Hi Auther. Gophers will eat roots and/or pull a plant underground to get the top to. Voles will chomp the roots or come outside to eat the top. Yes voles have about a thumb sized hole, but this time of year a huge wasp called a cicada killer makes a thumb size hole as well as a little mound. in the mound you will actually see a curved trail from the hole to the side or back of the mound where the wasp is pushing dirt. I get lots of calls about gophers, moles, and some voles that turn out to be these wasps. They are friendly by the way.

Can you post a picture of the damage?

Auther, In my garden, we have two types of voles. We have meadow voles that come in from the adjacent grasslands that surround us for miles around, and then we have the pine voles that live in the forested areas along the Red River and along all the creeks.

The meadow voles seem to eat above-ground, and often they seem to nibble their way around the plant and pretty much sever it, just above ground most of the time, by girdling the plant. The bobcats that often appeared in our veggie gardens must have been controlling them pretty well because after we put up the 8' tall fence to keep out the deer, there no longer were any bobcats in the garden and the meadow vole population started getting out of control. Our pet cats stalk them and kill them, but the cats are inside more than they are outside so they cannot keep the rapidly-breeding voles totally under control.

The pine voles live in our woodland (about 10 acres of our place is dense woodland) and they travel underground. I started finding their tunnels and holes in our veggie garden during the horrific drought year of 2011. I assume that prior to that they must have been pretty well-fed in the woods and didn't bother venturing up to the area where we have our house and other structures, lawn and garden areas. They seem to mostly devour things underground.

They will eat away at the roots of a plant underground, and our first clue that they had invaded the back garden last year was when I went back there one morning and found a 4-year-old fig tree tilted at a crazy angle. As soon as I saw it, I knew in my heart the pine voles had eaten all its roots. I had kept that fig tree in a container from the time I purchased it in 2011 and had finally put it in the ground in May 2013. When I went into the garden and reached the fig tree, I grasped the trunk and gave it a gentle tug so I could guesstimate how bad the damage was....and it was bad. The entire tree came up in my hand and had only a couple of roots left and they were 3 or 4" long. I took the tree up to the barn, got a molasses feed tub (which was about the size of a half whiskey-barrel type planter), filled it with a soil-less growing mix, planted the remains of the fig tree into the mix, watered it in well, and then pruned the tree back to about a foot in height. I really didn't think the fig tree could survive the loss of most of its root system in the July heat, but I kept it in the shade and it did really well, putting out new roots and new growth. Since then, I've kept that one in the container and, so far, am ambivalent about whether or not I'll ever put it back into the ground. The voles haven't bothered the other fig tree in the garden that was growing about 15' from the one they devoured, so I might get brave and transplant the containerized one back into the garden next spring, or I might leave things the way they are---one fig tree in the ground and one in a container. Both have produced figs this summer, though the one in the ground produced more.

As time went on, the voles ate other plant roots underground---dahlilas and other perennial flowers that have fleshy roots, tubers, or corms, zinnias, sunflowers, coneflowers, some pepper plants, ornamental sweet potatoes, etc. They particularly seem to enjoy eating moss rose.

This year, so far, the only plants the pine voles have eaten (knock on wood) are moss rose, nasturtiums and southern pea plants. They've been moving down the rows of southern pea plants eating enough of the roots to kill a plant every day or so. Last year they absolutely devoured the florence fennel plants, so this year I put most of the florence fennel in containers, but put two plants in the ground and, as of yesterday, both those florence fennel plants are still there.

Last year the pine voles ate both Irish potatoes and sweet potatoes but this year we rebuilt the raised beds we grow potatoes in and we lined the beds, including the bottom of the bed, with 1/4" hardware cloth. We didn't lose any Irish potatoes to them and so far we haven't lost any sweet potatoes to them either. Those beds are about 20" tall, and I don't think the voles can jump high enough to get into them. I cannot grow any sort of root crop any more without the voles getting them, so every year in the fall or winter we will dig up/dig out a raised bed (most of ours are 35-40' long and 4' wide) and line it with hardware cloth to keep out the pesky rodents. It is a huge pain in the neck to dig out all that soil, put down the hardware cloth, and then refill the beds, but the pesky little voles don't bother things in beds lined with hardware cloth, so it will be worth the time and effort to protect crops from them.

Because we have acres of woodland, we'll never be free of the pine voles, so I just need to work at excluding them from the garden beds.

I have been seeing lots of the cicadakiller holes that scottcalv described and we have them every year more or less in the same spots (which is mostly outside the cultivated garden, randomly in the yard but particularly in shady areas). Living in a rural area with abundant insect populations, we always have cicadakillers at this time of the year. The vole holes are slightly larger and often are freshly dug at night, so that I discover them for the first time the next morning.

