Mystery guest, part II

After work yesterday found that two more daylillies had been damaged by my mystery vermin.  Not as severe as the earlier damage, but nonetheless, traps went down immediately.  This morning on checking the greenhouse found nothing caught by the mouse traps baited with apple, but also no further damage to the plants either.  

Good progress with spring flower-bed clean-up so far.  Today it's raining and tomorrow family arrive for a several-day visit, so probably won't be able to do more for at least a few days.  Love the way the earth smells in this early spring warmth in a mild drizzle.

Mystery guest

I went to the greenhouse this morning to perform the usual morning check and maintenance and found I've been visited by a mystery guest.  This "guest" (or guests?) had demolished two plants overnight.  A beautiful little red and gold primula that had been in full bloom a few days ago was nibbled down to the ground, and a daylilly start that I had repotted a few days ago (it had a beautiful big, healthy root ball) had been dug around, leaving a large empty hole surrounding what was left of the roots, with the soil and other root remnants had been kicked out of the drainage holes in the bottom of the pot and piled around it.  WEIRD!  From my reading since then, I'm assuming my visitor or visitors are voles, since they have to be small enough to enter through the drainage holes and move all that dirt.   ARGH!  Sounds like there aren't a lot of viable options for getting rid of them without a lot of work, since I don't want to poison them and risk poisoning whatever predators might eat them.  Until a month ago, my cat lived in and patrolled the greenhouse, and during that time I never saw any damage, although the previous winter (before the cat moved in), a number of my weaker shrub starts suffered from what I thought was mice-damage (chewing of bark and branches).  When we put in the greenhouse several seasons ago, we dug down about 6 inches throughout, covered with weed barrier, and then covered the weed barrier with

3-4" of pea-gravel, and since then have placed concrete pavers on the aisles to both act as heat sinks and make walking in the greenhouse easier.  Still, it's just a hoop greenhouse, and from what I've read, sounds like that wouldn't have provided much of a challenge for the voles - assuming that's what is doing the damage.  Mouse traps baited with apple will go down tonight (voles supposedly like apple), and we'll see what happens.

Spring is slow in coming

Spring bulbs are late in coming this year...or maybe I'm just impatient.  This is the only little crocus that has braved the elements so far, although the daffodils are shooting up more each day.  I've been working on clearing the majority of the leaf debris from the main flower beds to give the poor spring bulbs less work in fighting their way up, but as is typical for Michigan springs, if the days are warm and sunny, they are also windy in the extreme, which means my efforts to clean one bed are quickly challenged by the wind moving those same leaves to another bed.  Oh, for a windless, sunny day in which to work in the garden!

Snow is Gone, Spring Bulbs Beginning to Emerge

The snow has finally melted off all sections of the yard and spring bulbs are beginning to emerge.  Time to do spring-cleaning of flower beds, before the bulbs leaf out too much and are in danger of damage from my ministrations.  At the same time, greenhouse work is in full-swing, and shrubs and trees are in need of their late winter/early spring trimming for health maintenance, pond needs cleaning, etc.   Whew!  Too many fun jobs, and days are still too short to do them all! 

Pest Treatments

This is what I've done to begin my pest-control program:
1) Set out saucers of beer for the fungus gnats
2) Isolated plants with fungus from those that appear free of fungus or other problems
3) Put of starting the seeds I was going to start, until I get this all under control
4) Sprayed scale-infected plants with soap solution
5) Opened the bottom part of the greenhouse door and set the fan thermostat to a lower heat setting to increase air movement in the greenhouse and around the plants (Is this counterproductive? Will it help spread fungus?)
6) Scheduled daily MORNING work in the greenhouse, rather than afternoon work to avoid watering late in the day.

So far this appears to have brought things back under control.  I did have to just destroy a couple of plants that had been pretty much overcome by fungus.  They were all kalanchoes that I had started from cuttings in the spring of 2009 and then moved to larger pots several times during the summer.  It looks as though possibly with the last repotting in the late fall, I overcrowded them by planting several starts in a single larger pot.  As they filled in and branched out they were beautiful, but by the time they began blossoming in late January they were showing signs of stress which I failed to remedy, and then overlooked the start of the fungus until it had taken serious hold on those plants.  I've been able to control what few additional plants became affected because I addressed those immediately, but the original infected plants had to be destroyed.  Hard lesson.

First robins of spring

We had our first spring robins in the yard yesterday - a hopeful sign, even if most of the yard is still snow-covered. The greenhouse has made it through a fairly typical Michigan winter using only 60% of the propane tank filled in November. This is tremendous progress from the first couple of years; I may have finally hit on the right balance of heat sinks and other heat-retaining methods for a hoop-house this size in our climate. It's still surprising to me that I've not been able to locate more published information on home-greenhouse maintenance for this climate, but through various readings from writers and bloggers in other zones, I seem to be finally piecing together what works here.

The next challenge, coming up quickly now, is how best to circulate the air and cool the greenhouse as the days become warmer and sunny days begin to be predominant, overheating the greenhouse by 1pm. So far just opening the glass of the screen door part-way has been sufficient to prevent overheating, but soon it will require more than that, complicated by my being gone during the day and unable to fine-tune adjustments as the day progresses. I'm looking at several alternatives now to provide better air circulation and cooling of the greenhouse for the spring months, and will report them here as I try them.