Before
After
As we find ourselves accepting the arrival of Winter with its chilly winds and cold precipitations, garden pests are not top of mind. But for those of us who have cold frames or store prior harvests, this is a mistake. I have been nursing a wide variety of greens in a cold frame to harvest over the next month or two. My late summer seedlings have been growing nicely and upon last view filled the cold frame with succulent greens. I started to carefully harvest salads a few weeks back wanting to space out my fresh greens over the next few months. Before Christmas, however, harvests were abruptly stopped by a heavy snow and sub-freezing temperatures.
A few days ago I went to get some greens from outside as the temperatures were in the low 40s and I expected the leaves to be rehydrated. Unfortunately, something beat me to the harvest. Pulling open the center pane, I found that my garden had been ravaged with few leaves intact; only the cutting celery (Apium graveolens var. secalinum) remains. Previously hidden by my greens, a quartet of holes the size of ping-pong balls are scattered around the raised bed. I think I have discovered my culprits.
With a sigh of resignation, my dreams of fresh salads are dashed. I look at the remaining stumps of plants hoping that perhaps I will get a regrowth in the Spring of new greens. But to make sure, I place a humane trap baited with sunflower seeds and peanut butter into my cold frame to remove any inhabitants that may continue to chew away at the few plants (and their roots) that are left. I am rewarded the next day with a vole shivering in the trap but not before it and perhaps some family members made short order of the cutting celery. Now there is nothing left safe roots and some well-eaten stems. I remove the vole, rebait the trap and wait for the greens to grow back and any remaining voles to be tricked into having a final meal. In January, there is little more than this to do.
