Buying an Aljezur farmhouse
Home Aljezur farmhouses for sale Contact Control of the red palm weevil Algarve west coast climate Heating options The truth about coastal property What is natural park Costa Vicentina? Building and renovating in western Algarve Portugal land scams Fishing on the Vicentina coast Western Algarve agriculture  AFPOP Utilities in Portugal Schools in Aljezur  Solar home heating plans		Control of red palm weevil in the Algarve overview Pesticide pumps and sprayers Chemical control; Note; I have updated this page, I now recommend more fluid than before, since one of my own trees got infected. It looks like I caught it in time to save it. Adubopor in Portimao recommends this regime for the prevention of the weevil. Do this for all your vulnerable palms, which for us means mostly Canary date palms and Washingtonias. Make a solution of  1% by volume [116 gr. per 10 liters]"Solar" insecticide, active ingredient Imidacloprid [Also known as Confidor], and 1% by volume [92 gr. per 10 liters] Cythrin, [Cypermethrin].  Then add fertilizer, Aminotec, 1% by volume [100 gr. per 10 liters]. This solution has to be slowly dribbled into the crown of the tree, right between the top leaves, so it soaks into the trunk [and doesn't spill down the outside]. It takes a lot of fluid; if you don't use enough, the top of the tree may be protected while weevils borrow into the lower trunk. Then the whole tree, still looking fine, just topples over one day. I use about 10 liters of pesticide mix for every year of growth, so for a 5 year old tree, 50 liters, a ten year old tree, 100 liters. It's important that the fluid fills the trunk right to the bottom! If you water your trees, stop irrigating a few days before treatment, so it dries out a little and is ready to absorb fluid. If the mixture comes seeping out of the bottom of the tree [not dribbling down the outside] then you can be sure it has enough. I use a hook bent out of a piece of copper tube, connected to a very slow dosing pump that pumps at about 10 liters per hour. You can also use a plant sprayer [backpack type holds 15 liters] and hold the lance there if your trees aren't too high. Otherwise you need to get a long pole or pipe to reach up with. another idea is to hang a bucket or barrel from a tripod so it's higher than the delivery point, and gravity feed the mixture in. again, if you have really high trees, this won't be practical, but it will work for many. The important thing is to get the chemicals into the tree. This picture shows an apparently healthy palm that may be showing the first sign of infection; the top leaves are slightly short. This tree needs treatment urgently. Palms aren't woody, they're fibrous inside, like a mass of wet twisted rope. It will absorb the mixture better if it hasn't rained for a week or so. Other methods of getting pesticide into a tree include digging out a root, cutting it and putting the end into a bad of solution so the tree sucks it up. Or drilling a hole and injecting it. For tall trees, this could make sense as it might be imposable to get enough in at the top to percolate all the way down. But for trees less than 4 meters [to the leaf center, or crown] I really don't think it makes sense. Frankly, I think the main purpose of the injection method is to make it all look more difficult than it needs to be, and discourage DIY tree care. The Imidacloprid is the same insecticide as used in "Advantage" flea and tick drops for pets. It lasts for months and kills bugs that try to colonize your tree. The Cythrin is more powerful but doesn't last as long, the idea is to periodically mop up anything that managed to survive the imidacloprid. The fertilizer will aid recovery from any injury and generally help healthy growth. This stuff is expensive! Cythrin €47 per liter Solar   €88 per liter Aminotec €19 per liter All + 6% tax. So a 50 liter solution will cost you about €82, and you need that for 1 medium sized tree every 6 weeks. if you have a lot of trees, this is really going to add up. The shop also recommends dousing the ground around each tree with another 10 liters of solution. If you have no budget worries, why not? But my opinion is that this 10 liters will only have minimal effect against bugs that don't live on or in the ground. You can also ring your property with pheromone traps. This is just a bucket with water in it [with a little fruit, like apples, added for flavor]. Hanging above the water from the lid of the bucket is 2 sachets with pheromone, one for the males and one for the female weevils. The bucket has holes in the sides for them to enter; they fall into the water and drown. The sachets cost about €10 each and last 3 months. The economics of the traps is hard to determine. I have stopped using them now, mainly because of the expense. 4 traps is €80 to renew the pheremone each time, and although there have been many weevils killed in the traps, there were lots more that made it to my trees; in fact, despite my efforts, one got infected. So now we are using more pesticide than before, and I don't see any merit in the traps. if the pesticide kills all the bugs, I don't need traps; if it kills 95% of the bugs, my trees still get infected. The few authorities on this, who are successfully holding the weevil at bay from the coconut and date trees of India and the Arabian peninsula, say they're an important part of weevil defense, but they use them mainly for monitoring over huge areas, which we individuals can't do. This tree is obviously infected. note the lack of top leaves This tree has had it; it's entire core has been eaten by weevils. These recommendations are through a shop that sells the chemicals, and they say it comes from tree specialists who have had a lot of success with the regime. The chemical companies probably made some suggestions as well. However, so far I have failed to find any recent comparative study of different regimes. I think this is a lot of pesticide and a lot of money to spend; would half as much be nearly as effective? I don't think so, because as I said above, I wasn't using enough at first.