Oregon Spring--rain and voles

The week before spring break we were able to get some seeds into the ground, in some ways taking a chance on the weather given that the forecast was for rain. And rain it did. Even with the raised bed, I wondered about whether or not the seeds would be washed away, and some of the lettuce (which is planted very shallowly) probably did. It has been so cold and wet, that germination is taking it's time, and I still have yet to see whether or not some of the beets and spinach will come out of the ground.

We are having a particularly big year for voles, which are a smaller version of a mouse almost, and their holes and paths are everywhere. When I got back from Guatemala went out to the garden and noticed three nice 18 inch wide rows of pockmarked soiling, almost looking as if a golf ball had been dropped onto the ground repeatedly. The voles had gone through and dug up every single pea individually. One of my former students and her husband (Leslie Lukas-Recio and Manuel Recio) run a specialty farm called Veridian Farms (Shameless Plug: check them out at the Portland Saturday Market if you get a chance) took one look at that and said, "yep, need to transplant seedlings." You would think that with two barn owls, two cats and all the hawks around we would keep them down a bit, but there are some real vole hotels around this place.

The good news is that we got our Territorial Seed potatoes; they will be ready to plant this week, and we will get another load of mushroom compost to get the rest of the raised beds filled. In the meantime, some more of that nice warm weather would be nice!