Mole Miseries

We gardeners seem to be facing one aggravation after another from spring right up until fall.  If it isn’t aphids it’s slugs.  If Mother Nature doesn’t drown us in rain, she gives us a drought.  If the gardens don’t get woodchucks they get  rabbits.  This year my first aggrevation was discovering that my vegetable garden was riddled with mole tunnels.

Many years ago when I was writing for the Lakeville Journal, I wrote a column about moles in which I described finding a nest of  squirming  newborn star-nose moles.  Have you ever seen these unattractive creatures?  I was so horrified I did them all in with my shovel.

The following week there was a letter to the editor from a Miss Whittlesey, whose pen can be as vicious as my shovel.  I quote only her first sentence. “I am appalled that you could even print that horrid account by one Hatsy Taylor of how she murdered a perfectly innocent nest of infant star-nosed  moles!” In another letter to the paper this same lady called me a “rural skinhead” because I’d referred to a flock of turkeys as some of God’s stupidest creatures.

Critical letters to the editor make me shrivel in embarrassment. I am sure that lady is not a gardener or has ever had the experience of finding moles visiting her yard. Since there have been no more scathing criticisms from Mrs. W. since 1985, I’m hoping I will be quite safe in once again writing about moles.

In past years I’ve only coped with moles in the lawn or the perennial border, never in the vegetable garden.  Humps of pushed up grass in a beautiful lawn are unsightly, but the lawns on Locust Hill are not  beautiful.  They have as many weeds as grasses, so a few mole tunnels make little difference.

Moles who invade a flower bed are another story.  Most people think  these blind beggars are the culprits when last year’s tulips vanish, but moles are carnivores and have no interest in eating roots or bulbs. They like grubs.   Unfortunately their tunnels provide easy access for the mice, who are the culprits.  They are herbivores, and they especially love eating tulip bulbs.

Never before have I had moles in the vegetable garden. Last fall, as usual, I dumped four bucket loads of manure on the garden with the tractor, then  my yard man Steve  spread it and rototilled and I raked it as smooth as a diningroom table.  But this spring it resembled a bowl of spilled spaghetti, the humped up mole tunnels making a dizzying pattern, curling in every direction.

 How I wish I’d thought to take a photo of this nightmare.  I should have known that if  I ever found a solution  I’d write a column about it.  I guess I was too upset to worry about photos, so you’ll just have to believe my description.

In some respects moles invading a vegetable garden can be beneficial, as they eat a variety of bad bugs.  Maybe so, but that’s no excuse for making that many tunnels.  There wasn’t a single uninvaded space in the garden.  How could I even think about planting my seeds and seedlings?  I stamped on most of the tunnels and raked the garden until it was once again smooth. Two days later it was riddled with new tunnels. 

One certainly doesn’t use poison in a vegetable garden.  Traps rarely work, especially if you’re trying to catch 4 or 5 or who knows how many of these critters. Another suggestion  was to try drowning – put a hose into a tunnel and turn it on full blast.  That didn’t sound like a great idea. Just look at that mole.  Is he laughing at me?

Finally a very knowledgeable gardening friend suggested I lime the garden.  Apparently with enough lime in the soil, grubs, the favorite food of moles, die and the moles move on to a better hunting ground.  So I bought two fifty pound bags of lime, punched a big hole in each one and walked up and down spilling out a beautiful white stream of lime.

I raked the lime in and I’m very happy to report that it worked.  When I didn’t see but one weak tunnel for the next three days, I hastened to begin planting.  By then it was almost June, a rather late start.

 Once I’d raced to plant half the garden I was too exhausted to plant the other half.  As you can see, the pepper plants aren’t even moving, 2 out of 3 Brussels sprout seedlings don’t look as if they’ll survive,  but the poor pea vines are suffering the most.  I’m sure they don’t like the warm weather, and probably don’t like that much lime either.

 The other half of the garden now has half a dozen tomato plants, zucchinis and cucumbers  started, plus rows of flower seeds - zinnias,  cleome, and larkspur, which haven’t even appeared. 

 I see a few mole tunnels in the lawn, but so what.  I’m not complaining.  

A Teacher in the Garden

       I love getting emails from my readers.  It’s the only way I know who’s out there reading.  Sometimes gardeners ask me for help in solving their gardening problems, and more often than not I don’t know the answer. Not wanting to admit my ignorance, I  look through my many garden books for the solution, something anyone can do.   

       

       I like to think of Weeds and Wisdom as primarily entertainment with a few bits of helpful information thrown in.  I would make a very poor teacher.  But now that I come to think of it, working in my perennial border is sometimes as difficult as trying to control a class of 3rd graders. 

       When school begins each spring, my students are on their best behavior, all arriving in class looking very neat and tidy.  The bright blue clumps of Chinese forget-me-nots along the front of the border look as if they were marching in uniforms.  The groups of daffodils are so attractive they  should have their pictures taken, and most of my other pupils are too new to misbehave.    

        As the school year progresses, however, all too many students start  giving me trouble.  Artemisia  is the worst.    As it turns out that genus contains more than 50 species, so I couldn’t even guess which one I have.  Their common names, Wormwood and  Mugwort, are so unattractive! The  rascal in my garden acts as if he were out on the playground, instead of in the classroom,  running roughshod over all his fellow students. Just look at how he is invading the astilbe that hasn't even gotten a chance to bloom yet.

