I grow hostas and have had problems with voles. I have solved it for the most part by using baited mouse traps placed next to their tunnel and putting a flower pot over them to keep other critters from getting into the traps and by planting the hosta in 3-5 gallon nursery stock pots with the bottoms cut out to protect the root systems. You can also drill a 1" hole in a plastic container to hold poison bait. Most non-target critters can't get to it. I have found tho that the more of them I get dug up and potted the less traps and bait I have to use. I don't mind that the voles get snuffed at all but I don't want anything else getting hurt or killed.

Lisa

We have a small farm where we grow flowers and herbs. The groundhogs and other critters wreak havoc but I just deal with it. I could never bring myself to kill any of them, especially with poison. I won't even use insecticides on my plants. We do use electrified fences to keep the deer out but it doesn't stop the rabbits and burrowing animals. Not killing anything is a personal choice and I can understand why others feel that it's necessary to eliminate garden pests.

Check out vole control at Andre Viette's site. He runs a nursery/mail order business in the Shenandoah Valley and has had lots of vole damage in the past. Has some good advice for control.

My neighbor's kitties took care of my vole problem. They moved away and the voles came back for a while. Now there is a large blacksnake living in my yard, and the voles are gone again. I still get ocassional kitty visitors, but not as regularly as from my neighbor's cats. I really loved having them patrolling my garden. They were super friendly too and would stop by just for a petting session on my garden bench. Probably the only person in the world who didn't freak out with outdoor cats in my garden. It's worth a little poop clean up so I can keep my plants.

I use a product that makes voles sick to their stomach(caastor oil pellets) and they move away, but I am tired of fighting them and the mountain beavers, so I'm learning what they like and what they don't and I don't replace the plants they go after. I have hostas, and late winter I'm going to move them into a whole that is surrounded by chicken wire. I heard this helps if they can't get to the bulb from below then the give up. I don't like killing anything, and making them sick isn't something I like to do either, so I try natural ways. Their tunnels I also fill back up with gravel as they don't seem to like to tunnel through it. It all helps slow them down, and maybe some year they will give up and move on to easier pickings *G*

If you are using what we call chicken wire around here the those holes are too large and the dang voles can still get thru it. I tried using hardwarecloth. Effective but hard to cut. The nursery stock pots have worked the best for me. Three to five gallon size with the bottoms cute out. Most of the nurseries around here will give them to you.

Lisa

I have 250 large rose bushes, and we use hardware cloth. The squares are about 1/4 ". Around the rose bush we make a circle that is 12" deep and 4 ft. around. We leave about 1 inch above ground so they cannot get over it. You need pacience and good wire cutters for the hardware cloth, but it works.

Sammy I bet your yard is beautiful. I have a few roses but my yard is mostly shade so I have about 200 hostas.

Lisa

I came across this little tidbit while searching vole and moles. Interesting site BTW.

Mole Control Options
All moles are classified as wild, nongame animals under North Carolina laws. No hunting or trapping seasons are set up for these animals, and they are subject to all applicable state laws and regulations. This means you can not kill a mole without requesting and receiving a permit from the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission. The reason is that several species of moles are becoming dangerously low in numbers, so the NCWRC moved to protect all mole species.
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/gaston/Pests/voles.html

We have 90 to 100 inches of rain, we would live in a swamp if the gophers voles and moles didn't make draniage tunnels. I agree on on posion, my cats keep the populstion to a working level.

There is a little known effect to poisioning mice, rats, and voles, and that is the inadvertent sickening and/or loss of cats and other animals that prey on these. When a rat or mouse becomes sick from poison, it travels away from its home to die.

I once lived on a farm and our nearest neighbor was 1/4 mile away, yet we lost cats to his rat poison. He had no cats; We kept a bunch of barn cats and these controlled the rodents. When his barn became infested with mice, he put out poison. We saw sickend mice crawling at least 3/16 of a mile from his barn, and a few our our cats found and ate some of these poisened mice and died.

There is a product that will kill the varmit, and not the secondary animal, but I don't think it is a fast kill. I didn't believe that it would work, and called a number at the University of Oregon. She said that it kills the first animal by using a sort of "gas" that hits the blood stream. I asked what would happen if a dog or cat ate the animal that had eaten the product that turned to a gas. She said that as soon as the dog bit into the vein, the gas would dissipate, and not harm the dog.

This is ok with me if I can be positive the dog or cat wouldn't eat it in the first place. It is made by Hi Yield. I don't know how long it will remain poisonous in the ground. I simply don't like to use it.

Sammy