The Garden Vanishes!
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Jo Murphy
- Howie
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Jo Murphy
- Carol Wallace
- Carol Wallace
- Howie
- Carol Wallace
- Kirk_Johnson
- Carol Wallace
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»
Jo Murphy
- Are We Allowed
He's soo cute!
I want one!
I really doo!
Hope you are well.
Jo
http://www.busywomen.com.au
http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/mura...
-- posted by Jo Murphy
» Howie - Voles
<img src="http://www.suite101.com/files/topics/319/files/BlueEntoloma3.jpg" width="100" height="130" alt="Blue Entoloma, at Lake Matheson, New Zealand, 3,266 bytes" border=”2” align="left">Every spring, when the snows melt, there are the vole tracks they made by tunneling at ground surface beneath the snow. Some decades ago I decided to do something about it to control their ravages. I lit a sulfer bomb and stuck it in a vole tunnel. To my surprise, smoke started issuing from over half a dozen other spots, the vole's escape holes.
Some time later I read that peanut butter would stick in a vole's throat and finish it off. I tried it once and found one vole with a mouthful of peanut butter down for the count the next day.
Since then I live and let live and take but mild revenge by placing stones in the entrances of vole holes, making them work to remove them.
-- posted by Howie
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Jo Murphy
- Noooooo!
I am baginning to get distressed.
Jo
http://www.busywomen.com.au
http://www.suite101.com/welcome.cfm/mura...
-- posted by Jo Murphy
» Carol Wallace - Re: Noooooo!
In response to message posted by martine3038:But Howie has taken my approach - live and let live. Believe me - they can be devastating to a garden. In fact I once watched one nip off a plant low on the stem and then drag it over to the stone wall and then it and the flower vanished into the stones. If you hadn't noticed the vole it would have looked like the stone wall was sucking in the plant.
Howie, I'm glad to see that I'm not the only one who can't stomach the idea of cruelty even to a vole. In my case maybe especially to voles because of an experience I had with one that the cats got to. I assumed they had killed it. And I'm squeamish = I didn't want to touch it, and so it remained by the kitchen door until Roger returned from a 5 day trip. On the second day I noticed that the poor little thing was moving. Just barely, but clearly alive and I assumed in pain and misery - and it had been for some time. It's the only time I ever deliberately killed something - I dashed its little had against a stone - because it hurt to think of anything - even a critter who eats whole gardens - lying in pain for that long with no hope of recovery. And to this day I think back on that and am saddened for the poor little thing.
-- posted by Carol Wallace
» Carol Wallace - Re: Voles
In response to message posted by Howie:Howie, we tried that with the resident groundhog and his family and I was astounded by the number of places the smoke emerged from. So we live and let live with them, too. In fact Roger had this crazy idea about domesticizing it. Knowing that groudhogs are vegetarians he decided to drop small apples near the main hole, and then every day a little further from the hole and closer to the house. He figured eventually he could get them to come to the back door asking to be fed instead of feating on the garden itself.
-- posted by Carol Wallace
» Howie - Re: Noooooo!
In response to message posted by martine3038:That was decades ago that I fought them. Now the voles happily munch away at all my plants unhindered, not even bothered by Kay's 18 year old cat. When we all get old, we slow down and fight less. Placing a very small stone in a vole tunnel entrance just gives it a little exercise.
-- posted by Howie
» Carol Wallace - Re: Re: Noooooo!
In response to message posted by Howie:I was going to tease you about how humanitarian that was of you - giving the voles a regular workout to keep them hale and hearty. But I think more appropriately it makes you a voletarian.
My cats are about the age of Kay's cat - so not much of a threat to anything in the garden except the catmint, which they like to lie in.
-- posted by Carol Wallace
» Kirk_Johnson - Re: Re: Re: Noooooo!
In response to message posted by CarolWallace:Where I live, on the southern Oregon coast, voles are seen as rather harmless. Maybe it is because there is so much for them to eat during our mild, wet winters. We also don't have a problem with rabbits eating the bark off of shrubs.
-- posted by Kirk_Johnson
» Carol Wallace - Re: Re: Re: Re: Noooooo!
In response to message posted by Kirk_Johnson:We do. One year I had this bright idea to create an arbor by pleaching Four dwarf cherry trees. Sort of like a miniature allee. We bought them and planted them - and of course it was going to be a year or two before they grew enough for us to start the actual pleaching - and then rabbits girdled three of the four. But I would say we may have as many rabbits running around here as we do voles. Not to mention chipmunks. And the groundhog family. Plus the deer who call this home in winter.
I am not destined to ever get the chance to try pleaching. We also planned an allee at the top of the stone wall above the main garden and bought ten trees - half of which got planted. The otheres died and before the store got in more for us to replace Roger got tired of digging tree holes. So I have half an allee.
Perhaps if you have enough greenery around you won't miss the odd munch or two from the voles (who can also girdle trees - you'll know it's not a rabbit because you'll see definite tooth marks). But we have a lot of greenery here, too and lots of areas we've left relatively wild. Perhaps that's why I've never felt that the groundhog was much of a problem - he may be eating his face off in the woods instead of in the gardens. Then again, I may make deer the scapegoat for damage done by the others.
-- posted by Carol Wallace
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