deer and fritillaries

Jane McGary janemcgary@earthlink.net
Tue, 13 Mar 2012 16:34:02 PDT
I grow a great many Fritillaria species, mostly under cover but a 
couple of dozen in the open garden, and I've never had anything eat 
the bulbs, although my former garden was plagued by voles. The 
leaves, however, are sometimes attacked by slugs, and the flowering 
stems for several years were mostly destroyed by deer and rabbits. 
The latter got into the frames, which were ventilated enough that 
they could hop in even over a fairly high foundation. I even caught a 
couple of them one day. Now I have moved to a location with no voles, 
deer, or rabbits, and the bulb house is critter-proof to a high 
degree. As a result, the flowers have come back wonderfully.

It snowed 2 inches here today and the temperature is not predicted to 
exceed 50 degrees F for the next week. Nonetheless, everything in the 
bulb house (where snow blew in through the hardware cloth sides) 
looks quite content, though the crocuses don't open in these 
temperatures, and in the open garden only a few larger daffodils got 
knocked over. Cyclamen coum is flowering brightly through the melting snow.

Jane McGary
Portland, Oregon, USA





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