Voles Galore!

2 inch PVC pipe trap ready to glue.

February 18, 2012!!!

Still more February!

March or  2012

A portable compost bin - 4/8/12

The future in flowers.

I do not think this will flower this spring.

My favorite greens - sorrel

Oh those pesky - plum curculio's...

A "Bagged" apple tree

Couldn't resist adding  my new boat - stand up kayak

The mini hosta in the maple bonsai .

Figs and peppers.

Nice crop of black figs.

I wish this tasted as good as it looks.

The hoop house experiment.

Cloning - "Figgy" and still working on this.

The new spinach and arugula beds replacing the hoop house.

Happy New Year fellow gardeners.  All your seed catalogs - gardeners "wish" books- should have arrived by now and January is the month to do your reading and selecting to get the best selection.  I had some catalogs way before December this year too - so the market is still growing.  I will make selections this year with some thought to paring down some areas - tomatoes sadly is one.  I may even move the tomato patch as now that the hoop house is gone and that space will be open and the tomatoes have been in the new area for two years anyway.  We had some blight last fall too, so a move might be even be required to stem that problem.

I was out checking the yard and without dogs and kids running in the snow it has been undisturbed for a long while - enough time for meadow voles to create havoc.  I found a great deal of tunneling both in the snow and in the lawn - so it is trap time.  2 inch PVC traps baited with poison should help make a dent in my pest population.  I probably should have done more trapping in the fall around the compost bins but I really did not see much indication that I had too many voles - WRONG!  Check out the pictures for an easy trap or check out the web images for other types of traps - gutter and mouse traps seem to me an alternative.  However you will have to check and re-set those types - in snow country that can sometimes be difficult.  I did mark mine with stakes and re-buried them with snow to encourage the voles to  feed but as you see mine have a top opening that makes it easy to re-bait them and not move them.  If you want more ifno go back in the blog to November 22 of 2009 and check out that post.

I have included again, some of my favorite 2012 garden pictures as a year summary.  Hope you enjoy them.
Happy Gardening