For the record: I buy long rolls of 2 ft. wide, 1/2" mesh, hardware cloth and use a healthy 3ft of it for each new tree I plant…making a 1+ foot diameter cylinder of it, burying it one foot above ground and one foot below, with the new tree inside. I have all types of moles, voles, gophers (though I think I trapped them out), mice, etc, and they would mess with my garden pretty seriously, but I have had zero damage to my new trees, bushes, etc. (approaching 100), since I’ve planted them this way.
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Seedy, I’m surprised it would keep gophers or pine voles out. When I lived in gopher country we used baskets of mesh or planted trees in large metal cans with the hope that by the time the cans disintegrate the tree could withstand some gopher damage. Don’t they tunnel deeper than a foot? I’m pretty sure they did in the sandy soil where I fought them.
For those lazy people like me, I use aluminum window screen on small trees and staple it together with one of those staplers which look like a pair of plyers. If you use screen much wider than you need and staple it from next to the tree going out to the edge of the screen when the tree grows it will pull the inner staples out and expand to the next staple, pull that out and continue. You can leave them on forever and even after they totally open up they protect the part of the tree still covered by screen so you won’t get full girdling. I find putting some soil over the bottom part of the screen stops the meadow voles from digging under it. This of course only works on meadow voles.
We have mostly meadow voles here, but some pine voles. I had a 6" Bartlett pear die on me once. Everything looked fine until I dug around the base and found 1" under the ground the roots were entirely stripped of bark.
Roof shingles and decon work well, put the shingles out in the summer and the voles will make homes and holes under them, put 2 tablespoons of decon under the shingles where you find homes. Birds and other critters normally leave the shingles alone especially if they have been in place for a while.
Eric
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Yes, Alan the gophers may not be thwarted, at least not for long, with a barrier only one foot deep. A lot of their root-eating activity is no deeper than that but they certainly do go deeper for nesting, etc, and would definitely be a threat. I had them about trapped out by the time I started planting new trees and berries. Everything else seems to be held back. I have had a massive burrowing vole population, the kind with paths in the grass. The big numbers seem to come and go, but there are always a few around…no problems now. Something else is making a lot of medium sized burrows this year (and no mounds…weird), and I don’t even know what it is, but it isn’t bothering my plants. I’ve had no damage to any ‘caged’ plants.
Next step is dealing with the raccoons. As my little trees start making fruit the fruit disappears if it hits the ground…even in an organza bag. Even with a big rock moved into the place they were coming in under the deer fence…they’ve moved it twice.
If you don’t want to trap them out (I use live traps then kill them with a high powered pellet gun) you can train the trees to have no branches until 3-4 ft up the trunk and staple roofing coil to the trunks starting a foot above the ground. Coons can’t pull themselves up a tree protected this way and just have to wait for drops. I use this method at scores of home orchards I manage- also against squirrels, but that requires more height and lubricant on the coil.
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That is very interesting. I plan to have my trees top out at about 8ft with branches starting ~3ft or less. What I’m seeing on a search for ‘roofing coil’ looks like a common width must be about 40"–42" pre-ribbed. If a cylinder of coil had about a 3ft diameter it could maybe sit on the ground and keep the coons out but that would cost a lot more per tree (though I have no idea how much) than a trunk wrap maybe 1ft in diameter. Actually, a 3ft diameter cylinder still wouldn’t work with 30’’ branches heights; nor would it necessarily keep out the squirrels when sitting on the ground. Am I thinking of this right? Post a photo of one in place if you get a chance. BTW I’ve seen vids of squirrels trying to climb a greased bird feeder pole…pretty funny.
PS: This thread started out being about voles…am I getting too far off the mark?
The vole questions have been addressed, we aren’t to strict about pirating here as long as the questions of the original poster have a chance to be answered. If you want to have a pedestrian orchard I would recommend an electric fence.
Ouch! Is that a peach trunk?
A warning against poisoning voles, rats etc. The dead animal is likely to be eaten by a predator (hawk, fox etc.), with the predator dying from the same poison later on, which makes the control of the rodent population even more difficult. I’d trap them with a lethal trap and then leave the carcass on the ground for the predators to take care of. That may even help attract predators to my yard. I also wouldn’t feel so bad because I would be helping the predator provide food for its cubs/ chicks…
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Yes. Lovell. It was one of the few trees I didn’t protect with spiral wrap this fall.
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Ahmad,
I wouldn’t necessarily encourage backyard growers to use rodent bait, but in larger plantings it is sometimes necessary. I use vole bait myself, zinc phosphide. Although extremely lethal to voles/rodents (and humans) it poses little risk of secondary poisoning of predators, based upon several studies.
