A little water treatment

 Already have the AC and fans going after we got home from shopping at 1. Breezy but still high 89's is too hot for us in this box.

I went out in the evening yesterday to check on things and enjoy the cooler air, the smaller sunflower had keeled over from not enough tissue strength to hold it up. Then I saw the holes and decided to use the hose on them.

The picture on the right was after I tried to pull it up, thought there would be less resistance than there was. The soil is more dry in that corner due to not being covered with mulch.

Yep, that's how deep I could get the trowel in without losing it. So, next step was turn on the hose and start flooding.

I may have run it for about five minutes. No puddling or back up occurred. I stuck the trowel in on the other side of the bean and immediately got a tunnel. I could tell by the texture, there was water down there, sure enough. Remember the hole is to the left of that bean plant, in the corner. I decided to turn the hose off and the two holes that were full of water were drained by the time I got back to the bed. At least the subsoil is watered.

And this morning. I covered the holes last night with the dirt and mulch and decided to do watering anyway. Not as many lace bugs on the sunflower yay and pollen still dripping off the flower. Was hoping some bees or butterfly would find it by now. But then, I'm not out there in the middle of the day so who knows. One thing though, it's facing east where the sun comes up but doesn't twist a whole lot to follow it.

Small soil mound in the south neighbor bed. Too close for my comfort and am now wondering if I actually don't have gophers but something else. No surface tunnels so not a mole, voles also make a tunnel close to the surface and leave open holes. Typical gopher activity is a much bigger mount of soil at the hole. I know, I remember them from when I was a kid. So... voles maybe? After doing research the answer is still gophers. Type of damage and holes still indicate gopher because voles being mouse like tend to live where there is a lot of vegetation and soft dirt. They are also active day and night and so far damage is only happening in the evening or overnight.

So here's hoping that the fence I put around the south bed is sufficient, I will completely lose it if I find damage there.