       I’m sure all teachers have kids whom they consider dead-heads. Iris is the one that comes to my mind. She comes to school looking absolutely beautiful, her dresses so colorful, but after a few days she starts to look pretty drab, detracting from the other Irises. Of course  removing deadheads from the class is easy.  It’s when these girls start crowding each other that problems begin.  Rhizomes that start fighting for space  provide a perfect environment for diseases, which means they must be dug up after blooming and be replanted.  If I put them in a large circle with their stems facing out, they will all grow away from each other and do well for three or four years

Many Deadheads                                      Picked  Clean

I usually have a few pupils who  are true teacher’s pets, rarely giving me trouble.  One is Granny Bonnet columbine,.  Compared to the red and yellow blooms of the wild columnbine, the Granny Bonnet has a beautiful long-spurred hairdo of deep purple and white which fades to a gentle lavender as she grows older. I also have her cousin, a pure white columbine.  These girls can sit almost anywhere in the classroom without giving me problems. 

Granny Bonnet Columbine 

      Now you might think I’d consider Miss Peony a teacher’s pet after raving about her in my last column,  and she definitely deserves an A in almost all her subjects. If given the right seat (so her “eyes” are an inch below the soil) at the right time of year (late September) she will do her homework, producing handsome foliage and sweet smelling blooms that are long-lasting when picked for a bouquet. Where she fails is in deportment. 

      Such poor posture!  I’ve tried several ways to keep her upright.  Nothing works very well, but I’ve found that chicken wire does best.  Put over the newly sprouting stems and gently raised as the stems grow, the wire becomes invisible when the plant is fully grown. After a heavy rain, however, the blooms usually lean over so far they’re touching their toes.

      Another teacher’s pet you might not love as much as I do.  It’s feverfew. This pretty little daisy self seeds so readily that I often find new ones suddenly appearing under the apple tree or even in the vegetable garden, but if you consider that bad behavior, they can easily be removed.  Feverfew never seems to get sick and is always alert and attentive  throughout the school year.  If she looks a bit scraggly after a year or two, she just needs a haircut to continue looking well. 

       Below are  photos of some  more students  who usually behave well all through the school year.  

Lupines

Lady's Mantle 

      It’s hard to believe that last one is a geranium, Its Latin name is Geranium himalayeuse Birch. It can make a perfect circle of flowers at least two feet across. 

      I haven’t mentioned the new students I add each year, the annuals. They are always a big help – tall ones like cleome, and short ones like alyssum, and some colorful zinnias in between.

       I don’t think being a teacher is half as much fun as being a gardener.  But by the time October comes, we gardeners are definitely ready for a vacation.!

The Death-Defying Peony

When I was first married I was so ignorant about gardening  that when a neighbor brought me a huge bouquet of peonies I didn’t even  know what they were. I remember being amazed by their beauty, their sweet smell, and the fact that they seemed to last for weeks. My neighbor told me that peonies were immortal.

I still feel that way about peonies, but especially tree peonies which unlike the perennials, stand up beautifully without staking. Several years after we moved to Locust Hill Hank’s Mom gave me a tree peony with luscious pink blooms.  I didn’t know where to plant it as major landscaping plans were still on hold.  The one area not threatened by future bulldozers and changed topography was the front yard.

We’d finished building a retaining wall with a raised terrace, and leveled and seeded the area just beyond it, as our first lawn.  Where the retaining wall turned sharply at the edge of the road, it formed a V that couldn’t be mowed and seemed like the perfect spot for my new tree peony.  I planted it there, with nary a thought of what would happen come winter.

As the town plow roared by after each snowstorm (and in those days there were dozens every winter), it buried my tree peony with snow, gravel and enough salt to raise its blood pressure to heart attack levels.  When the mountain of snow finally melted around the first of May, I clawed out the debris of pebbles and broken branches from the V, murmuring apologies to the peony.

I had little hope that the bedraggled plant would survive, but no, in June it actually blossomed. My neighbor had been absolutely correct - peonies are immortal.  Within three years it had so many blooms I had to count them – 23!  What a survivor, especially when you hear what we did to it next.

The retaining wall of the terrace had begun to collapse, and since we’d decided to enlarge the terrace, the long-suffering tree peony had to be moved.  I knew where I wanted to replant it, but there was a major problem.  I guess this will sound crazy, but the fact was that the bulldozer could only get to the peony from the south, and could only replant it in the new location from the north.  Was my poor brave peony immortal enough to survive this total reversal of its environment?

Yes, the photo at the top of this column is that tree peony, its body all turned around to face south instead of north.  It’s the same one Hank’s mother bought for me in 1964 so it will be 50 years old next spring.  Lots of people think a tree peony is a tree, but as you can see,  it remains a low-growing shrub.  I think instead of calling it a tree peony, we should rename it an Immortal Peony.

The white tree Immortal peony below that daughter Trum gave me several years ago has had an easy life, holding up this last week through two days of heavy rain.   If you've always thought a tree peony turned into a tree, now you know, it's an Immortal.

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