Field mice ARE voles. At least around these parts that is the common name for voles. :-) Since they spend quite a bit of time underground, building networks of tunnels called "vole runs", they gnaw on tree and shrub roots to keep their teeth from growing too large, just like other rodents. They also find tasty morsels that we plant, like root vegetables, that give them the opportunity to gnaw and have a tasty meal. Voles seem to be particularly fond of potatoes and sweet potatoes. They completely devastated my small crop of sweet potatoes a couple of years ago. Not one single sweet potato was untouched by the time they were done. After that, I decided the root veggies will be grown in fabric pots, not the ground. If you have small beds, you could use hardware cloth around your garden. Voles can't climb very high so you only need about 12 inches above ground and 6 inches below ground. Most voles only burrow about 6 inches or less below ground level, unless you have pine voles, in which case the hardware cloth should go down about 12 inches below the ground at the garden perimeter. Of course, this could be both expensive and time-consuming if you have huge gardens. I grow all of my root vegetables in fabric pots or containers now. I hate those little spawns of satan. Moles, on the other hand, disrupt your ground but they eat grubs and worms, not plant matter. They certainly could disrupt young plants as they push through the soil looking for food, but they don't eat plants and won't eat your almost fully grown root vegetables. If it doesn't have eyes, it's a mole. If it looks like a mouse and has eyes, it's a vole. You can have both at the same time. I certainly do. I don't mind moles all that much and tend to leave them alone. Voles are rodents; moles are NOT rodents. Appearance-wise, voles are a bit different from a mice, but it's not immediately obvious. Voles have smaller ears and shorter tails. However, I don't care - they are still destructive little mice to me. They give me the creeps, like all rodents. So 1/4 inch hardware cloth, installed like a fence, except you put about 6 inches of it under the ground and the rest above ground. Make sure it surrounds the entire perimeter of the area where you want to grow root veggies. If you have pine voles (and they seem to be more common in the west and midwest) then go down a foot. The idea is to block them from getting in via underground tunneling. Like all rodents, they can "collapse" their bodies and get through small holes. Since they are small, 1/2 inch holes probably won't stop them, so use the 1/4 inch. Best of luck.

People have been trying to keep moles out of the garden since at least the 16th century when a garden writer of that time described a "sure fire" method of control. "Place a straight sided bucket in a hole in the ground to its rim and trap a female mole and put her into the bucket. Her cries for help will attract males that will also fall into the bucket in an attempt to rescue the female" Moles are after food when they make those tunnels you see in your yard and that food is earthworms, although they will eat grubs also (or about any other insect they find). Traps may kill a mole but another will move into that vacancy as soon as possible after you have eliminated that one, so trapping will be continuous. I know people that have trapped 100 moles every year for the last 40, or so, years and still do. The mole population has not diminished one bit. Poisons may help some, but they are poisons and could be eaten by other animals and since the dose of poison is aimed at moles could cause a larger animal excruciating distress over a period of time until it too died. Most places that have tried to replicate the studies done at Michigan State University have not. What Joe Vargas turf grass students learned is that to be effective you must apply 1 pint of Castor Oil over 5,000 square feet and then water it in thoroughly. None of the commercial products I have looked at have that much Castor Oil in the mix and all have on the label that this is meant to cover 10,000 square feet and as those turf grass students found too little will not be effective, and more is simply a waste of money. Every time Castor Oil has failed to control moles it is because it has not been applied properly. An unfortunate fact for every organic gardener is that because you will build up the amount of organic matter in your soil, and earthworms love organic matter, you will have a mole, most often only one simply because of the amount of territory each mole needs to supply its needs, anbout 1/4 acre.

I don't know where the idea comes from that voles are just a winter issue. I hope no one believes that and gets raided in the summer because they didn't take action or precautions. Last summer I'd lost every one of my acorn squash to voles. They looked great from above until I went to pick and found they were empty hulls with vole holes directly under them. I had no apparent vole damage tomy hostas last year. Didn't get any winter squash in this year because of my spring rehab from surgery and this summer they are ravaging my hostas. Just two weeks ago I lifted what had been a beautiful Wide Brim for years. I thought the drought was getting to it and the neighboring Francee until I saw the vole hole under the remaining leaves right behind the crown. All I managed to pot up were three small divisions. If anyone doesn't believe me I can post pics of the new little ones. Wow-I had one Wide Brim and now I have three. Is that progress - or what! If planting a couple of seeds in spring for acorn squash helps keep them from eating my hostas, it may be a bonus in vole damage control. You can always eat what they don't :) Voles, if you live in an a habitat that supports them, should be treated as they are; a year around hazard. If you don't have a year around problem where you live, you need to at least be conscious that they do present a problem in the summer elsewhere. I gave in and bought four traps last week and baited them with peanut butter. The next morning two were sprung and the peanut butter gone, and two went completely missing. Not a dead vole in sight. Maybe some other critter dragged the traps off to eat the peanut butter in safety. Naturally I don't put much faith into running a trap-line for voles. I figure the score is voles 4 - Les nothing, and out the cost of 2 really nice mouse traps. lol So much for a "winter issue"! Two more daily high temp records were broken the days it happened. Now we have new records of 92F and 93F. I actually saw one the other day duck into its hole in one of my hosta beds as I approached. I'm going for the castor oil and maybe some bait if there is no danger to my German Shorthair Pointer. I don't think they do well in very rocky or hardpan soil. I never had them in the AR Ozarks and Sandy in MO Ozarks said she doesn't either. So maybe it is not a summer problem in your biosystem. Les

Moles produce tunnels in the yard or garden that result in the soft ground that has been mentioned. At times moles will push giant mounds of dirt aboveground. In yards, the grass can be damaged due to disruption of the roots, so above the tunnels the grass can become yellowed or brown. As to voles, I've never seen evidence that I know of that a vole has disrupted the ground other than at the point of attack. I know a vole has struck when I notice a hosta starting to yellow, and if I look more closely I realize I can lift it out of the ground and there's nothing much left but the leaves, which were sitting in a small hole.