Trap before you plant

**Chris** · 06-14-2008, 01:30 PM

Originally Posted by wildWoman

We bait our traps with pieces of tomato, zucchini and squash plants for the voles, they totally go for it. Consider that if you poison the voles, you may also poison the animals that eat them, and you end up with yet more voles in the long term.

Alas, there are no predators here, which is the problem. I live in town.

Anyways, the poison didn't work... very well anyways, a few sprouted, a few got eaten.

New plan: start all seeds in trays. I hate seed starting indoors because hardening off is annoying to me. If you start sees indoors in a window or under growlights they don't adapt well to the outdoors so you have to harden them off by bringing them outside during the day and inside at night for like 2 or 3 weeks, so annoying.

BUT.... you can plant outdoors in flats and then transplant. This, mostly, keeps the voles out of it, and who doesn't have flats from the greenhouse or garden center laying around? I've had voles, or chipmunks, or whatever, eat my corn, my sunflowers, all my various members of the squash family, so annoying. I have much better luck starting in those trays just sitting out in the sun because they can't tunnel up into them, only climb on top and dig down (which exposes them to possible predators so it is against their nature).

Once the seedling has leaves it is pretty safe from being eating by these rodents, so at that point I transplant.

**wildWoman** · 06-14-2008, 03:18 PM

I lost three of my zucchini plants in the greenhouse to the voles, despite setting a trap a week in advance and starting the plants inside the cabin. The voles here are specialized in gnawing through the stem of the plant at soil level and unfortunately go for bigger plants, too. Trapped the bugger after a few days and feel somewhat superior for growing a few zucchini plants inside the cabin in containers this year. I'm keeping a trap going but the problem with using squash plants as bait is that the bait dries up within a few hours and is then not taken by the voles anymore. I keep maiming one of my inside plants for this purpose in the hope the voles might ignore the other zucchinis in the greenhouse and make a beeline for the trap.

**Rick** · 06-14-2008, 04:40 PM

Take a plastic soda bottle or milk carton. Cut the top and bottom out of the container so you only have a tube and slide it down over your plant to a depth of about 4 inches. Leave about 4-5 inches (depending on what you are using) out of the soil as a barrier to the little cretins. You can also set mouse traps using either bird seed or grass seed. Pieces of apple will work well, too. Find an entrance to their tunnels and if you haven't caught something in two nights move the trap to another tunnel entrance. They don't always use the same entrance to discourage predators (like you) so keep moving the traps until you find the entrance they are using.

Same with runways. If you have a clear trail they are using, set the trap so the bait is on the trail. They won't use the same trail every day so you may have to move it as described above.