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["Kieran &/or Donna" <holycow@frontiernet.net>]

I am pleased to learn the difference between meadow and pine voles.  I was not pleased at all to realise that we have the latter, the burrowing kind.  But then I remembered that's why I'm growing Micromalus rootstocks.  Voles don't eat them.  Lawyers carried them for a few years, Hidden Springs Nursery bought them and let me buy 20.  I've never noticed any vole damage to the 10 or so I have in the ground.  They sucker a little, and one year I cut off a sucker and stuck it in the ground, it rooted.  Lawyers didn't have Micromalus after that, don't know if they have it again.  I also like the nice smooth trunks that don't invite borers, and the taproot, which we need in this clay soil.  Ungrafted, they should only get about 10'X10', so that's what I spaced them for.  Of course, like all the other apples I have planted here, they hardly grow, but I'm not being impatient anymore.  One of the seedlings was obviously something else or a cross, it grew so fast and tangled I haven't been able to get it grafted properly.  It just grows other branches faster than the grafts.  I've been tempted to dig around it for roots to graft because it's done so much better than the others in the same soil.     Donna