These little critters can cause havoc on a garden. Voles are vegetarians and Moles are meat eaters. Essentially, the voles will eat the roots of your valuable and important vegetables and other plants. The moles uproot your garden and tear up your lawn in their quest to eat grubs.
We have a terrible problem with one or both of these. You can see the trails of raised soil in the lawn, so I think we have moles. My wife just planted a bunch of lariope in the front, and already the moles are rooting around.
I don't want to use poisons in the yard, so I looked elsewhere for a solution. I've picked up eight Sweeney's Mole & Gopher Sonic Spikes. Each pair is good for up to 15,000 square feet, so four front and four back ought to have us well covered. The effectiveness depends on the soil type. Dry, sandy or peat soils do not conduct the sonic waves easily. Moist clay is the best conductor, so they should work like gangbusters in our yard. It will take a week or two for them to begin to take effect. I'll give you an update later in the month.
Mice
The bane of rural living is mice. Whenever the weather gets cold, we get them in the house, crawling under the kitchen sink. We keep it as clean as possible under there, tape off any openings we find, and set a trap baited with peanut butter. We usually kill a half dozen or so a winter. I've recently expanded our food preps and moved a lot of it out to the shop. It's climate controlled and heavily insulated. I've seen no evidence of mice, but I want to be preemptive. Traps are not the answer, since I don't go out there every day to check. No pets are out there, so poison is an option.
I've picked up some Just One Bite Place Packs
of rodent poison. I'll place them on the shelves and keep a close eye on it. Aside from the disease they can spread and little mouse poops left behind, they can eat clean through plastic storage buckets, and can attract snakes who eat them. Roaches
I've seen two roaches out in the shop. There isn't food laying around in the open, so I think they have come in from the woods. Little reddish fellows, but I'm not sure what particular species they are. I got a couple Roach Motels for them to check into... but not out. If all else fails, at least roaches are nutritious.
I read that spraying cider vinegar periodically around areas where you don't want mice repels them. I don't know if this works, I haven't tried it myself but I read it on one of the homestead blogs I follow. I'd narrow it down, but I have so many I really can't remember. If you have a notion to try it and find that it works, please post!
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen any signs of mice yet, but if I do, I'll give this a try and report on it. Thanks for the tip!
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