We have about 20 or more chipmunks in a population explosion this year. They've made an extension of one of their existing tunnel complexes right through a new Iris bed. Where they used to tunnel in garden bed up against outer garage wall I'm afraid voles are now using their tunnels and making more. There are spring blooming bulbs all along that wall and I have a sinking feeling I'm going to have to carefully try and find out what's still intact and what may have been nibbled. I really can't tell what holes are from chipmunks and which from voles. I raised that bed for better drainage and something is continually tunneling right into the root zones of a number of new plants. Guess that's voles. "How to" articles say to set up mouse traps along burrows but can't see anything but holes. What the slugs aren't eating above ground I fear the voles are taking care of below ground. Kimcoco, if I were you I'd take special precautions when planting your first bulbs this fall. I went overboard my first attempt last fall but at least I had flowers. I'm pretty sure I posted this on bulb forum but I wouldn't want you to lose money, time and expectation of flowers if I didn't mention it here. I used Repels All spray on ALL bulbs before planting letting them dry on newspaper after spraying. Next step is controversial with some, but I wrapped bulbs in light layer of fine steel wool. Unlike some people I like my little squirrel pals since finding way to protect bird feeders from them. They didn't get tangled in steel wool since I sprayed ground over bulb plantings with more Repels All...maybe they don't like the smell since I didn't have any digging in bulb plantings. For most threatened bulbs, Tulips, I took a further step and put them in bulb cages. You can use chicken wire to rig up same arrangement which is cheaper than buying bulb cages. Don't know what your soil is like in Wisconsin but I had to spend days chopping through hard clay, roots and invasive vines followed by amend soil to 24" to even get these bulbs in the ground. After all that work I was intent on doing whatever I could do to keep bulbs intact and then sprayed the heck out of them with Deer/Rabbit repellant every week once they showed the first bits of greenery above ground. Like I've said before...I spent more on repellant sprays than bulbs. And I've got another 140+ bulbs ordered for planting this fall. I should have my head examined but don't know what's intact below ground with moles, voles and chipmunk activity observed since late spring. Sorry if bulb discussion is OT for annual forum but when they get eaten or damaged they're rendered an "annual" planting!

UPDATE: It definitely wasn't slugs. It wasn't rabbits either. We still don't know for sure but we got down face to face with the marigolds that are left and now they too are getting slowly eaten. We found that if we shake the plant, a tiny white worm will drop off each plant. By tiny I mean like 1.5 mm! We have no idea what it is but it moves like an inch worm stretching out and then hind end bunching up and moving forward. If anyone has a good soap recipe we will try it but we've lost more than half of all our marigolds at this point and don't know if we can save the rest. Any help at all would be appreciated.

If they have the nems and are in the ground, I have no advice. If they have nems and are in a container, you can try a 30 minute bleach soak with 10-20 % bleach (mix 1 part bleach or 2 parts bleach to 10 parts water), then pot them up in new soil, new pot. I did that early last year to three hosta which came from the same nursery, and all were set back to small sizes, but this spring have shown growth clean of the nems. But the real booger for us southern gardeners, which strikes quickly and fatally, is the southern blight, southern rot, anything you wish to call it. From looking beautiful one day to being a limp mass of rotted stems with the little orange balls around the base of the plant....like tiny Osmocote fertilizer pellets........only takes maybe 24 hours, and its a goner. Time to trash the plant. I had it happen this last week to Totally Twisted. I have watched for this everywhere, since it seems to be triggered by extreme sweltering heat with no breezes to circulate the air. Then the rain and high humidity. I began moving my potted hosta apart, giving more air space between them. Poor little Totally Twisted had been stuck between three larger pots, and I feel the air stagnated and it was ideal for the blight. I found my mama plantaginea with the little balls growing around her base, and I moved her to the hot direct sunlight. Some mention was made of heating the soil to 117 degrees to kill the mycellia, which was present in her soil. But I want to save HER, and I'll toss the soil. Perhaps washing the roots and the bleach soak could help with blight as well as nematodes. Blight affects vegetable garden plants such as peppers and tomatos, so it is not specific to hosta. It is spread on your shoes (like Mad Cow disease in that respect), on your tools, on garden waste not removed. Dig out the dirt in that hole in the ground, pour boiling water over the hole (do not know how much it takes to do any good), get RID of the old soil. Watch about your shoes! (I love my 4 identical pair of garden clogs cause they wash in the machine so easily.) Too much rain is serious if there is not enough drainage. We have rain all day today, more predicted tomorrow. I will be cruising through the hosta pots myself, keeping an eye on pots with the first signs of the blight. All afflicted hosta must be isolated quickly (containers make it easy to do this) and kept from contaminating the others, while you try to work some magic to save your favorites. The temps are down now to 75 in Mobile, so we don't have a high temp to deal with. Just a lot of rain. Hope you can keep the blight under control up in Georgia.

Sinners go to church. Looks like you found one of them. Best bet is to do an accounting and see where you stand. Work done and materials installed plus materials on hand versus labor to be done and materials yet to be ordered. Compare what you "have" versus what needs to be done, and compare that to what you've paid him. You can also bring in another contractor to bid on the remaining work and see how that fits in. Then get formal. Send him a letter, no emotional angst or whining, just the facts. Certified mail, return receipt requested. Lay out the numbers for him and give him 5 business days to reply. If he doesn't reply, then you can pursue legal avenues...from small claims to something else. If it's worth it to you. If he was half what your other estimate was for, you're seeing why. He probably bid the job poorly, and discovered that he was on the losing end only after he got neck deep in the project. This is his way of getting out.