See page 10
Other choices of rodentcides which pose little risk of secondary poisoning are Bromethalin and Cholecalciferol. Some rodentcides do pose a high risk of secondary poisoning. See table 3 of this fact sheet.
http://npic.orst.edu/factsheets/rodenticides.html
The bigger risk with most rodentcides is that a non-target animal will eat the bait itself. Products labeled for voles mitigate this risk by the application method. One application method is to broadcast the bait at the labeled rate, in which a relatively small amount is spread over a large area so that non target animals have a hard time finding enough pellets to eat at one time to receive a lethal dose. Hand baiting is another acceptable method, which requires a very small amount to be placed at active vole entrances and tunnels (which are easy to spot). Again it’s an amount of bait small enough to administer a lethal dose only to small rodents. Uneaten pellets are designed to break down quickly from moisture.
Zinc phosphide bait has an additional safety precaution in the formulation. It’s formulated with a garlic odor which tends to repel carnivores and omnivores, but, contrary to anecdotal evidence circulating on the internet, doesn’t repel voles.
Of course any poison has a risk of not target poisonings, but in terms of rodentcides, these generally occur with bait packs (in which the bait is concentrated in an area which will give a lethal dose to a larger non-target animal) or bait blocks/chunks which are weather resistant and are again sometimes large enough to administer a lethal dose to a non-target animal. Neither of these types of baits are approved for vole use.
I completely agree that poisoning voles does remove much of the food source for predators, but as with just about any high pressure pest situation (including insect pests) voles are not controlled enough with natural predators to prevent substantial damage in large plantings of trees or berries. Voles multiply here so fast in large plantings, they will literally make swiss cheese out of the ground beneath the planting.
For myself, I just bait my orchard area, so there is lots of ground which the voles can (and do) propagate, including pasture/range land on all my neighbors’ land as well. This provides plenty of vole meat for natural predators around my orchard. The week before last, I was eating lunch in my truck and saw a hawk land on a fence post not more than 20 yards from the pickup. Like a crow, they generally won’t get that close to you. I don’t see them much in the summer because the grass is taller, but they show up some in the winter and hunt the pastures when the grass has died back.
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That is sad to see. Maybe you can save some scion off of it and graft them in spring. If it isn’t one thing it is another. Hard to keep critters away.
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Thanks Bob. I have that tree grafted elsewhere, so fortunately it’s not a big deal. But I might use it as an opportunity to try my hand at bridge grafting – trying to turn lemons into lemon squares over here.
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Thanks for the comprehensive reply Olpea! You clearly did your homework 
. I remember reading an article in a scientific news journal a few years back covering the secondary poisoning of raptors as a result of eating poisoned rodents. I think that was a blood thinner type rodenticide.
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I’ve seen some interesting videos and pictures of bridge grafting. You’ve got a perfect situation for that. I had one similar to yours and ended cutting it back and bark grafting to it. So far it is working well, good luck with yours and keep us posted.
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My son has a big problem with moles and/or voles in his lawn. I suggested the car exhaust method into their tunnels. It worked great killing and chasing them from his yard. A few weeks later they were back. He tried again with the same results. The problem is that the tunnels are still there and the ones that were chased eventually come back. He payed an exterminator and had the same results. A solution is a mechanical barrier around the property but that is not practical for most people. Traps or poison used constantly or mechanical barriers around the plants needing protection seems to be the only solution.
I’m still trying to find a bait that the deep tunneling voles like. The baits I’ve tried work for a while and then the voles seem to avoid them. If I knew their favorite plant that might work as bait. I once used goji berry leaves and that worked but only when the leaves where fresh.
That is a problem to find a good bait for a home orchard. I wish I could offer help there, but any vole baits I’ve seen, require an applicator’s license.
I’ve used a couple different vole baits. I currently use ZP AG pellets (zinc phosphide). The zinc phosphide is supposed to be bitter, but the voles don’t seem to have any problem eating it. I used to use Rozal. It worked good to, but required multiple feedings to receive a lethal dose.
As you mention trapping is an option, and you’re right it requires constant diligence. The good news is that we don’t have to worry much about voles in the summer, so at least it’s not year round.
Are you talking about pine voles that eat the roots? Here they can be trapped successfully in the fall when, I guess, they come up for acorns. Otherwise you have to trap or poison them underground. They have special baiting stations for the purpose or you can make your own once you have an idea about a working design.
I have a crazy vole problem at hand. They are eating everything. Everything from tree barks to roots to leaves to veggies. I see them running around in the day light. That’s how plenty they are. I’ve used JT Eaton 166004 709-PN Bait Block Rodenticide in the past and it worked. But it’s expensive for the amount of blocks I will need. Does anybody know a cheaper but effective way to control these bastards?
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