traps baited with peanut butter work pretty good for mice. for voles, find their tunnel entrance holes. set mouse traps at the entrance but tie them down with wire or drill a hole in them & anchor them with a large nail. with the squirrels I live trap them or get out my air rifle. last year I carefully harvested the buckeyes from my bottle brush buckeyes . every one that I planted the squirrels got. I just dispatched one ten minutes ago digging up bulbs.

GGG -- Boo Boo Kitty sounds like she earned a well-deserved retirement after years of being on duty. I have my other two kitties relegated to the indoors for medical reasons. Someday Starbuck will have to retire but she's only about 4 so hopefully she still has years of service to my gardening cause ahead of her. rjinga, love your babies too. Especially the white one staring into the camera. So far I haven't been able to train A.J. to stay out of my daylily field so I feel your pain. I can't tell you how many buds he's broken as he bounds by. He only showed up on our property as a starving pup last April and we're still working on some "issues". At the end of daylily blooming season last fall I put nylon pantyhose footies over all of my developing seed pods that I hybridized just like I always do to protect them from insect damage. Well, A.J. must have gotten bored and thought they looked fun to play with so when I got back from work one day I found somewhere between 30 or 40 nylon stockings littering my field, complete with huge broken off seed pods inside, slightly chewed of course. I could have killed him!!! All that time spent planning my crosses, gathering pollen, pollinating and waiting...all for nothing. Aaargh! I would have had far fewer casualties with the bugs, so this year no panty hose. Eventually maybe I'll get it fenced off with low voltage electric wire and hopefully he and any hungry deer will get the hint quickly. He only knows the difference between cats and everything else that moves. He actually ran down a HUGE wild turkey that just happened to walk out of the woods one day while we were on a walk. That was the day I learned my sweet, submissive wouldn't-hurt-a-kitten stray pooch had some serious hunting dog in his gene pool. The turkey and I just stood there and looked at each other for a minute, we were both so surprised by the other's sudden appearance. But the instant he got nervous and decided to run away he was doomed. A.J.'s chase instinct kicked in and they both disappeared over the hill just as the bird took flight low to the ground. I was concerned about the dog because those turkeys can actually inflict some serious damage when threatened. I looked and looked for him for over an hour with no luck. Finally later that evening I walked out of the house to look for him again and he was laying in the yard next to a giant turkey carcass. I was shocked! Not only had he killed it but he dragged it back home over a mile and that bird was much bigger than he was! So....who's craving a turkey sandwich? Danielle

I was a beginner growing gourds and learned quickly that gourds plants are long, prolific vines and need lots of room. One of the best things I figured out...run them up fences. We use old hog panels. It keeps them off the ground and you can find the gourds much easier and you can spot any bug activity on the gourds. As far as growing them ...we mound up hills and grow 3 to 4 plants per hill. For each vine you can expect 5 to 7 gourds. I find if you pick the first biggest gourd right away the smaller ones will take off and all end up same size.If you don't run them up fences give them LOTS of room....as the vines will expand out about 15 to 20 feet each way. Each year we plant our gourd seeds and watch them slowly grow for first month and then hot weather hits in late June and then the vines take off. I add slow release vegetable fertilizer in each hill before planting and then fertilize every 4 weeks until they start blooming...you will get these great white flowers. I wait for small gourds to appear before I fertilize again and then to get BIG gourds I water like crazy til fall. I pick them when the normally green skin as turned white. I don't let the frost touch them either as it will discolor them. Some gardeners don't pick them til after first frost but I don't like the big brown marks on them as that is first area to rot.I cure them inside garden shed sitting on old wooden pallots. I don't drill holes or nothing....just sit them on pallet and leave them for spring. Come spring all I do is take rough brush to them to get skin off and spray with a little bleach and water. From there you have your dried gourd....long process but worth it in end. We also grow apple gourds for birdhouses...very cute and easy to grow. After drying you can paint them apple red and hang them in trees for birds to nest in...looks just like super large apples.

>There should not be little holes and cracks everywhere for them to get in. All it takes is ONE hole. I bought an old house in an area where EVERYONE has mouse problems--in fact, when I was remodeling the gest house, I didn't tape over the hole where the old shower was, and we had PACK RATS the next time I came in. Anyhow, I'd been certain the mice were coming in the main house mostly through the laundry room, but it wasn't until I completely demo'd the kitchen that I found the spot--the ONE spot. Haven't had a single mouse since I sealed it up. Of course, that doesn't mean I won't in the future--all it takes is for one pregnant mouse to scoot through the door while you're unloading groceries, and you've got a huge problem again.