Mice & Bugs

[bigdummy]

The photo is my potato patch this past summer.

The white is cut both ways with a paper shreader, copy & typing paper, six to eight inches deep. The green things are the potato plants.

I wanted as much potato seed as possible, but I have had heavy deer predation on the true potato seed berries, in years past. I had three tomato type circles of wire that i put around three of the most (berrie) promissing plants. These three potato plants never had a potato bug on them all season. I had a lot of Colorado potato bugs this season and they were pratically the only plants that were not touched. Anyone see this in their potato patch?

I hilled once but relied on the deep mulch to protect the upper most potatoes from the sun. What I did not realize is I built a home for mice. Any potatoes that protuted from the ground, but still under the mulch were eaten away by the mice. A hugh loss of spuds. Is this common with mulched potatoes?

I have so many mice now I have to run a trap line in the house twice a day.

I am in zone three and we always have mice coming into the house in fall & winter, but this is like the lemmings march to the sea.

Big Dummy

[Tom Wagner]

Interesting photo with all that paper mulch!



Several points about that much mulch:

• Poor circulation to the developing tubers versus soil hilling
• Diffusion into the potato tuber of oxygen for respiration takes place only through lenticels.
• Lenticels are those whitish bumpy areas dotted around the tuber and are pronounced under overly wet or heavy soils, and/or too much mulch.
• Some varieties are sensitive, yea, hypersensitive to poor air exchange.
• With that much vermin pressure you may need more hills to get a fairly good and undamaged crop.
• May need a cat population upwards a herd.
• Potatoes planted near wooded or weedy lots more apt to have vermin.
• You certainly don't have weeds!

[jungseed]

Take heart, I've been through the mouse (and bat) migration in an older WI country home twice now. Keep your trap line running and in no time at all (usually took me about 2 - 3 weeks) you'll be back to catching a few here and there like normal. There is light at the end of the tunnel, no matter what brought them to begin with, there is an end.

[svalli]

Originally Posted by Tom Wagner

• Diffusion into the potato tuber of oxygen for respiration takes place only through lenticels.
• Lenticels are those whitish bumpy areas dotted around the tuber and are pronounced under overly wet or heavy soils, and/or too much mulch.

I have wondered what the white bumps on potatoes have been. I used to see a lot of them when harvesting potatoes as kid from my grandparent's field. Usually it was during the years when the potatoes had lot of some kind of blight, which made them to rot. So I assumed that the bumps were an early sign of a disease.

Now it is quite obvious. The bumps were not the disease, but were caused by the same condition as the blight - a wet summer.

[rxkeith]

i have just recently been there with the mice problem. i have dispatched 20 mice within about a 2 month period from our old farm house, but not before most of my uncle steve pole bean seeds that were in an upstairs room drying got pilfered along with a good amount of miracle of venice seeds. seems they really liked the uncle steve seeds. keep the traps set. you will get them in the end. i haven't caught a mouse in over a week, so hopefully they are gone for now. peanut butter works for me. sometimes they would lick the peanut butter off without springing the trap, so i would wedge a raisin on the trap topped with peanut butter. that got them.



keith in calumet

[jungseed]

Peanut butter works the best for me also. You don't need much to get those nasty critters.

[robin303]

Sounds like you need a cat. Mine brings her little trophys to me all the time. Haven't seen one in a while. Her reward I grew 2
industrial strength catnip plants for her in which she guards with her life.

[Granny]

Originally Posted by robin303

Sounds like you need a cat. Mine brings her little trophys to me all the time. Haven't seen one in a while. Her reward I grew 2
industrial strength catnip plants for her in which she guards with her life.

How did you manage that? Ours are so in love with catnip that they will tear the house down to find it and chew through the strongest plastics known to man. Not long ago I came down to find they had gotten at the cat nip again. What clued me in was when I noticed that the white long-hair was distinctly green.

Every single time I've tried to grow catnip the eat it down to the ground about the time the first true leaves appear

[robin303]

Hi Granny, They are the two biggest plants right now in my garden right now LOL. About 2' tall and and 18" wide. I started mine out in clay pots and put them were they [all cats] couldn't get to them. After they were well established and keep putting them in larger and larger pots I went ahead and put them in one spot in their dedicated area in the garden. My cat has so much there is no way she can take it out. Plus she just wants a little every day. Also they seem to spread by the root system and when it goes to seed you will have an ample supply. Maybe you might be able to make a cage around them and top also to keep your kids [cats] out. What I like about it it will survive winter quite well.