Well being gone for a few days had a high cost. It was like the critters got an email alerting them to the opportunity.
I was so eager to get back and see what had bloomed and what had put up new scapes, but most of all I wanted to get back to my seedling bed.
How my heart dropped when I saw it . Dug from one end to the other by some hateful, spiteful, lowdown, no good, etc. #!%$ varmints.
Name tags, scattered, buried, and broken. Plants dug up and tossed about so no identifying where they should be or what they are anymore. Row after row will now be named "unknown" seedlings. Oh I still have the majority of them intact with names, but the season is early and already major damage has been done. I should have set the trap before I left, but I was in a hurry and the damage done up until now had been negligible.
I think most of the plants I have found so far can be saved, they just will not have the cross information available.
A note to myself, do not rely on 6 inch vinyl name tags with seedlings, the critters will destroy them. I was just reading another thread about using pvc pipe and putting the vinyl name tags inside, that would be better...if you still had plants left to go with the markers!!!!
The good thing was all my named cultivars down in the bog had cages around them so they were left undisturbed. There was major damage done all around them and to the paths, a lot of reworking to be done again down there now. I may have to just limit the number of seedling crosses I do from now on to just the few I can grow in my protected beds.
