If you’ve ever lost your precious garden plants, veggies or fruits to burrowing critters, then you’ll want to know how to get rid of voles and moles. Chances are if you’re here reading this article it’s because you know the pain of that loss.
We lost many plants to moles last year, and something is already destroying plants this season.
We were harvesting some dandelion leaves for one of our favorite salads, from our hugelkultur bed and noticed some of the plants were wilted. I went to snap a leaf off and the whole plant came up out of the ground.
That’s when I noticed the telltale furrows in the soil… those raised ridges branching out like veins on top of the garden bed. Uh-oh! Voles or moles! Darn! It’s mid spring and the garden’s just getting started and those critters are already wreaking havoc on our plants!! Turns out they can even cause damage to plants under snow cover in winter. Yikes! Makes you wonder how our pioneer ancestors survived. They couldn’t just run to the local home store for traps, poisons and other deterrents.
If you’re wondering the difference between moles and voles, hop on over to our article on moles first. There we show and tell the differences so you can be sure you’ve identified the right garden pest, so you’ll be able to determine the best plan of attack. There’s also a descriptive image below.[1]https://www.gardensall.com/how-to-get-rid-moles/
We don’t have critter problems in our straw bale garden beds. You can read more about those here.
Here, we turn our attention from moles to voles.
If you don’t want to see and learn the differences between voles and moles, etc. you can go straight to the “how to get rid of voles section here.“
VOLES: Habitat and Appearance – What does a Vole Look Like?
Size, feet, and face, fur coverage and tail, all distinguish these rodents from their subterranean insectivore counterparts, moles.
Voles are rodents. Moles are insectivores.
Voles are actually kind of cute. At least, a bit more cuddly looking than moles. Yet, these herbivores can wreak havoc on a garden in short order. They also feed on the roots and bark of woody plants, including those in nurseries and orchards where they can inflict a lot of damage in short order.
Some common names for voles include meadow moles, meadow mice, field mice, and ground moles. Voles resemble chubby house mice with short snouts, stubby tails and thickly layered fur.
These cute little herbivores can wreak havoc on your garden.
Voles live in thatch and brush cover in grassy fields, shallow tunnels, and surface runways. They also can thrive under long term snow cover, a significant factor in relation to root and stem damage.
There are numerous species, but the ones considered here are the pine vole (Microtus pinetorum), the meadow vole (Microtus pennsylvanicus), and the prairie vole ((Microtus ochrogatser). The latter two form tunnels on or near the surface while the pine vole digs deeper channels. So we likely have the meadow vole in our hugelkultur bed.
The species differ but not so much in how to control them.
Voles, Moles, Mouse and Shrew – Appearance Comparison
For an artistic sketch of the differences in these gnawing rodents and insectivore mammals in this article on how to get rid of garden moles.
What Do Voles Eat?
Voles consume mostly vegetative matter though they will devour small creatures and occasionally scavenge. They go for grains, roots, and tender bark which leads to us discovering dead plants overnight, and all to often, dead shrubs and trees that fail to flourish with new growth in the spring.
Unlike the solitary seeking moles, these little fur balls are quite gregarious, short-lived with an average life expectancy in the wild of just 6-12 months. The vole breeding season is spring-fall, around April-November, (depending on the climate) and females give birth to 5-6 litters of 4-5 babies each year.
and prolific in breeding 5-10 litters per year with 3-4 young per litter, so an average of 26 new voles per female per year. However, they’re also dying off.
Not sure the math on that but the bottom line is that there could be a perpetual population of voles at any time, happily chomping on the roots and bark of your plants and trees! And they can decimate crops in short order.[2]https://extensionpublications.unl.edu/assets/pdf/g887.pdf
The Cost of Vole Damage
Wintertime, when food sources are scarce, is the costliest period for vole damage. They will gnaw the roots below and the trunk’s green cambium layers of orchard trees and other woody plants.[3]https://extensionpublications.unl.edu/assets/pdf/g887.pdf
Plants, that are not killed directly often succumb to opportunistic diseases and pests that finish the job the voles started. Here in North Carolina our extension agents estimate that voles have inflicted moderate to severe damage to around 90 percent of the state’s home landscapes and gardens.
Vole damage to fruit tree – Image by RodRepel.com[4]https://rodrepel.com/blog/blog/woodland-voles-causing-damage/
Voles cost apple growers $50 million a year in damage.
It’s been estimated that voles cause just apple growers close to $50,000,000 a year.[5]https://rodrepel.com/blog/blog/woodland-voles-causing-damage/ They also do substantial damage to soy, corn, and potato crops, particularly those in no-till cultivation.[6]https://extension.missouri.edu/p/G9445
In order to treat the pest problem, you want to first diagnose the cause.
Do I Have Voles? Determine if You Have Voles
In our survey of the non-commercial literature, the approach that makes the most sense to us is Integrated Pest Management or IPM. In so doing, there’s no relying on a single method that may or may not yield results as desired.
The first thing is to determine if voles are about the property in question. The “Apple Sign Test” has been recommended by our NC State University as the first step. It involves setting up test sites by placing a single roof shingle on the ground and putting a morsel of food underneath it and waiting 24 hours to check it. The result is noted on a map where you’ve already marked each test site’s location. (For more details refer to the footnoted reference). [7]https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/voles-in-horticultural-plantings
At the end of the Apple Sign Test you should know if there’s a vole presence and if so, where they are generally located. The test should be conducted every fall and spring and records kept of the locations and subsequent control treatments. [8]https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/voles-in-horticultural-plantings
There are numerous ways to control vole damage and get rid of voles. Here are the four most relevant methods: Exclusion, Habitat Modification, Frightening, and Repelling.
How to Get Rid of Voles Naturally
If you’re here looking for how to get rid of voles naturally, the good news is that there are a number of options that work. One neighbor might swear by one method, whereas your other neighbor might say that same remedy hasn’t worked for him. What works for one, may not work for the next one.
Because of that, the efficacy of specific methods is hard to nail down because circumstances vary and often times it’s multiple factors that contribute.
For example,