Oh boy I know just how you feel. My backyard is like a small zoo with all kinds of animals. I love it, but the animal visits are hard on the garden. I've got a band of three deer that occassionally browse through. What the deer don't eat the woodchucks eat and what the woodchucks leave the slugs polish off. I've given up on growing vegetables. I'd need a very tall fence to keep the deer out. There are a few flowers I've found that deer avoid, like heliopsis, daffodils, torenia, snapdragon, peony, mints, monarda and some more. I've got some garden plants growing on the window sill. My dad doesn't bother to ask what I'm growing anymore, instead he'll ask, "What's on the menu this year?"

Here is a link that might be useful: my webpage

My dashound Oscar is very good at killing moles and voles. So good in fact I hardly see them anymore.
I can relate to having the wild life parade thru the yard. Having two Border Collies besides the Dashound has cut down on the deer coming close to the house. Not sure if it's the scent of the dogs or the randomness of when they are out on and off leash that have taught the deer to stay clear.
Woodchucks on the other hand.....nothing seems to stop them. For every one you see there are 6 more underground :(

I can relate to you too, susan. I have a serious vole situation in my yard that three cats and a dog doesn't seem to solve.
I planted bulbs and perennials last fall and I brought out all the artillery I could (sharp stones, hot sauce, cayenne pepper, garlic bulbs, moth balls, and bulb baskets). I'm hoping one of them will prevent them from getting them. Everytime I see a hole, I pour ammonia down it. (At least the plastic ammonia bottles make great WSing containers)

I use all the methods that lblack61 listed and it did help. You can dip bulbs in hot sauce before you plant them to keep them away from the bulbs. I also plant ornamental allims and garlic around my bulbs and plants that are susceptible to voles. THey are attracted to plants that grow from bulbs and rhizomes. I also soak my soil where there tunnels are very early in the spring with a hole bottle of hot sauce in a bucket of hot water. I just dump the whole bucket on in and down the holes. Last year I had very little problems. So far this year I haven't seen any holes or any activity. You have to cave those holes in as soon as the ground thaws out. Poke a dowel or stick in the soil all around the area where you see tunnels and then blast it with tons of water with hot sauce to settle all that soil back down.

Penny

Growing up, we had a cat that would catch/kill moles and line them up in a straight row on the side of the house! Sometimes 8-10 moles at a time. After a while, he stopped doing it. I guess he got rid of all the moles in the neighborhood.

When my husband visited my parents house for the first time(they had moved out of the old neighborhood) my cat, who was now 17, caught a mole and left it in front of the door as a "present" for him!

I guess that cat was just a good "mouser" b/c my two kitties, who are indoor cats, won't even catch the mice that live under the kitchen sink. We had to buy traps.

Here is a link that might be useful: Pest FAQ link

My scottie takes care of most of ours (she loves to hunt moles and voles, and is very good at it. She finds them before they are even above ground.) I know we had one or more under the bird feeder this winter, and the dog's been nosing around the tunnels the last few days (I'd intended to collapse them tomorrow, but we got more snow.) My mom's dog doesn't seem to be a hunter, though, so my mom had luck with a baited have-a-heart trap. She caught almost thirty voles (and one or two moles) last summer and released them in the woods a half mile or so away. I have a feeling her numbers will be down this year -- an opossum moved into the neighborhood last week.

I'm pretty lucky -- no woodchucks, no chipmunks, no deer (though they aren't more than a few blocks to the north), and, for no reason I can find, no slugs. Even with nicely mulched beds and lots of yummy hosta. Usually, I just lose a few plants (like all my tiarella, grr)to the oversized rabbits that stop by. My dog gets the moles and voles in the backyard, and the neighbor down the street's cat gets them from the front and side yards.

Voles are a pain as they are quite prolific breeders! Using mouse traps with peanut butter can be somewhat effective as male and females are closely bonded. Persistence above all else is required. Place the traps next to the hole and cover with a bucket, secured to keep other critters out. A heavy rock will do.

Generally, there is at least an indirect relationship between the number of grubs and vole population, which is a favorite food source. Which is why after the ground freezes they turn to roots for food in the winter. Using grub poison might be effective short term, but will only make things worse in the long run all the way around. Nematodes have been effective for controlling grubs in the past for 1 or 2 years at a time. This year i might try the Milky Spore route. Actually, voles are amazingly effective grub eaters, if only they weren't a rodent with rodent habits.

