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How To Effectively Control Voles In The Garden. Why Sounds & Sprays Do Not Work On Voles.
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Nov 23, 2022
When it comes to controlling voles in the garden you need to look at the whole environment. The key here is to ensure an open space where they can not hide from predators. Also removing food sources such as leftover root veggies is key for vole control. Castor Oil For Voles: https://geni.us/Nm8X Tunnel Vole Trap (place this next to the hole): https://geni.us/pTzSq Vole PVC T-Trap: https://geni.us/ebyGJgB Poisoned Mouse Bait: https://geni.us/xHpMTA References: Pine Vole Control Study: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1149&context=voles Penn State Vole Guide: https://extension.psu.edu/voles Plant Based Vole Control Study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0261219401001016 University of California: http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7439.html 🎥 2 N D. C H A N N E L https://youtube.com/channel/UCjui7H4Eczaoj3Z92AC-LBQ
View Video Transcript
0:00
I have a vole problem. Hello plant people, how are you guys doing today? If you're new around here
0:04
my name is Ashley and we are in the kitchen because I'm canning and doing all sorts of stuff
0:09
and one thing I am doing today is beets. Now, I have a vole problem out at the farm. I want to
0:15
show you how to identify vole damage and specifically how to take care of voles or at
0:22
least at a minimum control them because eliminating them entirely, especially in rural settings
0:28
It's going to be very difficult. So let's get into it So I have never had wool issues in my garden my parents have and this is kind of my first time at having a
0:37
Bowl issue So I grew some enormous beets this year literally the size of my head and it's normal for beets to have kind of this rough
0:48
Upper lip that's normal because there's several stems and leaves coming out the top
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So it can give you a rough appearance, especially as these leaves die out
0:56
out what's not normal however is complete gaps and chew marks which is what quite a number of my
1:05
beats have and you can see some are scarred over and then others are relatively fresh and i would
1:13
have liked to have left my beats in it's looking like it's going to possibly be a later knock on
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wood winter and so i wanted to leave them in place but unfortunately this sort of damage to your beat
1:26
will completely decimate any storage time that the beet did have so these guys will not be stored
1:33
i'm going to have to basically cut this in half and i'm only going to be able to use the portions
1:37
of it that are not not on so just this back half and that's the case for a large number of these
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big bad boys so i'm going to be making borscht i have my beef stock brewing from scratch and going
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I'm going to do beet relish and then I'm just going to can pressure can just beets in general
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So I got to get an entire Rubbermaid of these guys processed. We don't eat a ton of beets
2:02
We eat some beets. So I didn't do a whole Swacklow to have one single Rubbermaid
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I sure it like a hundred pounds worth of beets but I mean some people like beets more than others Anyways So when it comes to vole damage they will literally gnaw away at your roots or stems of your plant near
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the ground so in this case unfortunately that is the edible part in other cases
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you may notice flopped over plants like if your corn's flopping over your tomatoes are flopping over or dead patches of grass is another sign of
2:34
voles you'll see little tiny holes kind of poking up all over and if you have
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cats or dogs you're gonna know notice them really obsessing on the ground so
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they're gonna be digging sniffing and acting kind of goofy voles like to hide
2:49
under debris so if you mulch your area they will find that very ideal habitat
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for them to live in and so they will invade that in this case they were not
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mulch it was just very heavy cover very tight row spacing if you watched my
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garden tour on the farm you know that I packed things in really nice and tight and I did kind of
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like a succession cropping meaning for the crops that are going to be ready early in the year I
3:16
planted them next to later crops so then I was pulling out the early crops letting the later
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crops then fill in the space so it's very compact almost like a permaculture type setup where there's
3:28
just plants on top of plants completely unnecessary given the fact that I have so much space to work
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with but anyways I digress and so because of that they found ideal little
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habitats to hang out in so one way to make voles move on is to actually space
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the crops out enough that there is a visual line of sight for predators to
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come in whether that be cats or prey birds what are predator birds whatever
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the case is and destroy those vol populations slowly or at least in a
