BATTLE OF THE VOLES
PROGRESS OVER THE YEARS

The very cold and wet spring of 2022 did have a silver lining. Balsamroot seeds collected from the Ranch Annex in the spring of 2021 and planted in the fall of 2021 (under 4" baskets, removed temporarily for the picture) just did great. The germination rate was fabulous (every basket had enthusiastic seedlings). This, by the way is the first successful germination of seed intentionally planted on the Ranch.

Spring 2022 started out fabulously, with five of the 2017 plants showing their first bloom buds. UNFORTUNATELY, we had an unusually wet and cold spring, and only one was to actually bloom. This issue was seen valley-wide by the way, with only the most mature plants actually blooming.

This is the same plant as reported on April 26th,but now showing the first bloom opening (to the left) and the second still immature (to the right, in front of the leaf).

The blooms on the new plants are later than the mature plants. Looking a bit more closely at mature plants shows a second set of blooms near the base of the plant. It may be that balsamroots generate back-up blooms (for example, in case of a late hard freeze) and these may die off when the primary set of blooms has been pollinated. For these young plants, there may be no first set of blooms.

There are a number of plants from the 2017 Fall planting that are at least as healthy as the blooming one - but these are not showing blooms (not yet at least). For these larger plants, the original vole basket has been replaced by a large vole ring. While it is not clear that the vole ring is actually necessary, plants inside vole rings seem to do better (and the vole rings keep them from being accidentally stepped on or sprayed) so the rings are staying for now.

The most exciting news is with regards to the West Slope Balsamroot planted in Fall of 2017. As of April 26th, the first one of these plants is showing budding flowers!

A new learning for this season is the value of clearing out the grass/weed-choked baskets in very early Spring. The Balsamroots get all their growing done in the first chill days of Spring, and they need every second of sunlight they can get. It is probably a good idea to do this the moment the first grey-green leaves appear from the wild ones. (It was pretty remarkable to watch the growth spurt in just days after clearing out the baskets!)

The vast majority of the plants made it successfully through the 2019/2020 winter. There were only a few losses, all due to voles coming up in the middle of a basket. (A picture is on the left, where a vole has tunneled right into the middle of a basket and taken the Balsamroot out from underground.) Thankfully this situation is rare - there were only two losses this year (out of several hundred plants) from this issue.

Unfortunately, the 2019 Spring plantings continue to suffer large losses. They originally suffered about 40% loss during the over-winter in a cold-flat, and they suffered an ADDITIONAL 50% or so loss during the 2019/2020 winter. The exact numbers are a survival rate of 29% since planting (as compared to over 90% for the 2017 fall planting). The one piece of good news is that the survivors are very healthy. We're risking releasing a few of the survivors from vole baskets to assess the vole risk in this area (released plants have red circles in the picture).

The most exciting news is the West Slope Balsamroot planted in fall of 2017 (now in their third spring) are looking fabulous. This is a 3rd Spring Balsamroot and is representative of about 50% of the plants. The remaining 50% of the plants are smaller - perhaps a year behind this one. These are starting to look like 3rd year wild plants - suggesting that they are establishing solid roots beyond the original root mass!