Interesting take about rounded rocks being preferred. I used gravel that is jagged (driveway gravel) hoping that the sharpness would deter the pine voles.
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Yeah great point about the earlier apple growers.
That was my other question for you in regards to limiting the root growth with hardware cloth.
The area where my trees are planted is completely riddled with vole tunnels and holes. I have spent a lot of dough on my southern heritage apple orchard. It’s become a real passion project. So realizing the vole problem has been a big time bummer. Not too optimistic of my success here.
I went to the apple sale at Horne Creek farm near Winston Salem last weekend and the orchardist mentioned keeping the area around the trees free of any vegetation cover. Keeping it bare soil helps potentially? However after reading The apple grower by Micheal Phillips I was excited to have a biodiverse ground cover to help with nutrients for the trees. I guess I won’t be doing that. Last year I did a soil test and the soil came back very very low for phosphorus so I originally thought this was the problem. Little did I know then. I also do not want to put poison down or anything but the problem appears to be bad. I’ve seen some black rat snakes last summer so maybe they will help out when the area is mowed more regularly. One step up two steps back.
I definitely feel your pain trying to establish an heirloom apple orchard. I have bought trees from Jason at Horne Creek too. The Joyners at Big Horse Creek in Ashe County have also been wonderful to buy from.
I have mostly gone with no mulch in an effort to make the area less hospitable for the voles. The thing that may now be turning the corner (knock on wood) is my the strategy of planting garlic chives and grape hyacinth in quantity in a mass around each tree. Apparently both of these along with garlic are a bummer to the voles. The hyacinths I had tons that were overgrowing an area around my house and the garlic chives I bought a 5lb bag off Amazon and scattered generously around the trees. It may be helping more than anything else that I have tried so far - or I have just been lucky and the little suckers are leaving my trees alone.
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novole apple rootstock is supposed to be pine and meadow vole resistant
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Good info, thanks!
Thanks for the heads up. I just bought some garlic chive seeds. I’ll start them and then plant them around my apple trees. Gotta go at this problem multiple ways.
Do you maintain the area around your trees regularly? Seems like mowing helps with meadow voles but not so much with pine voles?
Some of the darn holes go over a foot deep?
Everything I read says pine vole tunnels are 2-4 inches in depth. I just can’t get over how many holes there are in my apple orchard .
I do think making a noxious stink zone will help make it less appealing for the voles to go after the adjacent apple tree roots. I wonder too about keeping everything bare around the trees as that mostly seems to be mentioned in terms of dealing with Meadow Voles which are above ground vs. the subterranean Pine Voles who probably couldn’t care less about what’s on the surface.
I have partly excavated the runs and places a mouse trap in them baited with a chunk of apple (they ignored peanut butter). In the colder months I have managed to trap a few but that is probably not doing a lot to work in the whole colony.
Bonus on the garlic chives is that we can use them in the kitchen!
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Here is an update on the gravel experiment. it has been three weeks since I dug 3-4 inch deep trenches around the small apple trees filled them with gravel and put gravel around the trees.
I did not observe any new pine vole tunnels around the trees that I put gravel around. Which is encouraging. The few trees that I removed the mulch and just left as bare soil around the trees. had new Pine Vole tunnels.
So maybe its working? Or the critters are actively munching on grass roots instead of the apple roots? I will continue to update and see how this journey goes. Thanks again.
I also planted garlic chives around the apple trees.
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Here is a late July update on the gravel experiment. Out of my 13 small apple trees. 7 of the apple trees had no vole tunnels underneath the gravel. There were vole tunnels all around the outside of the graveled area. So that is promising.
6 apple trees had vole tunnels that made it into the gravel area. Three of the trees had tunnels right up to the tree trunk.
The other three had a tunnel or two but not going to the tree trunk.
All the trees are alive and look pretty good. other than two that have vole tunnels to the roots. They are alive but have not grown.
So it appears that the gravel may help? But if they want they seem to be able to tunnel underneath the surface gravel (if its not deep or wide enough).
I think the small trench i dug around each tree that I filled with gravel has helped. I only dug it 4-6 inches deep maybe 3-4 inches wide. So I think the voles were able to go around the small trench i dug. So digging a deeper and wider one may do a better job.
My next step will be to expand the gravel area around each of the trees and dig a trench two-three feet from the tree trunk maybe 10 inches deep and fill it with gravel.
My hope is that if i expand the gravel area the voles will not be interested in tunneling under the gravel. Also remove the vegetation to be 4-5 feet from the tree trunk.
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Here is an update. I decided to go another route and use hardware cloth instead of gravel.
I dug a 10-12 inch trench around a few of the apple trees and placed a 16 inch in height hardware cloth in the trench. Hardware cloth is 10-12 inches deep around the trees, about 2 feet from the tree trunk.
Surely this will prevent the pine voles from getting to the roots.
The goal is to give the trees a chance to grow roots and get large enough to be able to handle some pine vole damage. Right now the apple trees do not have a chance becaus ethe voles just destroy the roots.
I am concerned that the hardware cloth may limit the root growth of the trees in a few years. So I will attempt to remove the hardware cloth in a few years.
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Callery and Betulafolia are vole resistant, Callery is a great Rootstock for apples and most can be grafted directly, but a Winter Banana or Clara Frijs interstem could help, judging from my Frankentree a Crispen interstem might be even better for Apples.
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