How To Keep Voles Away From Your Garden, According To Experts

You may recognize those unsightly raised ridges and bumps all over your lawn as the handiwork of moles digging around for their dinners. But some types of tunneling are caused by a different small mammal called a vole. While moles typically make a mess of lawns, voles can be destructive throughout your garden.

Understanding Voles

Depending on the species, voles construct surface or underground runways in areas with heavy ground cover. “Voles are active day and night, year-round,” says Robert Pierce, PhD, state extension fisheries and wildlife specialist at the University of Missouri. “Any landscape with a lot of cover, such as mulch, landscape fabric, or low-growing shrubs provides good habitat for voles.”

Voles eat whatever plant material is readily available. “While moles are insectivores, voles are herbivores that eat flowers, ornamentals, bulbs, and bark,” says Sheldon Owen, PhD, wildlife extension specialist at West Virginia University. “They damage crops and orchards, too, by gnawing on saplings and the roots of trees.” Voles are likely to blame when previously-healthy plantings topple over for no apparent reason or when a tree is girdled around its base from gnawing. Voles also may nibble on fruits or vegetables, leaving them on the stem.

Also called meadow mice, these rodents are 3 to 7 inches long with short legs and tails with stocky bodies. As a food source for many predators, they also have to be incredibly proficient at reproducing. Gestation takes three weeks with five to 10 litters per year averaging 3 to 5 young. Their numbers vary from year to year, with population explosions occurring every few years, says Owen.

How To Get Rid Of Voles

Unfortunately, there’s no easy, foolproof way to get rid of voles. However, you can try to make your garden less appealing to voles, with these tips from Pierce and Owen:

• Make sure a vole is causing the damage. Voles require different management techniques from other wildlife such as moles or rabbits.
• Keep grass mowed. Voles prefer tall vegetation, so keep lawns, especially those near flower beds, tidy.
• Minimize the amount of mulch in flower beds, and turn it frequently so their tunnel systems are disturbed.
• Cleanup brush and leaf piles, which provide excellent cover for voles.
• Use a trap. The most successful method of control in small gardens is trapping, says Pierce. Use a mouse or rat snap trap baited with peanut butter and oatmeal or sliced apples, and place at the entrance to tunnels. Or try a pre-baited type (with the fake piece of cheese on it) if ants tend to get to the bait before the voles. Cover the trap with a clay pot, shingle or piece of cardboard tented over it because voles don’t like to feed in the open, and you want to protect other non-target creatures, such as birds, from getting caught.
• Forget about sonic or other frightening devices. There’s no scientific evidence they work, says Pierce.
• Try repellants. They have questionable results, but castor oil may offer some short-term control. Follow the label instructions, and reapply as needed. But don’t expect miracles because it’s not infallible, and when foods are in short supply, the effectiveness of repellants decreases.  
• Protect young trees with a hardware cloth tube, says Owen. Bury the cylinder about 6 inches below ground so they can’t tunnel under, and make it taller than typical snow cover in your area.
• Plant in bulb cages constructed from hardware cloth to prevent voles from eating your flowering bulbs.
• Avoid toxic baits. They generally aren’t recommended because any animal, including cats and dogs, can get into them and be negatively impacted, says Owen. There’s also a risk of secondary toxicity if a poisoned vole is eaten by a predator such as a hawk or owl.

How To Tell If You Have Voles

Sometimes mole and vole damage is confused. Moles are seldom seen because they’re tunneling for food below ground. Voles may be seen occasionally, though they prefer to stay under cover in shallow tunnels on the soil surface or to burrow right beneath the snow in winter, says Owen.

Voles typically live in colonies.  A colony can have runways about one to two inches wide, covering an area up to a quarter acre, says Pierce. There may be four to five flat entrance holes to burrows concentrated in a small area.

Voles seldom invade structures, but telltale vole damage in the garden includes: plants that were flourishing but suddenly fall over, gnaw marks at various angles around the base of plants near ground level, clipped grass stems, and chewed bark. In the fall, voles also stockpile seeds, tubers, rhizomes, and bulbs, says Pierce.