Dan, why is a non-native invasive necessarily not sustainable? I know that many knowledgable people are highly (perhaps voraciously) opposed to them, but I don't quite 'get' it. Is autumn olive eventually going to use up its habitat and disappear? Some presumably native shrubs and trees around here seem to compete well enough with it; AO has been in this area quite a few decades and it is present in somewhat limited habitats. In truth if the local population needed to get all of its vitamins from local fruit and etc there would not be far too much autumn olive and it would likely need encouraging rather than the opposite to ensure an abundant supply in the face of huge demand. An invasive that suddenly becomes a useful crop probably won't really be an invasive, will it? It will be getting a lot of attention and kept where it produces best and is easiest to get at. There are native species that colonize cleared forest faster than most if not all non-natives. Around here I don't think any shrub or tree can compete with short-leaf pine in a newly-cleared forest. Autumn olive competes for control of old fields and road-sides, both of which are convenient places for gathering berries.

Thank you so much for your suggestions, everyone. I am so thankful and appreciate it very much! I am going to be buying some Permatill, Computer gardener, how many bags do you buy? I have 5 trees I am going to be planting and I was trying to gauge how many bags to buy. I am going to use it in the soil as well as 2 inches for mulch. I am thinking one bag per tree? Does that sound reasonable? Oh and Paully, I appreciate the trap idea using the bucket. We may give that a try too. We've killed, that we know of, 3 so far, using apple slices with a mouse trap; they are living under our porch and with the bait we used we are thinking that a lot more were killed. Jean, due to our situation, we feel that removing all of the mulch we had, some 400 lbs of it, was critical to removing the attractiveness of the trees. Even if the mulch was back 8 inches, the voles would still see the mulch and go towards it and then see the luscious tree as an oasis. Thanks though for taking the time to respond, I appreciate it very much.

Howdy, y'all! Here, in Southern Oregon, we're mostly plagued with moles and pocket gophers. Used to have a tomcat named Bonkers (an abandoned stray that adopted us) that was very good at keeping our yard and vegie garden critter free. The only part he didn't consume was their little heads, which he'd leave strewn around here-n-there for us to find (largely by stepping on them--"ca-runch"!). Then, one day, Bonkers went missing, never to return (much later his remains were discovered beneath our nextdoor neighbor's mobile). With him gone, the voracious, nasty tunnelers returned with a vengence. After having container gardened for a couple seasons we aquired a few small Caper Spurge plants that we set out at strategic locations. Small as they were, though, they didn't do much good at first, so we bought a couple "P3" battery powered "Mole Chasers". So far, the chasers are doing a good job, and now that the Spurge have matured and multiplied, it appears they're also proving effective (we shared plants and seeds with a neighbor and apparently they're successfully repelling varmints from her yard. Before that, she lost several Dhalias). - Anyway, I harvested quite a few Spurge seeds last season, if any of you would like some to give it a go. For important additional information on Caper Spurge, please visit my Member Page trade list!

In my experience in CT, Zone 6, the vole population seemed to vary quite a bit from year to year. Tunneling was certainly easier for them in our garden soil, but the lawn also had countless tunnels some years. They seemed to nest in our compost bins. One year, I had access to some old, wide boards. I used them as pathways in our garden until I discovered the vole tunnels directly underneath them ! I suspect the vole population varies according to many factors. When rabies became more of a problem, & when the coyote population went up, people started to keep their cats indoors and the vole population went up. However, it turns out that coyotes will also prey on voles! So things evened out again. One year, an elderly woman in our neighborhood died & her surviving family "released" her many cats into the neighborhood. Again, the vole population went down for awhile until these cats died off or were adopted by families. There are probably other factors that I haven't thought of. The number of gardens in a neighborhood ? Drought vs. plentiful rain? Are you in a fairly crowded suburban neighborhood or a wide open rural area where birds of prey have room to swoop in & grab a few voles ? I'm really not sure that mulching has a lot to do with attracting voles, but I'd like to hear what others have to say.