When our voles eat potatoes, the first clue is wilting foliage and then when you go to investigate, you discover the potatoes or sweet potatoes are gone. I've had some flowering plants recover from the damage, likely because the voles didn't eat enough of the roots, but annual veggies seldom recover.

I really like moss rose and plant tons of it in the veggie garden because it attracts bees and other pollinators, but the voles are attracted to its fleshy growth that holds lots of moisture. I try to outsmart the voles by planting far more moss rose plants that they can eat in one year. This year we planted about 120 moss rose plants (all of which were volunteers from last year's plants, so I just dug up all the small volunteers and scattered them around the garden when I replanted them). We've only lost 5 or 6 of them to voles so far. Last year they got them all eventually. When I see a moss rose plant lying prostrate on the ground, I know what the voles had for dinner overnight.

Dawn

Your garden must be pretty with all the moss rose plants.

I don't have a picture and wouldn't know how to post it anyway. What ever it is it eats the roots off of some plants and they just fall over, such as okra. or if it is small okra or a sweet potato slip or something similar it will pull the whole plant down the hole, I guess, as the plant is gone and a thumb size hole is where the plant used to be. The hole is to small for a gopher.
I do appreciate all the information, thank you.

You're welcome. If they are pulling the plants down into the holes, in my mind that has got to be a sign they are gophers. I've never seen anything else yank a plant underground. Maybe a field mouse or a rat? Maybe a vole, though I haven't often seen them do that.

There was one year that I lost 3 herb plants shortly after they were transplanted into the ground and each one of them was pulled underground and then was just totally gone. I lost all three within 1-2 days of transplanting them into the ground, and I lost them all the same week. At the time, I assumed a gopher had moved in from next door, and then we never had damage again and never saw a gopher, so I wondered if maybe it had been voles behaving differently from what I was used to.

Our yard and garden have so many holes in different shapes and sizes this year that I am almost afraid to guess what is making them all.

We have the vole holes I'm used to seeing.

We have the round holes that the cicada killers emerge from.

We have some larger holes in the ground in the fenced-in chicken run that I haven't figured out yet. I have had a rat scare the fool out of me in the chicken coop a few times this year, and we've never had rat problems before. The holes in the ground are the size that matches the rat I've seen, but I have no idea if rats dig holes in the ground. We have freshly dug holes of two types in the yard almost every day---the ones dug by armadillos and the ones dug by skunks. That's fairly typical here in August....everyone is hungry. But, then, I have found a couple of holes that look like a 2" x 4" piece of lumber was hammered into the ground and then pulled out, leaving a rectangular hole. I have no clue what is causing those, but they are close to the roots of a red oak tree. I used the water hose to run water into those odd rectangular holes and they filled up fairly quickly with water, so I don't think they go terribly deep. Still, I wonder what made them?

Gardens are full of mysteries.

I always thought we had voles and gophers really bad here. Then, back in March of this year, we went to a grass fire east of Thackerville near the Red River. The soil was that incredibly soft sugar sand that looks a lot like beach sand. There was a field of melons (dried up remains of plants and fruit from the previous year) that had what I'd guess was the equivalent of several hundred gopher mounds per acre. They also had some areas where feral pigs had dug up the soil. Seeing that poor melon field made me thankful that all my garden problems are small ones. We've had feral pigs on our land in at least 2 different years, but they never came into the garden. I hope they never do.

Sometimes if you pour a little blood meal into a hole made by some digging rodent, they go away and never come back. Bobcat or coyote urine have the same effect, but I can't figure out a way to get a bobcat or coyote to pee into a cup for me so I can pour the urine down the suspicious holes, and I'm too cheap to buy wild animal urine. Sometimes when I see a vole hole in a garden bed, I get out a cat brush we have that is called the Furminator, and I brush one of our cats, collect the hair from the Furminator and take that clump of hair out and stuff it down the hole. I figure it can't hurt and might help.

Helen, The moss rose plants do look really nice at some parts of the year, and in some years. Since we have been in drought for the entire year, nothing looks very good and nothing looks as good as it did from mid-May to mid-June, which is when my garden's beauty seems to peak. The drought has been insanely hard on everything, but the garden has produced well. It just hasn't looked very pretty while doing it.

