The Agave Menace - a "wipe out" situation.

Today we started to remove infected and dead agave. The infection is the infection of a small beetle which bores it's way into the Agave roots, lays eggs, and then, boom, masses of hungry larvae.

Lucas and Viktor are starting to fill the "skip". You can see the eaten trunk - no white flesh - all putrid and dead flesh.

In these two pictures you can see how the larvae have eaten from the root base out into the leaves. This results in total destruction and death in 12 months to 18 months.

 Viktor clearing the "debris".

 In the "skip".

The white part is the healthy part of the Agave. The brown part is a soft mushy purification caused by hundreds of these larvae eating and defecating.

It seems as though infection is extremely heavy, This  wipe out is underway, though it is still largely invisible. 

Viktor has created a mixture which is toxic to the larvae - a mixture of garlic, cayenne pepper, tobacco and vinegar. We will protect what we can.

We are taking action before we are faced by masses of cactae in various stages of death and putrification.