Sorry to hear about your plants. Hope the greenhouse can be repaired without to much difficulty. I had a problem with slugs damaging my hostas. Someone told me to try putting coffee grounds around the plants. I did. I still see slug trails in the mornings but they haven't touched my hostas in three years. I get free coffee grounds from Starbucks. They package their used grounds for gardeners and generally have them in a bin near the door. Good luck. Bernie

Thanks. Its most likely Deer because just the tops seem to be eaten. First voles eating the roots, now deer eating the new growth. My poor little pine trees. :-( I sprayed the remaining undamaged trees with repellent, hoping this will deter future nibbling. And I'll probably pee on the things to see if that helps -- I read that somewhere. I'm really hoping that with all the new spring growth, the deer and voles will eat other things and leave my pine trees alone. There are too many to cover each one with chix wire. I may swap out the eaten ones with better selections from elsewhere in the yard. And if the damage continues I may just give up and plant a bunch of leland cyprus. Does anything like to eat those?

If you want grass there, spray that stuff with Glyphosate (Roundup), then buy some composted cow manure (if you haven't got enough) and till it in. Rake it, seed it, cover with straw and then keep it moist. If that stuff spreads vegetatively (bulbs) as well as by seed, you won't get rid of it easily. Since there is no viable lawn there you should just kill it. Glyphosate is soil deactivated and you should be able to plant about a week after treatment. Steve

This will probably be my last post in this thread as my "initiation" into vermiculture is past the initial stages. I have, at least until 'things' change, settled on a "plan". (Change is inevitable, and OCCASIONALLY even 'good'.) Being the ending post let me remind those that are still watching of my initial ideas and goals. (Please don't let this being MY last post in this thread - other than to respond to other's posts - deter others from commenting, etc.) The following quote is from my initial post on this forum:http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/verm/msg0322443013790.html START QUOTE "While my interest in vermiculture has many roots, the PRODUCTS I am interested in are worms and soil. I have available at the moment: 1) an unlimited supply of goat manure (mixed with straw to a ratio of about 5:1 manure to straw by weight); 2) an almost unlimited (20 cubic yards per year) supply of birch leaves, 3) a large supply (2 to 3 cubic yards per year), of hardwood saw "dust"), 4) about 5 cubic yards per year of grass clippings, 5) currently about 2 cubic yards of shredded paper/cardboard with a weekly production of a pound or two, 6) about a half a pound per week of coffee grounds, 7) and about 10 chicken egg shells per week (which I grind using a mortar and pestle) into pieces smaller than 0.5mm. I have a modest leaf shredder I intend to start relatively modestly with one commercially available "worm farm" with 4 or 5 stacked bins. This "farm" will be in my shop that is kept at a temperature of 60 degrees F. It is my intent to shred and mix (using the leaf shredder) the birch leaves and goat manure/straw mixture. Here are my questions: 1) Given the "food" I have available, and especially the goat manure, what would "you" recommend that I use as food? (I would point out that native worms LOVE birch leaf piles in the autumn even without them being shredding first.) 2) How much of the eggshells should I add on what schedule - weekly, biweekly, monthly? 3) At this temperature, what do you THINK (I'm not trying to pin anyone down), would be the SOIL production per unit time? 4) At this temperature, what do you THINK the worm production - surplus to be harvested for use as fish food - would be per unit time? 5) Given the "system" I have described, do you see any potential areas of concern? Thank you for taking the time to respond to my specific questions. I would add that I have looked through the first 100 threads in this site." END QUOTE Quite a bit has transpired since that initial post, and my education has been greatly accelerated by the generous folks at this forum. The major departure from the above goals of "making soil" and "making worms" is that I no longer have ANY interest in using worms to "make soil". That's not to say I am not interested in vermicompost and worm castings, but using worms to "make soil" for my applications is not reasonable. Instead, I am going to mix items 1, 2, 3, and 4, plus 5 - 10% sand from the first list above (organic matter on hand), and call that "soil", and "use it like I knew what I was doing." The other primary goal of raising worms to feed my fish, got an 'adjustment' yesterday. The wife of my fishing friend (Jim) fought off breast cancer a few years back. Her immune system was compromised while she was going through chemo-therapy, and Jim was advised by her doctors to get a Mosquito Magnet (hereafter "MM") (http://www.mosquitomagnet.com/resource/lps/mm/3-traps-octenol/trap-video-three-traps.html?gclid=CMi24NzEkL4CFY6RfgodF38A4w) to reduce the probability of an infection from a mosquito bite. They have been using it every summer since. The MM collects ~5000 mosquitoes a week. (YES, I HAVE counted them. It's what I DO.) Mosquitoes represent a significant proportion of native fish's protein intake. I asked Jim to bring over a baggy of his first trappings, and we'd see if my fish were interested. It took a day for them to figure it out, but now they are eating them enthusiastically. I have at least one other friend with a MM that has agreed to save his trappings for me. Therefore, the burden to produce worms is LESSENED, not eliminated. The mosquitoes will likely be frozen and saved for winter feed when worm production will, at best, be minimized. SO... 1) "Making soil" via worm guts is "out", 2) I'm "moving outside" with mendopete's worm cages, at least until the Fall. 3) The 'demand' for worms for fish food is diminished. We'll see what the summer brings. THANKS! to all for helping me 'move along smartly'.(Those that have been in the Navy will appreciate the double meaning.) Paul This post was edited by pskvorc on Sat, May 3, 14 at 16:12