One interesting result came from trapping. The dead voles were tossed along the edge of the yard on the wooded side. Mostly cause the crows would stop every morning to clean things up. However, soon a fox picked up on the easy meal and it appears began hunting the voles, judging from their lack of presence that coincided with seeing this fox hangng around from time to time.

Other options include using large plastic pots buried underground as a barrier to protect the plants. Just make sure there are enough holes in the bottom to provide appropriate drainage as not to waterlog the plants. Something not yet tried but might, is to use the same material used to block out weeds from growing, as a barrier. Also, somewhat effective is the use of cocoa shells, apparently they do not like the smell.

That's what the Air Force is for. Mostly red tailed hawks, but there are a few others that show up. I think it was a Cooper's hawk that spent a lot of time in my neighbor's white pines last year, and every now and then I see an osprey or an eagle. The red tailed hawks are very good at rodents, and every now and then I see a squirrel tail in a very unlikely place, like ten feet up a tree.

It's strange to be outside, see one of the hawks circling, and realize that everything has disappeared - the birds, the squirrels - everything but me and the insects has gone into hiding.

BTW, during the winter and early spring there are a lot of raptors hanging out on the Thruway in Greene Co. They sit in the trees and wait for the cars to catch something.

Voles don't eat grubs, moles do. Voles are Herbivores and only eat plants, roots, rhizomes,etc. During the winter months they will eat the bark of the lower part of shrubs and trees to survive until things start to grow again. However voles don't have the capability of digging tunnels like moles do and they will use the same tunnels that moles use. Consequently they are often mistaken for one another when problems arise in the garden.

Penny

Were their "tunnels" on top of the soil between the snow and the top of the ground. If so that is definately voles. They will also use mole tunnels. As was stated above moles eat grubs and earthworms, so it is hard to get rid of them since worms are plentiful in a well established and garden with healthy soil. The best course of action is to trap them and relocate them to another area. I use a Tin Kat for the voles and a Havaheart Trap for moles, woodchucks and rabbits. I relocate them to a wooded rural area about 10 miles from our house that is not close to anyone elses homoe or farm (hard to find in some areas, I know).

I also have tremendous success with a product called MoleMax and a Shake-Away product that contains powdered animal urine. Once the population got down, I maintained it with these products. So far so good.

I replanted a bunch of bulbs last fall and dipped them in a product called Ropel. It is typically for spraying on foliage, but there is a small blurb on the bottle about soaking your bulbs in it for 5 minutes, let them dry, then plant them. I also planted daffodils around these other bulbs, since they do not like them. I also placed MoleMax in the holes before planting. If they ate these, then I give up. As soon as the snow finishes melting I can see if it worked.

Hmm. I've had a Cooper's Hawk hang around all fall and winter, and while it's landed on the pole holding the bird feeder (and my patio chairs) it's never touched a vole or mole as far as I can tell. And my mom and her thirty or so voles had red tailed hawks around. They (the hawks)preferred bunny to vole. We used to have an owl around when I first moved in, but he hasn't been heard in a few years (I never saw him).

They ate all the bunnies. We used to have some, but haven't for a long time. I forgot about the owls and the semi-feral cats.

IES seriously recommends pulling all the mulch out of perennials beds so the voles don't have cover for the winter as a method of controlling a serious infestation. Until the snow shows up, they are easy prey without cover. The tunnels do tend to stay near the wilder areas, and areas the snow stays around longest.

Hi Penny,

please do some googling and you will find that voles will tunnel and they will even resort to cannibalism. In fact quite often if i've not checked the traps in a day or two, the caught vole will be half eaten with clear indication it was by another vole.

ciao

Hi nagamaki,
I didn't mean to say that they don't tunnel. What I was trying to say is that they don't have the ability to create tunnels as well as moles and will use mole tunnels when available. Over the past 3-4 years, I have done a lot of research on voles and it wasn't limited to online information. I have also talked to people I know it the pest control field, wildlife management as well as lawn and garden seminars but you may know something that I don't. I suppose that it is possible that they will resort to canabalism if they are hungry enough.

Penny

Thanks for the suggestions. A friend today recommended sprinkling epsom salts on the garden. She says it also adds nutrients that help plants.

On another forum someone mentioned rat poison that you get in those boxes to set out under a flower pot so other animals won't get at it.

After a foot of new snow last night I feel even more helpless. The tunnels are in the soil, not in the snow.

