By Marlena Hirsch

“This is the way our universe is structured. We aren’t going to have peace on Earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of reality.”
-Martin Luther King, from the Birmingham jail in 1963

I am amazed at the health of my new garden, and I may be wrongly suggesting that the digging rodents (voles and moles) are part of the success. Here’s the story about how we are all doing well together. I did start by building soil, and have bountiful results on a rocky compacted plot initially overrun with thistles. In late October, when the rock walls were completed, I planted peas and fava beans with the wild thistles and grasses already sprouting. In January, I spread a thin layer of compost on the beds to add microbial life and encourage the cover crop. In late February, we began making beds with about three inches of compost over the cover of thistles, grasses, fava beans, peas, and phacelia. The paths were covered in wood chips. I sprayed a worm compost tea on the beds for added microorganisms. A few handfuls of a balanced organic fertilizer (mostly feather meal) were added at planting time. The only digging work has been voles and moles except for the occasional rock that I dig out when planting.

By September the plants have produced food and flowers all summer--I can admit that the voles and moles have not been a problem. Moles eat insects, so I welcome their digging. Voles eat fruit tree bark and dahlia tubers. I count three dead dahlias out of about 24 dahlia plants. The most vigorous dahlias did well, and I nursed along my one-of-a-kind “black” daisy dahlia after a vole ate part of its tubers. The loss of three dahlias is a fair trade for the soil enrichment the voles do with their excavation and manure. Their tunnels are used by amphibians like ensatina salamanders and small frogs. Those amphibians eat worms and insects in the garden.

I tried live-trapping the voles, but only caught mice. I tried three different types of traps and two different types of bait. I think relocating voles was not meant to be. I usually released the mice to another place in the woods. Later in the season, I felt bad for moving them from their familiar place where they have food stashes and family, so I just released them back to the garden. It is the voles who eat tubers and roots, but I could only catch mice. The mice eat things like pea seedlings, but I had plenty of pea plants.

I discovered a study about vole and mouse populations in the desert where a vole species is endangered. The authors of the study came to the conclusion that the presence of these species influenced each other’s populations in the ecosystem. The study is called “Recovering an endangered vole and its habitat may help control invasive house mice” by Peter Haswell, Andres Lopez-Perez, Deana Clifford, and Janet Foley. I think the mice and voles may help keep each other’s populations balanced, but I know the gopher snakes are keeping rodent populations in check.

Live trapping of voles was not working, and kill traps can ruin my day. Many years ago, I remember catching a gopher by the skin of his or her chest. How many hours it had been stuck in the trap is terrible to think about. I had to kill it myself.

I don’t require neat manicured landscaping to see beauty in my surroundings, so piles of excavated dirt don’t bother me. I have a friend who also lives in the woodlands, but likes neat manicured lawns. He can do battle with the digging animals if he wants. I would rather have peace.

Balance in a garden makes for fewer pest problems, and balance takes time to achieve, or so I have read. It involves planting a variety of plants that attract a diverse insect population: alyssum and carrot family plants for their small florets that feed tiny parasitic wasps is an example.

To create a balanced plant system in the garden, insects have to come to the garden. This garden is in an oak savannah in Northern California, yet insects arrived. The diabrotica beetles mostly ate wild cucumber and were easy to squish when all together in one spot. I removed tomato hornworms far from the garden, and a scrub jay found them. Aphids came to the broccoli when the plants were finished, so I regarded aphids as part of the natural senescence of these plants. I didn’t see serious pest damage that didn’t resolve with time.

Some plant diseases seemed to me to be part of a natural plant cycle. For example, the spring planted snapdragons were soon covered with rust fungus. Snapdragons didn’t suffer rust when planted in the cool fall. There were two heirloom tomato plants that suffered a disease. They were two out of several cherry tomatoes. The roots were intact when I pulled them out, so the voles didn’t damage them. I assume that the genetic diversity in this heirloom allows for some plants to be susceptible to one of the many tomato viruses. I planted six different types of heirloom tomatoes, so there was enough diversity for success. I have been giving away and freezing tomatoes for a month.

In biology, diversity is the driver of success. I assume this is the same in the garden. I have a diverse number of species. Tomatoes were planted in a bed of carrots that I am still harvesting from under the heavily laden tomato plants. An abundance of flower species is everywhere with the vegetables.

Something is always growing in the garden beds. When I take out finished plants, I add new lettuce, flower, and cabbage family plants. Many hardy annual flowers are getting planted now like carnations, everlasting, and Sweet William. In studies of soil, roots enrich soil with their growth and exudates. Keeping the soil covered with plants grows soil nutrients. Roots add mucilages or exudates to soil to feed beneficial soil organisms and promote good soil structure.

The big animals are staying out of the garden. The deer and the turkeys have watering bowls in the landscaping away from the garden. The deer fence has worked. The turkeys flew into the garden once, and I chased them out. The turkeys come for the extra seed that I put under the bird feeders away from the garden. Spent plants go under the bird feeders, so deer and turkeys come to eat these offering also. They head right to this feeding area and show no interest in the 40’ x 40’ fenced garden.

This garden has a bigger purpose involving other people. Maybe people’s appreciation nourishes plants. I am certainly appreciative. My granddaughter can now reach the latch to the gate and pick flowers when she visits. The neighbor brought her daughter over to get the overripe summer squash for their chickens and to pick flowers. She is even younger than my granddaughter, so I opened the gate and helped her carry a box of things home. We make about 170 small bouquets a week here to give to others at the food pantry, a women’s shelter, and small care hospitals.

By April, the wood chips and compost in beds are level with thick layers of each. Some fava beans and peas are still growing. Snapdragons are in the bed in the back. Seedlings of buckwheat cover crop are coming up. Next month this bed will be planted with winter squash and flowers.

If soil health is key, then the work of the voles might be welcome in parts of the garden. I put sprigs of mint in their tunnels near the dahlia tubers or other prize plants, since rodents don’t like mint.

Only the digging animals make this soil soft and friable. I can’t work soil to their perfection. I often take their soil mounds to sprinkle on the compost piles and mix into potting soil. I can only imagine the little piles of fine materials the mice move into the vole tunnels. I found a little pile of mouse collectables under the tarp covering a compost pile. There was a partially eaten acorn, a pile of sheaths from flower seeds, and a few petals. I felt bad scooping up the compost and disturbing this careful arrangement. There must be countless beds of grasses and other saved seeds the rodents arrange in the dark underground maze of tunnels. These saved materials and the rodent manure enrich the soil, and I do not have to dig.

There is some rodent damage in the garden that I hope to avoid. I know that apple bark is eaten by voles, and a tree was damaged last summer. I cut the tree back and watered to save it. Another tree died, but I didn’t see bark damage on the trunk when I pulled it out. I plant daffodils and mint around the fruit trees since rodents don’t like mint or daffodils. My sweet cats occasionally eat a vole or ground squirrel. Those bigger ground squirrels don’t like the cats and stay on the other side of the rock wall. I hear them sometimes, but they left the backyard rock piles when we moved in with our cats. By the time the rock walls were made and the garden could begin, the ground squirrels were no longer seen.

I am nourished by working with the magic of this garden. All of the garden tasks are a pleasure. Now I listen to my intuition, as I plan garden tasks and new plantings. I am not rushed, but have time to observe the plants and learn. I am learning from my appreciation of the synergy that makes the garden work. All life here is finding its place including the ground squirrels who have the other side of the rock wall. I look forward to the next season, and know there will be new insights and new flowers.