Ralph D. wrote:
"Travis" wrote in message
news:k1q_d.3898$uw6.986@trnddc06...
jacqueline cahoon wrote:
"Ralph D." wrote in message
...
I'm in the same general area... heading into the Laurel
Highlands... and I'll just say that you might want to be very
careful in these parts when it
comes to this stuff. We get a lot of false starts and spots in
the middle of
winter where we have mild weather for a few weeks only to be
followed with single digit F and lower temps. Poorly established
perennials and those that
are borderline between hearty and not often try to come alive in
the middle
of winter and then get walloped... often not making it.For
instance, I have
a row of dianthus that, if planted a few miles away up the
mountain, or further north near I-80 might be annuals...
nonetheless some nurseries here
sell them as hearty. I mulch them now as I got so used to seeing
them in that bed that I just had to put them in again when they
died. I know that there will be many here who sneer at this, but
it has
proven over time to be the least risk for me he I layer my
maple and ash leaves
heavily over marginal stuff in the fall. If it is a new plant
that
I put in
while very young or if I look at the temp range and see it is
close I pile it on, generally. Until this year I saw two real
risks... hitting just the right window to take it off so as not
to subject them to one of our famous late-March 70deg stretches
and cook them under there, and still watch out for one of our
famous late April 20 deg or lower nights. I start removing the
leaves
about now and then put a thinner coat back on. Sounds crazy...
but it seems to work for me. The other thing is fungus that can
get started under there, so I usually spray with a dose of
Fungonil a few times in the spring. Leave the leaves or some
other heavy cover handy... even if it doesn't look good until
after Memorial Day,
just in case the last minute evening news suddenly calls for a
drastic and previously unpredicted dip overnight... and make
certain you are watching the evening news *every* night.

Seems to be a number three these last two years, though...
fricking moles. I'm not sure if you're in one of our rural areas,
and soon it won't matter,
but the area is under a severe infestation of the things. If you
are you know that there aren't enough havahart traps being made
in all of China to nab all these little *******s. I've been
poisoning and shooting as has everyone for miles around since
the beginning
of last year and I thought that I had them seriously on the
decline where I would only have to stay on
top of new holes this year. Now that I have looked under the
mulch
I know that not to be such a promising outlook. Won't be long now
until I can't put
any widely applied chemicals on the property due to run-off to
the pastures
the cattle will soon be moving to. More birdshot in an extra clip
or two and
scoops of poison in the individual holes is all there will be
left to try. I
understand that the geniuses are going to try something to
eradicate them...
but that generally worries me even more SHUDDER

At any rate... if you're new to this, it truly is a learn as you
go deal around here. Someone else replied to take notes... I
can't stress how important that is. Keep tabs on how certain
things respond to your location
in various scenarios and you will learn how to approach our
wildly varying climate from one year to the next.

Of course you could just plant only large healthy plants from
major nurseries with lots of hard earned cash... making certain
they are hearty from 110 above to 30 below. I find great sport
in scouring the garden club sales and garage sales and flea
markets and out of the way eclectic shops for small cheap and
unusual oddities and
then give them everything I've got
to see if I can make them grow.




Thanks, Ralph. Your input (and Doug's admonishment to take notes)
helps a lot. I've actually lived in this area for 10 years, so
I've learned how unpredictable the weather can be. I remember
wearing a turtle-neck the first week of June a few years ago. I
hope as time goes on I'll get a better understanding of what my
plants needs, like you seem to have.
Funny you mention moles. I'm in a semi-rural area (small town
surrounded by farms, and I * have* noticed that the mole
population increased dramatically. I've been debating what to do
about them. I can't use any chemicals because my cats go out in
the fenced-in yard. One of them has made it her personal mission
to eradicate the little buggers, but she can't keep up.

I'm considering applying milky spore to control Japanese beetles,
under the assumption that destroying the moles' food source will
make them go away. However, I haven't seen many Japanese beetles,
so I'm not sure what else they're eating, and what an appropriate
treatment would be. If you fnd a something that works, let me
know (other than shooting them - I don't think my neighbors would
appreciate it :-)
Jacqueline
Carmichaels PA

Moles eat grubs and earthworms mostly. Unless you can crawl
through their tunnels it will be pretty difficult to shoot them.



You haven't seen infestations of the magnitude we have around here,
then. This is not like suburbanites finding a stay mole in the
petunias or someone who wasted loads of money on grass... it's an
all out war against critters that are causing huge amounts of
damage. You cannot move the smallest rocks, boards, tarps...
anything that sits for more than a day or three without seeing them
scramble. 22 Birdshot (crimped... not plastic point) works best as
they cannot wriggle away from all of them. Move some mulch a bit
and you see them go. I mulched the veggies with straw and they had
a housing plan in a week or three... hawks sit on the fence posts
waiting. You can fool them for shooting purposes by laying a half
sheet or so of old plywood down for a day or three and then have
someone flip it up with a hoe or something and have a full clip of
birdshot in the rifle.

We had two years of horrible wet and cicadas (their favorite food)
and far too much clearing and such around here. They're way out of
control and the simple solutions aren't working at all. Heavy
poisons aren't good, as I mentioned, because of the run-off to the
pastures (which are, incidentally, being affected as well). They
are working on a way to thin them, but they worry me when they talk
about that kind of stuff, and here's why:

In this area, a number of years ago, Multiflora were introduced as
natural fence lines to help control the cattle. Idea looked good on
paper, but... the birds eat the fruit and crap the seeds over the
fields and the multiflora sprout everywhere. Ever try to kill
multiflora? There is little that can be done to stop them short of
destroying fields literally digging them out. And the seeds remain
viable underground for 20+ years. Soooooooo... .. . the multiflora
have become the bane of the farmers here. But wait! The geniuses
have a plan:

They decided to take a rose bush that is diseased and crush it's
roots and make a tea of them. Then they started spraying the
multiflora (a member of the rose family) with the tea and started
spreading the rose disease to kill the multiflora. It appears to be
working... unfortunately, it's killing the roses, too. So they are
looking for a way to stop the spread of the rose disease that they
introduced into our area that will only stop it from killing the
roses and keep killing the multiflora... yeah riiiiiight.

So the announcement that the same group is working on something to
stop the mass infestations of moles leads one to the conclusion of
YIKES!

I read someone in the paper who puts out these garden write-in
advices that fielded a question from someone from our area on this
and they suggested covering a tunnel to see if it's active and then
putting a trap to it and thereby ridding the area of the mole...
How clueless are some of these writers? Does he know how many
tunnels there are? They would have to bring in truckloads of traps!
The best thing that can happen is to keep poisoning the little
****** as possible without going to the point of runoff, shoot them
when you can and hope for a dry year or three and let nature do the
rest, IMO. I'm not sure we can take any more cures or fixes...
although I might like to find a good deal on 5 gallon bottles of
castor oil and see if I can fight them back as far as the pastures
or the neighbor's fallow fields.

I have never seen moles above ground. What are they eating now that the
cicadas are gone? What does clearing have to do with moles? They are
not forest creatures. What kind of huge damage? Sounds more like voles
to me.

--

Travis in Shoreline (just North of Seattle) Washington
USDA Zone 8b
Sunset Zone 5