We have spider mites all summer long here, and I often see them as early as April. This year, with the summer rainfall in June and July, it seemed like their population was dropping in those months instead of going up like it usually does. Then, along came August and a lot of heat with very little rain and suddenly the spider mite population exploded. The mites have done enough damage that some plants are dying, but......you know what? I am okay with that. It has been a long, hot and mostly dry summer and I am tired, tired, tired. I have canned and canned and canned to the point that I cannot make myself can one more thing....though I have cucumbers and peppers in the kitchen waiting for me to come in there and can them right now. After that I have a big mess of southern peas to shell. (sigh) If the whole garden abruptly died tomorrow, I know I'd gripe and complain about whatever or whoever killed it, but then I think that deep down, I'd feel relieved. It takes me a long time to get sick of canning, freezing and dehydrating the harvest but I've reached that point now.

Dawn, I thought spider mites were generally caused by spraying insecticides. I am learning things here everyday.

I commend you for your efforts with the hardware cloth. We use the ones that are 1/2 inch for our rose cages. That means we must dig down foot, and dog out enough for a 4 foot circle. I have been told that for roses, it is not necessary to put in the base, so we just do a strip that is one foot by 4 feet.

I tried once to encircle a bed, and it did not work. I had been told that the voles simply came out of the ground, crossed the barrier, and went back in. I am glad this is working for you.

Scott, welcome. I see you are new here. Thank you for mentioning the cicada killer wasps. We have way too many cicadas and the wasps around our house.

Sammy

Yes Rats will dig holes and den up under ground. I had some den up under the ground in the corner of my chicken house once. They are very hard to get rid of once the have under ground tunnels.

Sammy, Spider mites are just another pest in a world that has far too many of them. The relationship between spider mites and pesticide use is this:

There are normal mites (red spider mites, two-spotted mites, bermuda mites, etc.) that feed on plants. Then, there are several kinds of predatory spider mites that feed on other kinds of mites. Usually, when a gardener treats plants for the kind of spider mites that feed on plants, they kill not only those mites but the predatory spider mites that had (unknown to the gardener) been feeding on the plant-feeding spider mites and keeping them somewhat under control. When the mite population rebounds (as it always does), it is the ones that feed on plants that rebound first. This is because the predatory mites will not begin reproducing until there is a large enough pest population for them to feed upon. So, your bad mites are reproducing without any good ones to keep them in check. Once the predatory mites begin reproducing, the main spider mite population is out of control and the predatory mites cannot catch up. This is why people often have a worse spider mite population after they sprayed with a pesticide, acaricide or miticide than they had before they sprayed.

Also, research has shown that pests like mites often respond to being sprayed by pesticides by speeding up their reproductive activity---as if they are trying to outcompete the pesticide by producing many more mites than usual.

When I was a kid in the 1960s and 1970s, my dad would spray either Sevin or something like Kelthane for spider mites on tomato plants. Inevitably, it would seem like it worked.....for a few days....and then suddenly he had more mites than he'd started out with. So, he'd spray again, and have even more mites, and then he'd spray again.......and by then the exploding spider mite population had killed his plants. So, I learned at a really young age that spraying for spider mites had a result that was directly opposite the desired result. As a consequence, I've never sprayed for spider bites, relying instead on lady bugs and other beneficials to keep their population in check. Lab research with some pesticides and spider mites has confirmed that using those pesticides can give you an increase in mites instead of a decrease, but we learned that ourselves by first-hand observation decades ago.

I thought about putting the hardware cloth underground beneath the perimeter fence by digging a trench a couple of feet deep, but because our property slopes, that would be more complicated than it sounds and I suspect they'd find a way around it. The new back garden is even worse. It is up on top of a plateau kind of like a mesa that has sloping slides. The bottom end of that area is a good 2' lower than the top end. The vole tunnels were pre-existing when we rototilled the soil and at the low end of the plateau they were a couple of feet below ground. So, I think what will work for us is just to line each raised bed. If we had perfectly level ground, a buried hardware cloth fence might work, but with the way the garden sits atop that plateau....I think burying the hardware cloth would be a big waste of time.

It way, by the way, your description several years ago of how you planted your roses in hardware cloth baskets that gave me the idea to line the raised beds with hardware cloth, so thank you for that.

Auther, Thanks for the info. I am afraid that is exactly what has happened here. I simply cannot believe that after 15 years with no rat problem in the chicken coop, suddenly in our 16th year, we have one. It is very frustrating. We have had possums move in underneath the chicken house and try to live there once a few years ago, but this is the first time we've had a rat issue. I feel like our cats could get the rat or rats (cause if I am seeing one, you know there's probably a lot more than 1) if we let the cats stay out at night, but we are so close to the Red River that all kinds of wildlife roams our property at night and it wouldn't be safe to leave pet cats outdoors. We used to let the cats stay outside at night if they wanted, but a few years back a bobcat chased one of our cats up onto the roof of our house (we saved the cat by opening the window and pulling it into the house) and that was the last time we let them stay outdoors overnight. I wish the bobcats would eat the rats!

Dawn