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Hostas and Mice! What You Can Do
by Jerry Van Der Kolk
Description: Tips for keeping mice out of your hosta plants.
Ordinary house mice, field mice, garden mice and voles can be major sources of grief in a hosta garden. They are most interested in your hostas during colder seasons when the hostas are dormant. The crown of the hosta in this case serves as a juicy meal for wintering mice. Damage to the crown can cause your hostas to die. Therefore we want to prevent any pests such as mice from damaging our plants.
There are several ways that you can address this situation. One of the most effective ways is to simply get a cat or two. Cats are the field or garden mice worst enemy. Most people who own hosta gardens have had incredible success simply by letting a cat police their hosta garden. Even a stuffed cat or a cat scarecrow of some kind might work to a limited extent.
Another solution is to place a high frequency sound emitter in the garden. However one drawback to this is that even though it might keep mice away it may also keep all other animals away as well such as earthworms that aerate the soil and singing birds. These are also not comfortable devices for most pets to be around as cats and dogs are supersensitive to high frequency sound emitters. Yet another problem with these is that they do not seem to work on all mice. It is as if the entire species of vermin is developing a resistance to sound.
A common natural poison to field mice is castor oil pellets. These can also be purchased at garden supply or hardware stores in the pest control sections. You can also find the outdoor type small packets of mice/rat poison. These are effective in outdoor conditions which may be wet and/or humid due to the weather.
You can also try to locate their nests and destroy them. Mouse nests are usually full of seeds. Sometimes the mice are also coming from your house. Blocking up any holes in your house to the great outdoors might also help your vermin problem.
Yet another option is to buy small traps that are small enough to trap the mice but not let other animals in. This style of mousetrap is widely available in hardware stores and gardening stores. The poison bait is inside and the door of the metal box slams closed when the bait is taken.
One prevention tactic that you can adopt is to put the crowns of your hostas in very fine mesh wire that has holes of three eighths of an inch or less to keep the mice away from hostas during the winter. Yet another solution is to remove the hostas completely and replant them in protective ceramic pots that have a hole in the bottom for extra drainage.
It is an ugly option but of course it works. If mice are still chewing on your hostas after all this then you may have no choice but to have your garden sprayed for rodents. However this is neither an ecologically friendly or human friendly practice.
A small dose of prevention goes a long ways with helping thwart mice damage to your hostas. Any time I discover rodent damage I take immediate action by applying the small packets of mice bait I find at one of the local hardware stores such as Home Depot or Menards. Personally I like using the red color pellets but the green pellets seem to be effective as well.
Article Source: http://www.homesteadarticles.com
Jerry Van Der Kolk has been involved directly with the Horticulture Industry for over 20 years. He now devotes his time to growing hard-to-find hostas for hosta collectors via his popular website http://www.DirectSourceHostas.com.