Hi again, there is no need to despair. There are many quite beautiful perennials that are naturally poisonous, and the voles will leave them alone. Overtime this has been the best solution, without risking a rat poisoned vole finding its way out and then eaten by a pet, fox, or hawk.

ciao

When I lost an entire border, I set out mouse poison. I put it in empty tin cans with the cans on their side and a rock or board over it to prevent birds and other animals from snacking. That went in alongside a stone wall - a favorite habitat for the little beasties. I never saw a dead vole so they must have died in their tunnels but since then the plants have not been bothered. When all the roots are gone and your plant or bush just comes up with not even a tug - that's voles.
A good deterrent with bulbs is to plant them in chicken grit with more grit on top and around. A shovelful of grit to each bulb will do it. Lilies are especially fond of growing in grit and it keeps voles off at the same time.

Wow...lots of great information here!
nagamaki, I wish the voles in my yard would resort to cannibalism...of each other!! I probably won't see any of the Hostas roots I planted last year, and skeptical on any of the Lupine roots I planted the same time.
I have started two kinds of Euphorbia ("mole spurge") to hopefully help stave off the critters.
I have both moles and voles in my yard...the voles disturb me more because they eat the bulbs and roots of the things we gardeners work so hard to plant! But I put down Milky Spore last fall to begin getting rid of the grubs the moles are after. I'm probably going to order something from Gardens Alive to give more immediate prevention of grubs (and, thereby, moles).
When I moved here, 3 years ago, DH said, "No, we don't have any grubs, the lawn is fine". I should have followed my heart THEN and bought the arsenal. I know now that with critters, one begets the other...an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure!
My cats would rather go after bunnies and the birds at the feeder than the voles (I admit, they are probably cuter and more challenging than voles).

Nagamaki, what *are* the perennials that moles don't like? They better have nice flowers or I'm not planting them. My fenced in garden is small enough as it is.

The varmints ate my scented violets, centranthus, beets, carrots, parsley, and dianthus so far. The rest of the garden was still snow covered..

Mouse and rat poison in those triangular shaped boxes kill not by poison, but by anticoagulation... prevents blood from clotting so they bleed to death. I don't think a large mammal who eats the dead animal would have a problem, but I may be wrong. Aspirin does the same thing in humans in much lower doses for us.

I'm kinda desperate at the moment. This stress isn't good for my health. Gardening is supposed to be relaxing. AAARGHHH.

Susan
I interplant flowering allium bulbs, garlic and daffodil bulbs with my other bulbous plants. The voles won't touch plants in the allium family (ornamental onions, garlic, etc.) or daffodils.

Penny

Hi Susan,

the link below is a starting reference. There are numerous plants not on this particular list, too. Generally speaking if the plant is deer resistant the voles will also not find it very appetizing.

a few others:
perennial foxglove
corydalis
trillium
lilly of the valley
wild phlox
clematis
alpines - various
crocosmia (lucifer)
peonies - except very young plants
blood root
creeping phlox

though not deer resistant, the voles have not bothered the daylilies, shasta daisies, asian lilies, or tea roses

ciao

Here is a link that might be useful: Deer resistant list

I had voles real bad last year until I started using this stuff called Mole Stop, which is just watered down castor oil. It really worked. You spray it on and then water it in if you have moles, but since I determined that I had voles, which eat plants, not bugs, and "tunnel" through the grass, I didn't water it in. I just left it on the surface. After a hard rain, you have to put it on again. I also bought some traps, but they didn't catch anything, I think because by that time they were already staying out of the garden. I didn't see another vole or their damage in the garden area after I started spraying regularly. They stayed in the lawn, which was okay with me.

I read somewhere that voles may be attracted to your garden by sunflower seeds from a bird feeder. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Perhaps I should plant my sunflowers far away from my flower gardens.

I looked for all the mole products mentioned above, but didn't find any that were safe to use on food. Not all of the above were available where I looked, though. My veggies and flowers are in the same fenced-in area. I'd like to find some pure castor oil.

So far I caved in all tunnels and I'm using hot sauce, epsom salts, and traps baited with apples under a shingle (which the Cornell Coop. Ext. recommended.) Today there is no sign of new activity, but I'm afraid to go ahead and plants peas.

They ate all my tulip bulbs but haven't found the site of last year's tulips which are coming up. I doused them with hot sauce....gotta go shopping for more tabasco. I wonder if my veggies will absorb the hot pepper with the water and taste awful.

