What do you get when you have hostas in lots of sun and the irrigation isn't working right? See above picture... :( One of my customers has LOTS of hostas and they receive a lot of sun, but the irrigation has always kept them moist enough that we've never had a problem with them scorching... UNTIL THIS YEAR.
The irrigation wasn't working correctly due to a leak in the line and this large area of hostas and geraniums weren't receiving the moisture that they usually do... the hostas were scorching and the geraniums were not flurishing as they usually do. The leak was fixed a week ago, but it is pretty much too late for this year. The geraniums will gain some growth for the rest of the summer, but the hostas will continue to look pretty poor.
And then there are these...
He might look cute, but he's not a hampster or mouse... he's a vole, and he (and LOTS of his brothers and sisters) have been terrorizing the hostas & geraniums at the same customer's house. I've never seen something so small be able to take down a 3'x5' hosta so fast!! I had a company install several P3 Super Sonic Molechasers - a 16"x2" battery operated unit that produces a sonic sound of 300Hz over an area of approximately 11,250 square feet, 1/4 acre, at approximately 15 second intervals. It's worked well in some areas, but... not so well in others. I've replaced the geraniums that had been eaten down (25 in total... 5 groups of 5), but they all are getting eaten again. Within a couple of days of replacing the geraniums I saw a new burrow appear leading right into one group of geraniums. I'm sure they were thrilled that I gave them fresh food!!
So, now we move on to the next level of vole control... TRAPPING. Now, my history with trapping has not been good... see http://strouthion.blogspot.com/2006/10/visit-from-conservation-officers.html to understand what I'm referring to. I'm suppose to have a "professional" meet me on Monday to review the situation and install the traps, but... he sounds a little over-committed, so I'm prepared to do them myself. The problem is... we have no idea how many there are. From what I've been reading, a colony can be 30-1000 voles. GREAT!!!!
Anyway... we'll see what happens with that situation... Hopefully I'll have time in the next few days to update everyone on that. I'm not looking forward to doing the trapping myself, but... if that's what it takes.
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