What have you done today in the Garden?

Cut off the old leaves on some of the hellebores

 

@Daniel W , I hate to tell you this, but the soil that you glean from mole hills will be contaminated. This is something I learned many years ago by a neighbours mistake. She decided all her pot plants in her conservatory needed re-potting, and collected up all the lovely fine mole hills she could find. Every single plant she put into this died. It took a few weeks, but she had none left, and she was devastated.
I asked a friend about this who was a pest control expert, and was told that this would have happened because of the urine the moles leave there.
As you may now be aware, I operated a camping site for many years here, and on one occasion, in the very early hours of the morning I spotted a lady who was camping near a mole run - in her nightdress with a plastic bag and a dustpan, collecting up the dirt from the mounds. I watched this happen every morning for a week, and she would look both ways before the lovely crumbly stuff was loaded into her caravan.
When this camper came over to pay for her camping fee, I had to warn her about the dirt she had loaded in. I asked her if she was going to create a campsite of her own with it - with a big grin of course. She looked a bit embarrassed at first, and then said she wanted it for her plants. Well, I couldn't let her do it could I? We both ended up having a laugh, so that was ok, at least she was warned.

 

Teeters great story ..Chapter one the “Mole saga”…Story of the missing mole piles. Never heard mole piles are contaminated , that is very interesting. The cats are always driven to the mole hills. I assumed it was the early morning movement at the dirt piles that the territorial cats were attracted to. But eew mole urine what’s in it that contaminates the soil ? They are so tiny surely the whole pile isn’t bad. When I scoot all the soil back in the holes the grass and weed seeds stirred up or the plants all grow ok in the mole soils. Not sure what is meant by contamination?

Gees I wish I had a lady scooping up all the mole mounds up around here, ( Well I suppose that lady is me)…it would save me a day or two of work and or a huge dust storm when mowing. Moles are a real pain in the caboose. I set up a few traps yesterday hoping to snag a couple of the little buggers. Of course I would never gather all the mole piles up and plant seeds in it. The soil here is hard pack clay , even though the soil gathered would fill a few wheelbarrow loads enough for a small garden. No joke. It would have to be mixed with mushroom compost and a lot of it.

Chapter 2 “Mole saga”…Volcano eruption stripped the land. When Mt St. Helens in Washington state , the volcano that erupted in the 1980’s blew its stack left the whole mountain side and miles and miles of barren land. After plant growth began a study was done how all the new plants began a new life on the scarred volcanic soil. The forest rangers gave the moles all the credit for re-establishing all the new plant growth. All the trees, shrubs , flowers , all the plant life was lost and the moles brought the area back to life. Moles are known as natural aerators. They dig underground tunnels which loosen soil and form channels for air and water to move freely through the soil, which helps plant growth. Mole tunnels promote the health of the soil , by turning , aerating, and draining it, fertilizing and mixing its nutrients. At least that was the results of the study.

 

@Tetters, thanks for the info. It sounds concerning, but I've been using the mole hills for 20 years, and everything I've grown in that soil has done great! Maybe anything in the soil has composted away by the time it gets planted. I just never had any problem at all using that soil source.

The urine thing sounds gross, but it would be in the yard and orchard anyway, and we use chicken bedding in the compost, there are deer pooping everywhere, and cats (I do stay away from that!) and all kinds of birds, and who knows what, I'm just not worried about what little the mole might leave behind.

It's actually the cats that worry me the most.

 

Daniel About your mole mounds , can they be a dark rich soil in your area. All my mounds are hard pack clay soil. My neighbor across the road has dark rich soil and I’m up a hill from her and have totally hard pan clay. I hauled in several dump truck loads of mushroom compost to build and design my gardens. Nothing here but pastures. You’d think with all the cow and horse manure on the pastures the soil would have been better. I swear clay soil just desolved any additives I added.

 

Do remember that the moles were there before us. Never had trouble with moles in my garden, but when i walk the boys they always seem to be attracted by the mounds.

 

Our mimosa arrived this morning.

I wasn't impressed, it was about 8ft tall and would need its support cane for the rest of my lifetime.
The foliage was looking very tatty and had lost some of its leaves at the end of tiny branches.

Given this cost £70, I considered it unacceptable, so I've e-mailed the supplier attached these photos and asked them to collect it and give me a refund.




I've decided that the hebes that we had in the troughs haven't survived the freeze. very well, they're all woody and aren't showing any sign of life. They look dead to me.

They may recover, but they won't be going back in the troughs. I'll find somewhere for them, if only "the green bin."

So I went to the local garden centre this afternoon and bought six replacements. I'll paint the troughs tomorrow, but keep the plants in the shed until the end of the month. The little troughs next to the window have the hyacinth bulbs, which were a present to my wife at Christmas.
The dozen primroses in pots which were a present from the same friend the Christmas before last, which I planted out along the edge of the long border in the January, are all in flower.




My biggest concerns are always my acer palmatums and the sambucas, but they are doing well and showing buds. The palmatum Taylor is still in the warm, in the freezer room in the garage. That has buds on it too.

 

What types of Hebes did you select?

