WHAT!!!!
The easiest way to prevent vole damage is to garden in an urban area where there is neither meadow nor forest to provide habitat for them. A surrounding of crushed rock or the like works best for comparatively static lumps like spring bulbs and dahlia tubers. After that comes caging, fencing, trapping, and .. giving up. For this chuckle, credit to the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticide.org
Help!!!
Invasive Plant –Japanese Knotweed ( Polygonum cuspidatum) is blooming profusely in Maine (and 36 other states) in September and actually looking attractive enough to cause a man to inquire if I sold the plant so he could take it back to Ohio. There are many websites to get info from. Just don’t give our non invasive, clumping Bamboos a bad name by mistaking it for this terrorist creeper whose rhizomes can run up to 60 feet!
Good Day Sunshine
Having moved from a much shaded, wooded site in Conneticut to a wide open, no shade hilltop in Maine, it has amazed me that I can have my Heucheras, Hostas, Rhodies and other shade loving plants right out on benches in total sun. I have one hoophouse covered in shade cloth for my Gingers, Dicentra, other woodland cuties, but someone pointed out that my signage saying Chelone (Turtlehead) needed shade was not right in Maine, that she had hers in direct sun. Mr. Kalmia, Dick Jaynes, ventured that his Laurels probably could come out of the woods and stand alone in the sun! Pretty amazing! Though I am browner than I’ve been in years, and none of this made much sense to me, it has become clear to me through a very hot, dry summer, that it is not so much the Latitude of Belfast….but the Longitude…..being so far East that has made this difference. I need to understand this more. It’s a wonderful, unexpected gift since I was in a bit of a panic about my move into total exposure. I welcome the scientists out there to educate me further.