OMG tonight I had a deceased vole in my kitchen. Either the dogs or the cats brought it in. I applaud them for assisting in the fight against the voles through the power of nature’s predator and prey scenario but I’m not sure the kitchen floor is the place to dump the bodies.
The Battle Rages On
The epic battle of human and hosta versus vole continued this morning with my waking to find two more hosta destroyed. I think I am losing about one or two a week at this point. I can’t protect them fast enough and the voles are now walking right through the repellant to get to the hosta. Maybe that’s a good sign? Maybe they are desperate?
Or maybe they are mutant voles for which there is no defense!!!
Today’s destruction includes a Dream Weaver – oh the horror. Do you know how slow this hosta is? Let me tell you, it’s a S L O W W W grower and the voles knocked it back several seasons. The second victim was one of three Diamond Tiara. Come to think of it, I can only remember two of them so maybe the third was actually a winter victim?? I have to see if I can remember where I put that third one. Hmmm.
Dream Weaver sans roots:
Diamond Tiara:
Interestingly I also dug up a hosta right next to this one because I found a vole hole right at its crown. The crown was still there and several big fat roots came out from it BUT there was virtually no smaller, capillary/feeder root system! I think that winter vole feeding reduced the roots dramatically and it was only able to grow new roots once spring began. It explains why many of my hosta did not increase in size from last year.
Battle Royale
The battle is on, voles! Although I had decided I could not purchase any more hosta until I had protected all of my existing (and rapidly diminishing from vole attack) plants I COULD NOT RESIST!!! Yes, you heard it here first, a hosta addict BROKE DOWN and ordered a plant. Ok, TWO plants but who’s counting? Hey, it did take until the second week in June – and I am not going to count those filler plants I ordered for the front yard… seriously, they don’t count – so I figure I’m doing pretty good. Right?
So what is this girl doing spending eighty bucks on a few … ok, TWO plants when she has a vole infestation that is insanely out of control? I don’t know. She’s crazy. But seriously, these are two FINE plants that will be arriving this week so it’s time to break out the big guns.
Today I hauled blocks around in 90 degree weather interspersed with rain showers (the southern blight was in HEAVEN – sing it like Jon Stewart for the full effect) to build a raised bed for the largest of the two – Empress Wu. My Pearl S. Buck phase had nothing to do with it. The sheer size of this plant had EVERYTHING to do with it.
The blocks I used to make the raised bed were from the concrete garden that I took all apart today. I left the concrete pavers buried in the ground but I ripped the whole raised planter out and moved it to the back yard under an american cherry weed, I mean tree. It’s probably in more sun now than it will be once the tree grows in a bit and the new fence goes up but I’ll put a sunscreen up for now to dampen the effect.
Most importantly I purchased hardware cloth that is a metal screen with openings about only a quarter of an inch wide. I spread it out and cut it to line the entire bottom of the raised bed/planter. Now that’s some vole proofin’ there.
Can’t wait till the Empress gets here. Maybe with this set up I’ll finally be able to have a hosta actually mature to a decent size!
Cheesefry Caught a Vole
Cheesefry the cat was out in the garden with me today and while I was busy vole proofing a new bed, she was busy vole hunting near the compost pile. She caught one but then being the not-so-smart cat that she is, she brought it over to me and dropped it in a hosta bed.
Panic.
It immediately tried to hide by squeezing itself into a gap in the bed’s edging. With nothing on hand except empty pots that had been holding the plants I was moving, I threw a pot over it. Then I grabbed a couple of other pots and put them together to get block the drain holes and scooped him up.
Now what.
I’m not an animal killer, despite my urges to the contrary when it comes to voles. I had to let him go but I did take him far-far away and put a good sized piece of asphalt between him and my garden before I let him go.
Voles and My Hosta Gardens
Do you have hosta damage? Not sure what’s causing it? It could be voles!
When you grow hosta in my neck of the woods, you tend to attract voles. Some people’s gardens will attract bunnies, others will attract deer, but in my garden – it’s voles! The winter of 2007/2008 was a terrible time for my yard and I lost many plants thanks to these little angels. Though their populations ebb and flow, the abandonment of the house next door to mine in 2007 was probably the biggest cause of the 2008 vole explosion. After the house was abandoned, the yard quickly grew into an overgrown jungle, perfect cover for the little critters despite the best efforts of the neighborhood cats.
