Garden Adversity

[Hoy]

Two reports today:  trapping and relocating squirrels has definitely taken the edge off their incessant diggings.  While these beasts are opportunistic and will move in to fill territorial voids, it takes them a little while (weeks) before they do so.

Secondly, it's been an unusually dry spring, the soil becoming very dry, an attraction for cat on-the-go litter box activity.  I noticed today that the spot where my rarest and moist choice of Chinese Alliums, the true Allium forrestii, was disturbed and somewhat dug up.  I tried to smooth out the dusty soil depression and grabbed right into a big, fresh, stinky cat turd  .  Not only are the several cats that occasionally wander through my yard useless for any rodent control that I can tell, not only do they leave their fresh turd calling cards, but of course they select the most prized plant received from a European correspondant to carry out their dirty deeds.  I don't like cats; grrrrr!

Cat turds, I know those from my own experiences with the neighbour's cat's remnants > > My only comforting thought is that I assume they take some rodents and not only birds

[cohan]

Our cats generally show very little interest in garden beds-- apart from some summer resting under shrubs, or in cool/damp spots of open soil, so far not on top of plants... though any time there are plants I might worry about, I lay some bare spruce branches around plants to make the spot unappealing..
I don't think they care to dig in our garden soil, when there is dry spruce duff under many trees to use!

[Spiegel]

I just finished removing chicken wire from the crevice gardens and am keeping my fingers crossed.  So far the word has not gone out among the antlered rats.  Everything here is very, very dry.  With an almost snowless winter and very little rain since, we will soon be in serious trouble.  Our well is very finite and I'm unable to water except for seedlings.  No rain forecast for the next few days and nursery orders will be arriving soon.

[Hoy]

I just finished removing chicken wire from the crevice gardens and am keeping my fingers crossed.  So far the word has not gone out among the antlered rats.  Everything here is very, very dry.  With an almost snowless winter and very little rain since, we will soon be in serious trouble.  Our well is very finite and I'm unable to water except for seedlings.  No rain forecast for the next few days and nursery orders will be arriving soon.

Hope you will get some rain soon! I have the opposite problem. It is raining every day and it is too cold and wet to do anything serious in the garden. Even the slugs seems to think it is too cold and wet.

[Spiegel]

It seems there's a distribution problem - you have too much rain, I don't have enough rain.  If only there was some way to parcel this out better.

[cohan]

We still have winter snow melting, and keep getting fresh snow so the ground never dries (last week's 15cm is still very much with us in shady places, besides the old stuff).. and rain/snow forecast several days this week; we aren't overly wet in terms of the water in sloughs etc, I'd just like to get the surface of the yard dried out once...lol

[Todd Boland]

I consider myself so lucky I have no digging creatures in my garden....my biggest problem are pigeons which are currently trampling all the new shoots in one of my beds below my bird feeder...guess that was my own fault!  I've moved the feeder and hoping the pigeons move with it.

However, I was wandering around our botanical garden today and am amazed at the damge done by moose!  I knew we had one around in winter, but with the snow recently melted and the ground super wet, the moose has been sinking up to 9" in the soil.  Many perennials have holes in the middle of the clump and dwarf rhodies have been devastated

[cohan]

I consider myself so lucky I have no digging creatures in my garden....my biggest problem are pigeons which are currently trampling all the new shoots in one of my beds below my bird feeder...guess that was my own fault!  I've moved the feeder and hoping the pigeons move with it.

However, I was wandering around our botanical garden today and am amazed at the damge done by moose!  I knew we had one around in winter, but with the snow recently melted and the ground super wet, the moose has been sinking up to 9" in the soil.  Many perennials have holes in the middle of the clump and dwarf rhodies have been devastated

We had a recent moose visit- I don't think they stayed long, as they'd already pruned all of the shrubs! but one did leave a hoof print in front of my semp bed- luckily they didn't step up on it!

[Hoy]

No (European) elks, I am glad to say! But a pair of the common wood pigeons (Columba palumbus) is nesting in the garden. I've come to believe that they do some damage in the garden although I've never seen them do it. I also have a pair of magpies (Pica pica) nesting in another tree and they do a lot of damage by picking plants and moss to line their nest.

[RickR]

A bird trampling anythings is foreign to me.  I have robins and juncos hopping around in my pots daily.  Except for the occasional dropping, there is never any damage, but they don't mill around in just one spot either.  Pigeons are a little bigger too: maybe they sit on your plants  .

