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That one week in July when everything went wrong at once
So two weeks ago I had this stretch where it rained for 5 days straight right after I had just transplanted my tomato seedlings. The soil got so waterlogged that three of my Cherokee Purples developed root rot and just wilted overnight. Then on Saturday morning I went out to check on my zucchini and found a family of voles had tunneled right through the bed and chewed through half the stems. Has anyone else had a season where you just want to throw your hands up and let the weeds win?
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grantp281mo ago
Man that vole story hit me hard. Did you actually see the voles or just the damage they left behind? I had a similar problem last spring and found out they were nesting under a pile of old landscaping timbers I kept meaning to move. The real kicker for me was when I spent three hours rebuilding a raised bed only to have a deer jump the fence that same night and flatten my best pepper plants. Sometimes I wonder if gardening is really about growing food or just learning to accept heartbreak on a weekly basis.
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king.aaron1mo agoTop Commenter
Talked to my buddy Dave about this exact thing last week. He had voles so bad they ate through his entire carrot crop underground and he didn't even know until he pulled up what looked like healthy tops and found hollowed out roots. He said the worst part wasn't the damage itself but that he had to explain to his wife why he was sitting in the garden at midnight with a flashlight just staring at the ground.
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skylerrobinson1mo ago
The vole thing is rough. I started sinking hardware cloth a foot deep around my beds after I lost a whole row of bush beans to them, and it's been the only thing that actually stopped them for good. Have you tried burying any wire mesh yet?
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