Next step is the rat poison under a bucket outside my fence.
Thanks for the wealth of great ideas here. You guys are the best.

gottagarden,
Yes the sunflower seeds will draw them in. That is how I ended up with a bad infestation of them 2 yrs. ago. I had a bird feeder outside my kitchen window. Early in the spring before all the snow melted, I noticed tunnels in the snow beneath the feeder. My husband said it was a squirrel. Later after the snow melted and the seeds that fell on the ground germinated, I noticed one day there were seedlings and the next day they were gone. we couldn't figure out what was going on. I had tons of seedlings to start with and they went down to about 20. I dug them up and spread them out so they would have room to grow. They wer looking good and growing well. One day I was trimming the bushes across from them and I saw the little creatures eating my seedlings. They ate nearly evey one plus any seed that had fallen. I quickly removed the seed feeder and built cages around the remaining sunflowers that did finally grow to maturity. Then they started going after my other stuff. I would find holes everywhere around the perimter of the house. I even had one swimming in the little rock pool I had made for the squirrels from a large plant saucer while I was sitting only about 3 0r 4 ft. away. I waged all out war that summer and again last spring. I still put seed out for the birds but as far away from the house as I can get and only when there is no food for them anywhere else.

Susan
you can buy the cheapest hot sauce available in the biggest bottle you can get and it will work just as good as tabasco. I have an Aldi's grocery store near me that sells it in larger bottles for about a buck. I soaked my beds down with it last year and had no problems. I planted my tulips in a galvanized tub last year and they couldn't get into that. So far this year I have not seen any tunnels but that isn't saying they are gone for good. The more ammended your soil gets the better they like it as it makes for easy tunneling.

Penny

Thanks Penny, you are a wealth of information! I can tell you research your knowledge.

I'm glad to know about the sunflowers. I never noticed voles until I planted sunflowers. Then I found these surface tunnels in the mulch right near the sunflowers. I'm going to move sunflowers and hope the voles that are here will move on.

Glad I was able to help. I only do a lot of research when it is something that really hits home for me. Voles hit home big time 2 seasons ago and we did talk to professionals and make notes of all observations. I quickly learned that it was going to be a problem that would not go away by itself nor was it something that I had to put up with. I am basically a nature friendly person but unlike a lot of critters in our yards, voles won't leave of their own accord and they do bring lots of diseases with them and they do multiply faster than rabbits. So this is one critter that isn't even slightly tolerated and that had to be eliminated one way or the other.

I am still growing sunflowers but I am wintersowing them now in containers with covers and they won't be transplanted until they are are good size that isn't as palatable to these little beasts. They are also grown in a more open area where there is little cover for them to hide in away from the house.

Penny

Milky Spore doesn't work well in central new york. It doesn't stay hot long enough to be effective.

You are better off just putting down the chemical that kills grubs through their feeding. It has to be applied at certain times of the year, that correlates to specific temperatures. It is a better way to get the grubs.

Your local Cooperative Extension should have literature you can have sent to you with the exact dates. Or, buy the grub killer products you see in the stores, and follow the directions in regards to timing and temperature.

Get your neighbors to put up beetle traps, then they will be attracted to them, and lay their eggs away from your lawn! LOL

Sterling

First, i take back the grub as a favorite food statement of voles. They do, however, canibalize as reported in published research and witnessed by the half eaten voles regularly found in my traps.

Second, using grub killer only compounds grub problems and weakens the entire ecosystem of the lawn, not to mention introdruces toxins into the home environment. Using traps is a very good idea and works quite effectively.

Grub killer won't matter for voles. Moles, sure. They eat grubs.

Voles eat those nice, tender roots of your plants and young shoots, they eat the strawberries on my strawberry plants, they eat the bird seed that spills to the ground. They also steal hosta leaves and other large plant leaves for nesting.

If the weather holds tonight, maybe I'll let the dog root around a bit in the flower beds. If she's too rusty at catching them, I'll bring out the hot sauce.

That's how I understand it, hammerl...Moles eat grubs, Voles eat roots and plants.
Penny, I will heed your past experience regarding the bird feeders. Actually, the ground around the feeders didn't get really messy until the Starlings started visiting. They are messy eaters!!

