On 2 Sep 04 at 22:27, Lee Poulsen wrote: > The squirrels on the other hand were a horrible problem. There were > pecan and oak trees in the neighbors' yards so they had plenty to > eat. They never ate any of my plants or bulbs. What they would do, > however, was pull the plants or growing bulbs out of the pots and > put an acorn or pecan in the resulting hole and leave the plant to > wither and die in the daytime sun. Apparently they were lazy > squirrels and didn't want to go to the trouble of digging holes in > the real ground! Each spring I still had to pull seedling oaks or > pecans out of various random pots. I have the same problem with the squirrels here, but the nut mix is acorns-and-filberts. The squirrels are very deft about inserting nuts into pots: it's often impossible to detect any soil disturbance until a seedling emerges. Some of the filbert seedlings are from a proper nut bush next door, others are from the native Corylus douglasii on my own property, but I can't tell their seedlings apart; if I could, I'd pot up the native ones for distribution. For those of you with collections of potted bulbs kept in frames of some sort, a screen or mesh cover will go a long way toward preventing this kind of difficulty. Screen will also keep out flying pests such as bulb fly. -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island