 

One of my friends has a large collection of Acer palmatums. If we get a mild spell in March, they start to bud, believeing it's spring. So if (more often when) we get more frost her garden looks like it's been taken over by giant spiders. Fleece coverings everywhere! She's had to give up putting covers on some that have grown too big. There's a limit to her supply of garden fleece, and the length of her step-ladder too.

Sorry about your Hebes. The heathers look nice! It's way too early for those here yet.

 

@Pacnorwest, Mine are whatever the soil is under them. In the summer, that soil hardens quite hard. In my raised beds, it is mixed with compost, leaves, coffee grounds, etc and softens a lot over the years. I find it takes at least three years of soil improvement to get the tilth that I like. It's still good the first year, but better in later years.

I noticed in Wikipedia about moles that others use the mounds in gardening too. Moles are mostly carnivores, so eat bugs, grubs, insects, earthworms, slugs and other underground animals. That reduces populations of harmful garden pests. They eat 1/2 to almost all of their body weight daily, they aerate the soil, and fertilize it with their feces. Moles are mostly solitary, so not likely to catch or carry diseases from each other. They move subsoils to the surface, enriching the surface soil.

https://extension.psu.edu/moles

A lot of articles state, mo,es do not eat plants, but their tunneling can damage roots. Also, voles do eat plant roots, and they can use mole tunnels to access roots, causing damage. Voles have killed several of my fruit trees. They seem to prefer apple and fig roots, over others.

This article, from WA State, does state that Northwest moles eat some plant matter. So it pays to read different sources. Still, 70% to 90% of their stomach contents were earthworms.

https://wdfw.wa.gov/species-habitats/living/species-facts/moles#

Moles and voles.

https://forestry.ca.uky.edu/extension/wildlife/wildlife-damage/moles/mole-management

I take a live and let live approach. However, I feel frustrated when they dig into my raised beds, or newly planted trees and shrubs. I line the bottoms of raised beds with 1" mesh of plastic chickenwire or similar, which seems to work most of the time. They are attracted to potting soil of new trees. I wash off all of the potting soil, to bare- root them. Then I plant in native soil. That helps a lot. That is also recommended, for other reasons, by WA State tree specialist Linda Chalker-Scott.

https://www.finegardening.com/article/root-washing-why-and-how-to-wash-roots

Sorry, this might be too much. I tend to blather on and on about garden topics

 

Daniel. Thank you for the splendid info about moles. And the gophers are huge here too.
I have already set all the traps for the moles. They have been incredibly ambitious this year surveying the area with food/insects and ready their nests for spring . It’s the gophers that eat the plant roots. Some days plants would start shaking and it’s not from the wind.. so if I’m out and see the movement I’ll grab my spade shovel and pop them out of the ground and that’s the end of that one. Or grab the hose and pack in the holes near by when movement is seen. I have gotten both moles and gophers this way.
Squirrels eat plant roots and have devoured a fav tree peony roots. I started using Plantskyyd in the garden really works on rabbits, deer and antelope. The traps are for the moles I catch quite a few during the season. Then voles usually stay out in the grassy area in the pastures. The cat is good at discouraging them .In summer when mowing grass hay the resident hawks follow me on the tractor and zero in on the voles scattered up by mowing. I guess you could say we are hunting partners in the fields.


Riley .. Your new Memosa is reacting to the cold weather. They will drop all the leaves and grow back in warmer temps. Not to worry. They are hardy .Mine do not even start to leaf out til June . Then the leaves start as the flower buds fill the tree with flowers the hummers luv , in late July. They are an invasive species in some southern parts of the US, but not here in the Pacific Northwest .

 

That is a beautiful tree Pac. What interesting posts on this thread. Love reading all of that good stuff.

Today I asked the peppers who was up to the task, and one was chosen from each pot. Everyone germinated, alhtough the banana peppers were a little slower. It is also older seed and coated.

The Echinacia also went through a selection process. Always amazes me how quickly they grow when they get the prize of being the one in the pot.

The leeks and some onion were trimmed.

I am stratifying some pansy seeds, some Salmon Oriental poppy to try early and Pasque Flower. The pasque flower seed is a tough one, and is alternating between the fridge and freezer for ten days before being planted. Fun stuff!

 

Mel. Your set up is really good and I luv all the flowers you’re growing. Your garden is going to be so fancyfree when all the lil seedlings are showing off in your garden.

 

Just received 30 snowdrops in the green and 9 lilly bulbs. I planted the snowdrops and going to pot up the lilies.

 

The Haskap berries that I ordered last year all survived the summer, with the exception of one. It was a very important cross pollinator for the other bushes. I was painfully contemplating ordering another root stock. With the increase in shipping it would have been $40 for a single one year old root stock.

I complained to Hubby, who brilliantly suggested that I take a cutting and root my own. After a little reading, I took my snow shovel and pruning sheers out to the Haskap patch. It was a little labour intensive, but I found a branch that was suitable, and the same size as the one's I had ordered. After taking my wee cutting from the dormant bush I put all of the snow back on top. Hubby helped with the rooting compound and potting. He enjoyed getting his hands dirty. I think it helped his spring fever.

So VOILA! My first cutting to make root stock for a new Haskap bush. Wish me luck!