How do I stop voles from eating my potatoes?
Voles can be a big problem for any garden located in rural areas. These voracious herbivores live in nearby fields and have no compunction about migrating into gardens where they can be quite destructive. Although they will dine on virtually any kind of plant material at any time of day or night, they seem to be partial to root vegetables, particularly potatoes, beets and carrots. However, don't be surprised if they poach the leaves off your beans while they're at it.
Controlling voles can be difficult.
It helps to know that they like to nest in tall grass and weeds. They also like to do their dining there or just under the soil surface in one of their runs. Therefore, keeping the grass in and around your garden cut short will deprive them of their preferred habitat, making your garden a little less attractive to them than the field next door. Removing any brush that has accumulated on your property will also be helpful.
Quite a few gardeners swear by installing hardware cloth around their garden beds which acts as a physical barrier these rodents can't chew their way through. However, keep in mind that voles are talented burrowers, so if you chose to go this route, you'll need to install the hardware cloth so that it extends at least a foot above and below the soil surface if it's going to stand a chance of being effective. Once the voles get into your garden beds, installing hardware cloth could trap them inside and cause a localized ecological disaster.
You can also try trapping them using mousetraps baited with fresh fruit or peanut butter. This can be a labour intensive way to go, but it can also be an effective way to keep the population under control.
By far the best way to control voles is to install a cat. It doesn't even have to be an athletic mouser. Even a lazy old fleebag of a cat will keep the voles at bay simply by parking itself in the vicinity of your potatoes. Voles hate cats that much.
Whatever you do, you will likely still end up losing at least part of your crop this year. Vole populations tend to be cyclical, spiking every three to four years. This seems to be one of those spike years and with any luck, next year things will return to normal.
If you have any questions or comments, please send them to me at vanessa@gardenmuse.ca.