3:59
them scare them off so things like the sound makers don't work a lot of people
4:05
have said they do they really don't they didn't work for my parents anyways as
4:09
well and then the other thing that does work or can work for smaller
4:14
infestations would be castor bean so that's either castor bean oil on some
4:19
sort of a carrier if you use that though every time it rains you're going to have
4:23
to reapply so keep that in mind that also includes when you water it just going to slowly disappear there people that have tried planting actual castor plants now i don know if i going i not going to recommend this because
4:36
castor bean plants are poisonous to humans and i'm not sure when they're near your produce what
4:42
could possibly happen if there's going to be leaching or anything like that so that one i'd
4:46
be a little bit more wary of but the way to control these guys is mechanical meaning we're setting up
4:54
traps or we're setting up what a lot of universities recommend is a grating and so you actually would
5:01
dig the grate into the ground it's a very fine mesh you have to go down at least 10 inches and
5:06
then surround the entire garden you would have some above ground as well this may work for like
5:11
an orchard scenario or a smaller sized garden but for my garden it's just completely out of the
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question so what i'm going to be doing is removing everything from that garden i will not be cover
5:24
cropping they will not be leaving any debris in place on that garden and the
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soil will be completely wiped clean or tilled under all that plant debris is
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just gonna get tilled under and it's really going to scare those guys off
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because it's just going to be an open field and the hope is that they will move on next year I'm going to make sure that the area surrounding the garden is
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tilled and continually mowed again just leaving it very open and scary looking
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to those voles and then of course you can set up traps now the traps you've
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set up need to be very specific you don't want them just lying out if you
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have dogs or cats or anything like that and you want to do the PVC pipe trap my
6:10
grandma and my mom have both used this it works very very well basically put
6:15
poison on a rod inside of a tee they crawl through the little tunnel PVC pipe
6:20
and then they go to the center to nibble away at whatever's in there and then
6:24
they will cease to exist so that is a great way to actually control those guys
6:30
and then lastly this is again just another way to deter them on top of like
6:35
the tillage and the removal of all crops and all plant debris is to incorporate blood meal so my dogs I did this this year my dogs absolutely went crazy for it they were rolling in it and they were trying to dig up the garden it was very irritating so
6:53
i'm not going to use that in the city anymore because they were just like yeah this is awesome
6:58
so i think the best way for the average person um that doesn't have cats or doesn't have a dog
7:04
issue in their backyard would be to actually incorporate blood meal they
7:10
don't like rotted animal smell and then you could also do coyote urine is
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another one this works for rabbits squirrels and bulls as well it may or
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may not attract mice and rats though just a heads up on that the mice are very
7:27
bad this year in Saskatoon I don't know if it's because I've reconvened the whole
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composting thing I didn't put any animal products I mean eggs nothing that they
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want to eat in my compost that's not sealed the only thing I did was the fish
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and the bone or the bone in the blood meal I'm not sure that was what got them
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all wound up in like in my area but I've had one in the house that my cat decided
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to bring into bed for me and then I had one in my Jeep so I'm kind of disgusted
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right now so that's two mice two mice and I don't know where they've come from
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and I've went like five years now with no mice so anyways I want to thank you
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guys for watching like I said the best way to control those bowls is not
8:17
necessarily the sensors or any of these fancy little things you want to clear it
8:22
off remove all root crops leave it very exposed do not mulch it and then ideally
8:28
you would set up a poison trap or you would set up a trap that is going to
8:32
snap on them ideally and it needs to be inside of a tube it has to be a tube type
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tunnel for them to feel comfortable enough to actually go inside of it
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anyways I want to thank you guys so much for watching if you enjoyed the video be sure to give it a thumbs up hit that subscribe button and let me know in the
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comments down below if the voles took out your garden because this was an an actual subscriber requested video as well because some of you have had this
8:56
issue, which is unfortunate to say the least. Anyways, I'll talk to you guys next time. Bye
#Pest Control