugs that scallop the leaves on a young pea vine, not weevils that bore into the pea seeds). The damage looks pretty serious for a while, but inevitably after a couple weeks or so the peas sort of out-grow it and the tender tips do not get chewed on- whether it's because the weevil can't eat this for some reason, or because they've moved on to something else, I don't know.

I was wondering two things:

1) Is the leaf damage really slowing down the growth of my peas? If you've ever seen pea leaf weevil damage you'll note that they just chew out notches on the edge of the leaves, but I haven't seen them take leaves completely off. The vines seem to grow rather slowly when the weevils are at them, but it might simply be because I planted them early and the cool weather slows them down?

2) Is there a way to control these things without pesticide? I garden in a community garden where pesticide is not an option, and all of the literature I find online about these weevils only mentions pesticide controls. When they're active there are a lot of the critters, so I don't know that simply picking them off of the vines is really a realistic solution. Also, the plants are rather small and tender at this stage, so I don't want to just hose them down too hard, or use something on them that might burn them.

Any help appreciated!