Critter Control Week–Moles & Voles

[Image of mole--from Wikipedia]

Isn’t he cute?  A face only a mother could love!

Despite the similarity in their names, moles and voles are very different creatures (as the photos show).  Further, they are after very different things in the garden and so control will consist of different things–although if you go to the big box stores, they may try to sell you Mole-med, an organic spray made from castor beans, for both. 

I’m not saying that’s not necessarily a good approach–I’m just saying there might be an easier way, particularly with the moles!

Moles are after one thing, primarily–grubs.  Get rid of the grubs in the lawn and you won’t have moles.  We have every critter on the planet on our property but we do not have moles–why?   Two reasons.  The prevalence of ledge makes our property not ideal for tunnelling (although tell that to the chipmunks and the voles) and we have no grubs, although all our neighbors, with their chemical lawn control companies still do.

We have no grubs–or very few grubs–because, as The Spoiler puts it–we feed every bird in Hartford County.  And grubs are wonderful bird food.  If the birds get them first, there is nothing left for the moles–and therefore we have no moles.  Pretty simple.

There are all sorts of devices on the market to rid yourself of moles from poisons, to smoke bombs to vibrating devices, but really, save yourself some trouble: invite the birds to eat the grubs and the moles will go away.  It’s a beautiful thing.  Nature in balance always is.

[Meadow vole--also from wikipedia]

Voles are a little trickier–small rodents always are, especially ones that can breed every 21 days!  Yikes!  These things use the chipmunk burrows (did I mention in the chipmunk post that chipmunk burrows often have as many as 50 different exits and entrances, so forget trying to put poison down all of those–and anyway, it is illegal) to move about and stay safe from predation and meanwhile, what they want to eat are the tender, tasty roots of your prize plants.

Repellents are only mildly effective here because repellents wash off after awhile, leaving the roots exposed.  What you need is some sort of barrier or deterrent.

There is a company that sells a hard fired baked clay product in a bag–it’s called Vole-Bloc.  The idea is that you surround the roots of the plant at planting time and the roots are then protected.  It’s a nice idea but the bag is small and retails for about $10. 

Crushed oyster shells, if you have a ready supply of them would work–but again, you need a lot for the roots of larger plants.  The product once sold as Bulb Insurance by Gardener’s Supply (at $9 a bag) was also taken off the market as too pricey, I believe.  I was just that–crushed oyster shells.

My suggestion is to use the inexpensive, non-clumping kitty litter.  I think it would function just like the Vole-Bloc–but a bag is considerably larger and costs a lot less money.

Other ideas are to surround the roots in hardware cloth or mesh screening but that is considerably more difficult to work with and more expensive as well.

Or you can spray or broadcast the mole-med repellent according to label directions.  depending on how large your concentration of voles is, it just might do the trick for you.