Preventing vole damage to mulched trees?

General Fruit Growing
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I plan on putting 6+ apples in mid-October and moving a few pears and am debating the mulch vs voles problem. Last winter/early spring we lost a few juneberry bushes to voles and so we never mulched the pears and put in a couple of those solar repell sticks that buzz. We want to mulch everything this year to help them overwinter, keep grass away, and all the other general benefits of mulch - but that seems to be a huge vole magnet.

How do you mulch but make sure voles don’t kill young trees? We plan on using the plastic tree guards, but that doesn’t help with below ground protection. Does lining the hole with chickenwire actually work without hurting the tree?

We’re in a wooded area of VA with a large vole population so I’m not sure trapping will dent the population enough to make a difference. Neither do the local foxes.

3 Likes
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Pine voles are a vexing problem at some sites, with or without mulch. I usually control them well here just by using the kind of black trays used for mixing small batches of cement and place baited spring traps under them near fruit tree trunks a few weeks before likely first snow. In the fall, pine voles will come up for food, but can spend much of the rest of the year underground.

Last season I did lose a couple young apple trees in my orchard- maybe because I moved the traps away too early. In 25 years I’ve trapped many pine voles but lost only a handful of trees to them, and I have a couple hundred apple trees at any given time in my nursery.