having googled, I think it might be vine weevil...

think is I have an absolute hatred of maggots of any kind so dealin with this pets is going to cause me issues.
there were 4 plants in the basket, 1 died, 1 was a new baby that didnt take off, now I bought a new one and put that in the basket.

now I am thinking that I migght have just killed that plant too...

can any of my plants be salvaged?????

I dont have a spare basket, but I do have spare compost...

I need a fool proof action plan, and fingers crossed the basket is not riddled...

I put the new plant in the basket in the dark and saw a couple of the blighters and screamed the neighbourhood down. need to scrub my hands as I wasnt wearing gloves...

:gag::gag::gag::gag:

help!!!

You could try a pesticide or what I would probably do first off is get the plants out, wash all the compost off the roots and replant in fresh compost

Definitely vine weevil - they look just like maggots! They're a devil to get rid of though or at least they used to be. I've noticed some new products on the market recently which might be good. I would go with Hayley1's idea of dumping the compost, washing the plant roots and starting again - that's what I used to do.

And if you see a little beetle type thing with faint spots on it wandering around at dusk - stamp on it fast!!! That's the adult!

I ditched the whole basket, I salvaged the new plant that was put in recently.
When GIL was rooting around inside the basket it was riddled!!!

*skin crawling again*

we looked at the other baskets and they are ok...

Vine weevils are persistent, and you cannot use the effective pesticides on foodplants. To make sure you do not have this problem again, you might want to treat your other baskets with nematodes (sold under the brand name Nemasys) once the weather is reliably warmer. We found this cured the problem for good.