[Hoy]

A bird trampling anythings is foreign to me.  I have robins and juncos hopping around in my pots daily.  Except for the occasional dropping, there is never any damage, but they don't mill around in just one spot either.  Pigeons are a little bigger too: maybe they sit on your plants  .

Pigeons mostly roost in the trees  but they are vegetarians and eat seeds and shoots of young plants on the ground. They're especially fond of peas and seem to know exactly where you have planted them! I have come to the conclusion that they are responsible for eating some of my small bulbs planted on the shed roof! Also the blackbird do some damage when digging in the beds for food (worms etc). They cover some of the smaller plants with soil when digging up other plants. Even in my little rock bed do they make havoc! Kicking the smaller pieces of rock away, turning stones around etc. They are pretty strong!

[cohan]

No sign of bird damage here either in spite of tons of birds- though I do wonder about the grouse that repeatedly visited one of our apple trees this fall-- presumably eating off the winter buds... will it make more? Between that and the moose, those fruit trees don't have an easy time of it- and to think a couple of years ago I had to prune them back...

[McDonough]

Sometimes stuff just happens. In the corner of my yard, the anchor to my woodland garden, is an enormous Sugar Maple tree.  It has been on the decline in recent years, with some limbs dying off, and posing a definite "under tree hazard" one windy days when I worry that sizeable dead limbs will come crashing down.  In fact, with limb and trunk decay, sometimes limbs just decide to fall without any wind provocation.

But, I was not prepared for what happened this past Saturday, when various isolated weather fronts were passing through, announcing themselves with sudden bursts of refreshing gusty air.  My wife and I on our deck, were witness to the cornerstone goliath tree simply snapping off near the base during one of gusts, with a thundering crash as it fell in a direction away from our house.  But due to its size and branching, large limbs crashed down into my garden, snapping two ornamental Magnolias and a Japanense maple off at the base, and a host of choice woodland plants now concealed by a monstrously large trunk and hefty limbs.  

 


The real damage will come when I call the town highway department to cut up and remove the tree.  This work is dangerous (removing such huge tree trunks and limbs), and the trampling by the tree cutters will surely be devastating in a garden full of woodland treasures.  Directly underneath the gigantic fallen trunk and limbs, is Cyprepedium reginae, C. parviflorum, Arisaema sikokianum, Iris koreana, Jeffersonia dubia Korean Form, Kirengeshoma koreana, and dozens of other choice items. I have a variety of Cimicifuga cultivars in this area, most have been squashed and snapped off, already cleaned up what I could and disposed of the damage.  It seems in a year, when I have lost much of my Allium garden due to invading grasses last year when I took on a job after long unemployment, and having to work many weekends so little time to spend in the yard and garden, this is just another step backwards in the whole gardening scheme of things.

This week is impossibly busy, with lots of travel; I'll have to try and not think too much about what the garden will look like after a crew of men come in to cut up and remove the mega-trunk and trample my garden mightily... I'll be traveling, I'll just have to wait and see what it looks like when I get back.

[Lori S.]

Oh no!  So sorry, Mark!  How devastating to one who loves plants and gardening!   
It is little comfort, I know, but thank heaven it fell away from the house, at least.  We don't even have trees anywhere near that girth and height around here...
Well, I hope the clean up goes as well as possible, and that the resilience and "life wish" of plants come through for you, so that the perennials, at least, are able to recover through the season. 

[McDonough]

Thanks Lori.  I think rhizomatous perennials like Epimedium will make it okay, even if herbaceously damaged this year, but with things like two diffferent Cypripediums, they rest with an easily damaged "nose" and I fear I shall lose them if squashed.  The few "woodies" might sprout from the base, but the beautiful Acer japonicum 'Ukigomo' which snapped off at the base about 2" above soil line might resprout, but as most Japanese maples are grafts, I won't get the true plant.  

I was just about to show my enlarged circle around this beautiful Japanese maple, planted with one flat of about 120 Jeffersonia dubia seedlings, but as the maple is no more, I either just have to leave the "Jeffersonia ring", or if I want to replant a tree, remove all of the Jeffersonia to replant with a new ornamental tree.  Not sure what to do yet.

My younger daughter always worried about this tree hitting the house, but it was far enough away it was not a threat to the house, but was very much a threat to anyone working beneath the tree canopy.  I'm glad it came down.  But a huge long arching branch sticking out to the right remains, defying gravity, another danger,. only a matter of time before it falls, I will request the highway department to cut it down; it leans into my yard and is posed to squash a row of hemlocks I planted, and a variety of choice perennials growing below.