I have been keeping a large coffee can of my good seed mix outside with a lid on of course. Well my favorite little squirrel family decided that I hadn't put out any seed for them in a few days and decided to raid the larder themselves. I went out this morning and found that they had eaten the lid off the good fruit and nut mixture. Now I have seed allover the ground that I will have to clean up as soon as some of the snow melts or else I will be providing a smorgasborg for the voles. They didn't touch the other can of cheap seed.

Penny

Squirrley connosieurs, huh? lol.
Oh boy.
I've started some Euphorbia, as I mentioned earlier in this post. I'm thinking of growing some around the bird feeders, to see if it will work on voles like they say it works on moles. I'm getting enough seedlings that I think I will be able to do this.
I'll let everyone know if it works, cuz I'm not sure there's that much hot sauce in the world to handle these critters!

Good luck. I wouldn't bet on it, they'd probably call Euphorbia dinner.

In the midst of all the grub and cannibalism reports, one little thing about voles stood out sharply to me in one of the posts, and was unremarked upon by others:

The relationship of mulches to voles: I have very large gardens and serious vole problems (not moles), but this year I was keeping careful notes and it is the beds with the mulches that had the worst damage. Also the beds with plants that had been carried in large pots with a loose composted-bark laden potting soil for a summer. (I moved three truckloads of plants from my VA garden several years ago. In order to do that I had to pot them up in large pots, so they still have reservoirs of this transitional soil around them.)

My native soil is a gravelly loan but I have expended a lot of effort to incorporate huge amounts of organic matter in the beds and been rewarded by the damned voles. In the newer areas which haven't been in cultivation for as long I had much less damage, even for similar (meaning identical) stock plants. So I'm going to be rethinking this. I make and apply dozens of yards of compost every year, a big component of it is composted wood chips which leave a wonderful texture but are apparently heaven for voles.

Aside from my six cats (who easily kill a vole apiece per day), the only other things that seems like a good bets to me are paying much more rigid attention to removing scruffy areas late in the season and making a final big push to remove every vestige of landscaping fabric which provides cover for the voles.

Has anybody made wire fabric or screen vole guards around the bases of shrubs? I only see above-ground damage up to about 6 or 7 inches, so that might be feasible. Do you think they would go over and then down in? My poor Exbury Az. had a hard time of it this year. Makes you want to cry to waste three or four years growth! But they don;t seem to have done thier usual damage to the Sib. Iris. I suppose thay are saving that for late April ....@#$%^&(*&?!

Molly~

The voles in my garden love it there because it is very soft, sand based, trucked in soil in raised beds. They find the garden and go, "Whoopee!" They barely have to work to tunnel.

The vibrating mole stake works to protect only the surrounding 6 inches because the soil is so loose. HA! But I've got the traps set under the buckets and it's working. You do what ya gotta do.

I find they set up housekeeping when the plants are full grown and they have some leaf cover (or snow cover or mulch cover).

I am trying Permatill this year to replace the 10 rose bushes I lost to voles. Pricey, but giving it a try.

Here is a link that might be useful: Permatill's VoleBloc

from what I have been told Chiocken or Turkey grit sold at feed stores will work the same way and is much much cheaper than the VoleBloc. I haven't used it yet myself but I will after I get my beds planted the way that I want them.

Penny

The voles are back again, eating the roots of perennials and fluffing up the soil. I've been catching them in a snap trap for mice baited with sunflower seeds, under a bucket where their tunnels are, and it's working. Make sure the bucket is low enough to not allow birds to enter.

I catch a lot that way. I dig a hole in the woods with my heel and bury them. I have no feelings for voles in my garden. They are not cute.

The tunneling varmints in my garden are chippies. They have staked out the area round about my shed. No harm no foul. However, this year they have decided to extend their holdings to the gardens containing my prize roses. Not good. I may have to resort chipmonkicide. Oh Nooooo.

In the last week and a half with have trapped 9 voles in 2 TomCat brand Multicatch traps. One placed along the back fence where they are tunneling in from my neighbors tall ornamental grasses growing behind my fence and the other trap placed along the foundation in front behind one of my azalea bushes. I think this has been a record. Thanks goodness they haven't bothered my plants (maybe besides being deer and bunny resisitant they are also vole resisitant but I DO NOT want these things anywhere near my yard. I even had my neighbor move his wood pile for his fire pit away from his his and put it out in the back 40 b/c it was too close to my house. That is when I started catching so many. They were obviously living in that wood pile.

Penny