Vole problem

HPartin 7/8/2012, 8:26 am

I have a serious vole problem. I have set traps and have caught 3 but there are MANY more. They are tricky little buggers. I am getting ready to prepare for my fall garden and need to line my boxes with 1/4 inch hardcloth. Has anyone done this?

I am wondering if I can just nail the hardcloth across the bottom of my beds or do I need for it to come up the sides too? I am going to need a lot of hardcloth--what kind of stores sell large rolls of this stuff. Lowes and Home Depot sell it but in small amounts. I need about 400 square feet of it.

Any recommendations would be helpful.

Heidi

chjbr63 7/8/2012, 12:41 pm

Heidi,

You can get that at farm supply stores. If they don't have it in stock they will order it, takes a few days to 2 weeks to get in. Use construction staples to attach, ask for them when you get the hardwire cloth. I see a few in your area on Google. just a couple of them.

http://www.tractorsupply.com/

http://www.agrisupply.com/

Good luck with your vole problem

Chris

**llama momma** 7/8/2012, 1:03 pm

HPartin wrote:I have a serious vole problem. I have set traps and have caught 3 but there are MANY more. They are tricky little buggers. I am getting ready to prepare for my fall garden and need to line my boxes with 1/4 inch hardcloth. Has anyone done this?

I am wondering if I can just nail the hardcloth across the bottom of my beds or do I need for it to come up the sides too? I am going to need a lot of hardcloth--what kind of stores sell large rolls of this stuff. Lowes and Home Depot sell it but in small amounts. I need about 400 square feet of it.

Any recommendations would be helpful.

Heidi

I have 1/4 inch hardware cloth on the bottom of boxes that were stapled up the sides just a bit. Worked great since Autumn 2010. Had an oddball thing happen though. Early spring this year I found a couple voles inside. But I think they entered by crawling in from the tarps that were draped over the boxes during the winter. (?) I literally chased them out, removed the tarps for spring planting and haven't seen any since.

1airdoc 8/27/2012, 1:57 pm

Hardware mesh may help, but it's not the answer to all vole problems. I put hardware mesh beneath all my beds from day 1, primarily because of mole issues. I now have vole tunnels/runs all through my oldest bed. The voles have eaten all my carrots and beets. Gratefully, I haven't seen evidence of them in the beds with my sweet potatoes. I put out mouse bait/poison and victory traps this week, and will probably dig out the beds this fall to rid them of the tunnels.

Squat_Johnson 8/27/2012, 3:00 pm

I think I found 1/2" holes of 4' x 100' rolls at Home Depot. It does work. Lots of work to dig out, but it keeps them out. Gonna need a staple gun if you are doing that many squares.

My troubles and solutions are documented in this thread. Good Luck.
https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t6089-moles-voles-and-holes

1airdoc 8/27/2012, 3:02 pm

I used 1/4" hardware cloth and did staple it all around the base....

1airdoc 9/22/2012, 4:57 pm

A month after using rodent poison and traps, it appeared that my vole runs became neglected/abandoned (the victory traps, BTW, were totally ineffective). Today I dug out all the MM from the bed with the voles to eliminate all their tunnels/runs. I didn't see any actual voles, but did encounter a couple of underground old nests. I dug the MM out all the way down to the hardware mesh at the bottom, from side to side and end to end, and I never found any location where a vole could have entered through the mesh from beneath. It was intact with no apparent openings anywhere. Also, all the runs were in the top 3-4 inches of this 6 inch deep bed. I think the voles entered by crawling in from on top, and then set up house in the garden.

Goosegirl 9/23/2012, 7:57 am

1airdoc wrote:A month after using rodent poison and traps, it appeared that my vole runs became neglected/abandoned (the victory traps, BTW, were totally ineffective). Today I dug out all the MM from the bed with the voles to eliminate all their tunnels/runs. I didn't see any actual voles, but did encounter a couple of underground old nests. I dug the MM out all the way down to the hardware mesh at the bottom, from side to side and end to end, and I never found any location where a vole could have entered through the mesh from beneath. It was intact with no apparent openings anywhere. Also, all the runs were in the top 3-4 inches of this 6 inch deep bed. I think the voles entered by crawling in from on top, and then set up house in the garden.

GG

**llama momma** 9/23/2012, 10:29 am

airedoc
I believe thats exactly how my vole issue happened.
I swear they crawled up through the folds of the tarps and gained access from top of the boxes. Once I chased them out this Spring they did not reappear all summer. And there was 1/2 inch hardware cloth on the bottoms.

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