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I give up - Voles won

Rennie Heuer

Rennie Heuer

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Constantine, MI
We tried again this year to grow some tomatoes. The plants were thriving! We were looking forward a bumper crop. We thought we had finally avoided the vole problem that killed our plants last year. Then, in spite of my using nearly ten times the prescribed amount of mole/vole replant they got through and destroyed all 5 plants in just a few days. I'll likely just yank them out of the ground and toss them in the woods. I'm soooo disappointed.


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Voles will poke air/exit holes in their tunnels . If you set a mouse trap with peanut butter next to the hole and cover it with a bucket, you can catch them. In our area moles make tunnels looking for grubs and worms and the voles take advantage of those tunnels to munch on roots. Controlling moles with traps and barriers will help control the voles. Raised beds with 1/2” galvanized hardware cloth bottoms are very effective in controlling both. Find someone tearing down a deck and repurpose the wood to create below ground barriers or raised beds. I’ve also had good luck trenching around a bed and filling it with lava rock or coarse washed gravel to create a barrier. Just make sure to go 14-18” deep.
 
Ouch, well that sucks, just when they're getting close to.

Knock wood.. most of the vole like critters here haven't been to bad.. yet..

We do have quite a lot of pocket gophers and they'll take out a whole line of plants faster than you can say ZIP though. Really difficulty to identify because they're all underground and sometimes they don't even poke out air holes much to speak of in loose soil. Same sort of "and suddenly a bunch of dead plants" problem. I've gotten pretty decent at trapping them out, pretty much see any damage and go full groundhog day on them. Luckily they're pretty solo so you only get one every 200-300 square feet so if you get one you're "clear" for a bit in that space until the next one moves in.
 
Ted Calver said:
Voles will poke air/exit holes in their tunnels . If you set a mouse trap with peanut butter next to the hole and cover it with a bucket, you can catch them. In our area moles make tunnels looking for grubs and worms and the voles take advantage of those tunnels to munch on roots. Controlling moles with traps and barriers will help control the voles. Raised beds with 1/2” galvanized hardware cloth bottoms are very effective in controlling both. Find someone tearing down a deck and repurpose the wood to create below ground barriers or raised beds. I’ve also had good luck trenching around a bed and filling it with lava rock or coarse washed gravel to create a barrier. Just make sure to go 14-18” deep.
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It much easier to just use a 5 gallon bucket....lol
 
Knock on wood, we don't have voles here. But we did have them where we lived in Virginia. A neighbor was a backyard gardener and he had a solution for voles.
It was an expensive solution but it did work. He made baskets out of hardware cloth. He would dig a hole deep enough for his basket and then plant his maters. They survived most of the time.

I'll tell you what didn't survive no matter what you did and that was flowering bulbs. Tulips, hyacinths, gladiolas, all were consumed faster than you could cuss. About the only thing they didn't eat was canna lilies and I think that was because ours were in a raised bed. The Japanese beetles ate whatever was left by the voles.

We also had murder hornets. Growing up we called those Japanese hornets. In the front yard we had a nice stand of river birch; you know the kind with peeling bark. Those murder hornets liked to get that bark for their nests. So did the white faced hornets. They didn't like each other and had wars in my front yard. It was always dangerous when I was mowing under those river birch trees particularly if I was wearing sandals. I got stung several times before I learned that it was better if the wife mowed there. I am quite allergic to bee stings. I would swelll up like the Michelin man. Some of that swelling has remained with me after all these years. :p
 
I don't know if you have them in MI, but down in Texas and even in California we had what was called "cut worms" or "tomato worms" they were a caterpillar of some kind about 2 inches long, green with a horn on their head.... an infestation of them would cut branches and stems of the tomato plants... only solution was to pick them off and feed them to the chickens.
We have a squash bug here that will get into your squash and zucchini plants and bore into the stem at the ground... only solution we found was to diatomaceous earth around the bottoms of the plants... had to renew every time it rained.
 
Chuck Ellis said:
I don't know if you have them in MI, but down in Texas and even in California we had what was called "cut worms" or "tomato worms" they were a caterpillar of some kind about 2 inches long, green with a horn on their head.... an infestation of them would cut branches and stems of the tomato plants... only solution was to pick them off and feed them to the chickens.
We have a squash bug here that will get into your squash and zucchini plants and bore into the stem at the ground... only solution we found was to diatomaceous earth around the bottoms of the plants... had to renew every time it rained.
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Yep, we have cutworms here. Our cutworms cut the stem of small plants right at ground level. Cutworms like the ones I described are easy to defeat. All you have to do is wrap a short strip of newspaper around the stem of the plants you are transplanting and it will protect the plant until it gets large enough that the worm cannot hurt it.

Chuck, what you are describing is a tomato hornworm. They are bright green and have a horn on their arse. We also have tobacco hornworms around here. I made money one summer in a tobacco patch picking hornworms off the plants and throwing them to where the crows would get them. Real men would squeeze the head off the worm. I was too squeamish and threw them to the birds. Tomato hornworms resemble tobacco hornworms and are in the same family.

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Squash vine borers are the bane of my existence when I am growing squash or zucchini. They bore into the vines at the base of the plants and kill the plant slowly. Can be very hard to control. I used to use malathion to control them but I long ago gave up pesticides except for organic alternatives.
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Re: Squash vine borers, I plant as early as frost permits in order to get a good crop before the borers arrive. Manage the borers by running a long thin SS wire up the stem through one of the frass holes or slitting the stem with a sharp knife until I find the larvae. Cover the vine with dirt at intervals to promote rooting and you can have a crop all season….if you can stand that much squash/zucchini 😎
 
Thanks all for the great info and guidance. Many good ideas, some of which we may act on next year. We'll see.

As for the buckets, hydro, raised beds, etc., the best place for us to grow tomatoes is a tiered bed in our front lawn. As 'curious' as a row of tomatoes might be in the middle of your front lawn may be, a row of orange 5 gal pails on a shelf would, shall we say, be somewhat less than aesthetically pleasing. Not to mention an outright invitation to tomato thieves. There are a couple of places in the back yard that get sufficient sun. We've tried there before but the soil sucks and we got tomato worms. A raised platform with pails would address both these issues.

In the mean time, a private service will be held for family only latter in the week.
 
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By the way, the best tomatoes that I ever grew were grown like this.

Dig a hole about 3 feet in diameter and 3 feet deep. Fill it full of old dry corn cobs. Pack them in tight. In the center put a 2" piece of PVC pipe 6 feet long to serve as a stake. Drill a few holes in the area to be buried. P:ut in a couple of pounds of balanced fertilizer and a couple of cups of lime. Fill the hole with soil and plant your maters. Water them through the pipe. The corn cobs soak up the water and keep the tomatoes well watered. The fertilizer feed the plant and keep it producing. You can plant 3 or 4 plants around the pipe and use it for support.
Works like a charm.
 
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