Voles are sometimes referred to as meadow mice and they do look a lot like mice. While moles have interestingly star shaped noses and paddle clawed feet, voles look like little mice with short tails. Moles also eat insects and earthworms whereas voles love to snack on plants like hosta crowns and roots! If you think you just have moles BUT you also have damage to your plants, you probably also have voles but you just haven’t seen them. Lazy little buggers like to mooch of pre-dug mole holes to infiltrate a yard fast.
What could indicate that you might have voles eating your hostas from below ground? A telltale sign as your hostas come up is some of the leaves coming up mature and others looking like baby, immature leaves. Here’s an example of Hosta “Tall Boy”. You can see that there are a few eyes of normal, mature leaves and other eyes that look like first year plants! The difference with this particular plant is really striking because most of the plant is truly TALL.
What else might you see? Walking through my garden I noticed a hosta that looked like it was tipping over. It was perfectly normal looking on top but didn’t seem to be attached to the soil – and it wasn’t! Here it is after I was able to lift it right out of the ground. You can see that the entire root system is gone.
Hope you enjoyed my white trash, bottle plant marker. They last and the rake doesn’t pull them up in the fall and if you drink enough, they’re free :-) So the middle of the crown of that first plant was eaten by voles and it’s trying to come back by starting fron scratch. The second plant, A Many Splendored Thing, is going to have to start over again completely.
Sometimes you will see a normal looking plant but with a leaf or two seemingly having shrunk down into the ground. Imagine you dig a borrow under the hosta crown and pull a hosta leaf into the hole by the petiole (stem from crown to leaf). I’ll have to see if I can get a photo. Thankfully, don’t have one yet!
Update from early June 2008! Here’s that sinking leaf I described above. First you see that the leaf looks like it is buried in the ground but with a simple lift, you can remove it whole and find the hole! Hosta is Hadspen Blue that is in way too much sun but I haven’t had the urge to move it:
Here’s another sample of vole destruction. The first photo is from May of 2007 and the second photo is the same plant in May of 2008 after voles moved into the bed.
Can you believe that is the same plant? Voles ate it up good. Now some people are going to tell you that your mulch is what is “attracting” the voles. Yes, voles like to have groundcover to build little vole highways but I never had an issue with voles – sure they were around, but never to the degree that they showed up after the house was abandoned next door – and I’ve always used mulch because of my sandy, quick draining soil. The overgrown yard next door, on the other hand, was an ideal environment for building a vole metropolis.
Signs of vole activity added in June:
So what did I do? I’ve decided to implement a multipronged strategy. One of the most important things I am doing is to amend my soil with sharp gravel around my plants. This is not cheap but it’s a permanent strategy. Voles’ sensitive noses and skin can’t tolerate digging through sharp stone. For my soil, I am using a lot of Espoma Soil Perfector that is a kiln-fired ceramic material. It also happens to be a great soil amendment for my sand pit. No matter how much organic matter I add, it breaks down and leaches away so quick it’s crazy. Here’s a vole-eaten Gold Standard with the new soil perfector worked into the soil. To rescue the plant, I dug it up completely, dug the hole out even further than the existing root ball and started filling in with the gravel type stuff in a layer of about an inch or two. Then I filled in further with soil and gravel stuff all mixed together and then replanted the hosta in the mix.
Here is the same hosta last year (2007):
Since this is a long term process - I have several hundred hosta and can only seem to find soil perfector in small quantities - I am also using repellants. I’ve heard that repellants don’t work but the voles seem to be pretty freaked out when I first started using the repellants on the hosta beds. The repellant that I am using now is MoleMax by Bonide and I’ve also used Sweeney’s Mole and Vole Repellant. There was all sorts of instant activity which was them scattering to other parts of the yard, preferably OUT of the yard.
There is also a possibility that I can use chicken grit. I’ll be checking that out when I can find it. Yes, there are poisons and traps and such but I won’t be able to use them with a good concience. Another thing I did do was to mow a ten foot strip of the yard next door when no one was looking. Now there is a border along my yard where there is no cover for the voles to travel. With everything I’m doing, I hope I’ll see a reduction in activity. I’ll let you know how it goes!
