How to protect your plants from voles and moles.
Are you trying to figure out how to stop voles from eating your plants?Read on to learn how to do it.
Our yard is an organic landscape.We top-dress our beds with wood chip mulch and use no-till growing methods.
We have created an ideal habitat for voles.Voles tunnel through our rich soil by using a thick layer of mulch.
There is a buffet of delicious plant roots beneath the soil.Even more food awaits when their tunnels open to the surface.We have had voles over the years.
Voles are small rodents that spend most of their lives underground.They are very similar to mice.
Voles eat bulbs, tubers, tree roots, and the stems of mature plants.
If you have noticed underground tunnels just below the soil surface zigzagging through your garden or yard, you probably have voles.
Some of the distinguishing characteristics of each species are shown in a comparison chart.
There is a chart showing the differences between shrews, voles, mice, and moles.Tyrant farms created a chart.CC BY-SA 3.0, Link, and mouse image by George Shuklin are additional credits.
If you want to stop a particular pest species from causing damage, you need to know what it is so you can use the appropriate prevention or eradication method.
voles and moles create tunnels in your yard.moles are a different type of mammal than voles are.
If you want to get a mole out of your yard or garden, you're not going to have much luck because they rarely come to the soil surface and peanut butter isn't appetizing.
During the warm months of spring and summer, voles breed the most.voles reproduce quickly even though they don't live long.
A single female vole can have as many as five litters per year.A female vole who lived for a year could produce 55 new voles.
The Tyrant is a big fan of dahlias.They produce flowers that are beautiful and delicious.voles love eating flowers.Learn how to stop voles from eating your garden plants.
If you have voles in your yard or garden, how do you stop them from eating your plants?
We have found some very effective solutions over the years.What not to do...
Poison bait can be put near vole holes to kill them.It is possible that the animal will crawl out of its tunnel and be eaten by your or your neighbors cat or dog, an owl, hawk, or beneficial snake.
We strongly advise against using poison to kill voles.
There are a lot of different Ultrasonic devices that are supposed to keep away rodents.
Some people use these devices to deter rodents.We tried to keep ground hogs out of the Oak Hill Cafe & Farm plots with the highest rated ones we could find.
Did they work?Nope.There were vole tunnels and holes within feet of where the devices were positioned, and the ground hogs could not have cared less.
Maybe the technology has advanced since then, or they will work for your particular species of rodents.We don't know if we should use them given our previous experience.
You can break ground on your new raised garden beds if you want to.You can vole-proof your raised garden beds with one simple design addition.
If you want to keep voles out of your raised garden beds, you can bury hardware cloth in a deep trench around the outside.voles won't dig any deeper than a foot.
We have learned from our mistakes after having voles eat our fruit trees.Do the following when planting fruit trees to prevent voles from damaging them.
2.You can make a root cage out of hardware cloth.A simple round cage that is open at the bottom and top can be made.
3.Attach your cage or basket to the hole and transplant your fruit tree inside.The voles don't want to scoot over the top of the cage so you need to make sure it extends a few inches above the soil surface.
The roots of your tree will eventually grow through the 1/2′′ caging, while preventing the voles from accessing the tree's root crown.
There is a tree in a basket.The roots of the tree have grown through the wire since we put it in.You can use the Vole King baskets.
It has been a long time since we found a 100% effective solution to keep voles from eating our transplants.
For a long time, we watched as voles sucked down our artichoke plants into their evil, dark holes, leaving behind only despair and agony.Our onion bulbs were gone overnight and our dahlias were dying daily.
Our Vole King wire baskets are flexible.Bring on the voles!
We use the 1 gallon and 2 gallon Vole Kings most of the time.You can get them in larger sizes, up to 15 gallons, for plants like fruit trees.
The labels on the top of the Vole King baskets are attached by the Tyrant.These tags are helpful if you harvest the tubers in the fall.
1.The vole king cages are very easy to work with, because they are flexible and don't have sharp points.
2.Plug in your transplants, tubers, or bulbs, then fill the cage with soil level to the surrounding soil surface.
3.As with fruit tree cages, you want your Vole King cages to extend above the ground.voles can't easily go over the top of the cages if they are tunneling near the surface.
One of our no-till, mulched beds has a young artichoke transplant in a Vole King basket.The same plant a month later.
Since using our Vole King cages, we have not lost a single plant.We are excited to have garden-fresh artichokes on the dinner table this summer, despite giving up on growing them years ago.
The Vole King baskets are flexible and easy to put into a hole.Second, cutting, bending, and tying together hardware cloth baskets is a pain in the neck and usually ends up in scratched hands.We have to remove our gloves to tie the pieces together.There are no tools required for Vole King baskets.
The cost difference between the two options is insignificant, so we prefer the one that is easiest and fastest.
2.Mouse traps can be used to kill voles.If you know where a vole hole is, you can bait a mousetrap with peanut butter and oats.To prevent another animal from getting caught in the trap, put a large cardboard box over the area.
We don't feel like putting in the time and effort to use trap or kill methods.We are comfortable coexisting with the voles now that we have methods to stop them from eating our plants.
This article can help you stop voles from eating your plants.Do you have questions?You can ask in the comments section.
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Food explorer, seed & soil nerd, duck Evangelist, writer and health nut.Their company, GrowJourney.com, is a USDA certified organic seed and gardening education company.Daily Harvest Express is one of the food and tech-related organizations that he writes for.He is the former farm manager at Oak Hill Cafe & Farm, a no-till, permaculture, farm-to-table restaurant and farm located right down the street from his alma mater.He is on the board of the South Carolina Farm Bureau.
I planted an almond tree and found a vole hole at the bottom, but I am too late to use the baskets.Is there a way to save this tree?Is it better to fill the hole and hope for the best?Thanks a lot for your help.
Hello Charlotte!We don't know if there is a way to protect the tree's roots from vole damage.There is a chance that you have moles, chipmunks, or other rodents which are harmless to trees, rather than voles.If you have enough other food sources around, the voles will not damage your almond tree before it reaches an age/size where they can't do much harm to it.If you want to be proactive, you can set mouse traps next to the suspected vole hole and put a box over it to keep other animals from getting popped.You can kill the colony if you keep following them.We know how much damage voles can do to fruit trees, having lost an apricot, plum, and other trees over the years before using root cages.We hope your almond tree makes it!
The Atlanta pine voles were able to chew through the king baskets.Save your time, money, and frustration.I have to make my own baskets with 1/2” hardware cloth at big box stores.
Oh no!I will reach out to the company to let them know about your report.We put plants in vole king baskets here in South Carolina.Since vole king baskets are easier and faster to work with, we switched to them from the 1/4′′ hardware cloth.I am sorry to hear about your troubles.
If I plant a lot of bulbs, would you suggest making my own with hardware cloth to be more cost effective?What is the largest size I can use with the vole king cages still being effective?
Vole King baskets might not be the most economical solution.Raising beds with mesh wiring attached to the bottoms will be the best option for vole prevention.You run the risk of voles going over the top and in on that large space if you trench out large in-ground beds and bury hardware cloth.Hope this helps you!
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