Close-up of one of my new replacement plants. I hope it survives. I have pretty salty water so broad leaf plants tend to scorch on the end with that kind of water.
Another good sign
So nice to look down a vole hole and see something totally different. He fits perfectly too! I took this with the new iPhone 4. Thank you Steve for finally putting a flash on the camera!
One survived!
I call this amaryllis my miracle flower because it’s survival is indeed a miracle. I have been battling voles in my garden for the past several weeks. I lost over half of my garden due to a sudden population explosion because of our mild winter here in California. They seemed to pop up overnight and devour the roots and all of some of my most beloved and nurtured plants. I tried all kinds of repellents and sonic spikes but nothing repelled them. I tried various traps but none worked except havahart live traps. Every morning and evening I was making truck runs to a near-by vacant field to release my catch. One of my beds of plants was a series of bulbs – a particularly tasty treat for these cute little fuzzy hamster like creatures! I saw one inch tunnels all around the base of this bud starting that was starting to swell and I thought for sure it was a gonner. I had really hoped to see it bloom and today I was greeted with the nice surprise that it did make it after all and today was the first day I had no voles in my traps! YEAH!
War!
Been busy lately and lots to report but last night I discovered a horrible site. A pocket gopher killed about 75% of my garden. He did what I didn’t expect and that is to get into the tops of my waist high planters and ate the roots of everything. Some are three year old plants. Still incredibly mad! I think the picture says it all. 
UPDATE: Ok I found out this was not a gopher but a vole. Around in these parts they are called field mice and they mature to adulthood every 21 days and have very large litters. I couldn’t understand why I was getting gophers up in my tall planters. That was the main reason I have them in tall planters. I didn’t know about field mice. I also wasn’t prepared for how cute they were. They look like little hamsters and they aren’t aggressive at all like a rat in the wild would be. I tried a lot of different things to not only repell or kill and nothing really seemed to work. The only thing that would allow me to catch them is the havahart cage like trap. I baited it with cuts of apple and pretty soon I had a stack of traps that I had to figure out what to do with it. Thankfully living in the country there is plenty of open space that I can release them on and not worry about transferring my problem to someone else. One day I had caught three all in the same bin and as I let them go they waited for the other one to be released before they ran off. Obviously I caught myself a little family.
I have to say this thing has been a mixed blessing.There were some plants that were half dead or that I really didn’t like but since they were dead I couldn’t pull them up. I am kinda bad that way. I had to pull a lot of stuff up and trim and now I have lots of space to start new. I have learned a lot since I planted those plants and now I can start again with the wisdom I didn’t have before. Thank you vole!!
Mosquito netting worked!
Last year I had terrible trouble growing these due to the cabbage moth and the earwigs that devoured them. When I peeked under the mosquito netting tonight I found a wonderful surprise. Big cauliflower and not a bug on it and I didn’t have to use any insecticide at all!!!
Some of my first harvest!
Th is my harvest from some white swiss chard transplanted from the ACE hardware. I just planted some seeds from another variety today called Virgo Swiss Chard from reimerseeds. I hope they are as good these were!
PVC structure to protect from pests
Here is my simple structure to protect young seedlings from getting consumed by my little garden friends. To take it off I can just lift it up. Here I am starting some sunflowers in a potato sack.
They are are measured to just fit on top of my bins where I can fasten whatever I want to them. On the back side of the swiss chard are snap peas. I haven’t been able to grow them because the birds eat all the leaves leaving nothing but a bare stem. This will protect them and provide something for the vine to crawl on.
Here are my senorita peppers seedlings next to the bush basil. I started them indoors under a glow panel. I am going to let them hardy up outside for a little bit and then transplant. Before when I did this the plants were gone in less than an hour. Hopefully this structure will give them a fighting chance. Picture below is from when I was growing them indoors.
