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Oklahoma Gardening

potatoes and mice

13 years ago

There was a mouse scurrying around the potatoe cage. The potatoes are surrounded by a wire cage lined with cardboard. The potatoes are being hilled by adding dirt to the cage. The tops look healthy. Should I be worried about the mice eating the spuds?

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Comments (5)

Okiedawn OK Zone 7
13 years ago
Andria,

Yes, they might be eating your potatoes. They can burrow into the soil and eat your potatoes, although I have found it to be more of a problem with potatoes mulched with straw than with potatoes hilled with soil. You can attempt to deter them by putting mouse traps near the cages.

I hope they're not eating your potatoes because there's really no way to know how much damage they're doing until it is time to dig potatoes....and you discover there aren't any tubers left, which would be very frustrating.

Dawn
0
PunkinHeadJones
13 years ago
I thought it was going to be a recipe. But I do hope mice are not eating your potatoes.
0
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slowpoke_gardener
13 years ago
Some years ago I had a problem with the rats and mice eating my sweet peppers and I put out some rat and mouse traps. I think I caught about as many birds as I did rats and mice. If I were to try that again I might take the traps up in the day time. I did not try to find any type of live trap, I just quit using the traps.

George has a system he uses with poison, but I am afraid to use poison because of maybe killing something I don't want to kill.

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0
oldbusy1
13 years ago
I'll trade you my golphers for the mice. I seen they done eat one of my taters and some onions.
0
slowpoke_gardener
13 years ago
The first job I had was trapping gophers. Dad told me the county was paying $.10 or $.25 per gopher. Dad may have just told me that to give my something to do, but me being the great white hunter that I was (between 5 and 7 yo? I set out to rid the world of gophers. I did make a little money but there is still a lot of gophers left in the world.

Larry
0

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