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| Hello all! I've been mostly a lurker on this forum, due to forgetting my password a few years back, and being too lazy to retrieve it. Mostly I've just read the posts, admired the lovely rose pictures, and searched for any info I've needed. Two years ago I started replanting the rose beds I built 30 years ago, when my house and I were young. . Last year I went all-out gung-ho for roses again. I was so surprised to see many of the rose nurseries that I thought would be around forever were gone - especially the minis. Local nurseries were extremely limited in what they were carrying (Knock Out, anyone?), so I tried several of the mail order sources for the varieties I wanted. I still had a few old favorite roses around, but there were soooo many gorgeous new varieties, and mini floras, new to me. And of course the lovely rose photos posted here encouraged me to try some new things. My ordering zeal resulted in a pot ghetto, til I could decide where I wanted to plant some of them (or could find room). This was an unusually long, cold, strange winter this year, even in coastal NJ. Like many of you, I worried that most of my roses looked dead. To my great surprise, most of them have sprung back and are growing nicely, or at least growing. I did lose a few, and after taking inventory on them I placed two (um no, more like four) more orders - looks like there will be no reduction in the size of my pot ghetto, lol. But now one of my nicely-growing-back roses, Paris de Yves St Laurent, which had four nice size growing canes on it, started showing withering of all the new growth on the right cane. A few days later, the left cane showed the same thing. The center two canes are still fine. I remembered posts here about withering growth, looked them up, and the mention of voles struck home. I do have what I assumed to be mole tunnels in this rose bed, I've caught at least 10 creatures I assumed to be mice in my house with sticky traps, and after researching them I have VOLES... quickly reproducing, rose root eating voles! As if dealing with black spot here in coastal NJ wasn't bad enough...sigh... What is the best way I can deal with these monsters? |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| On no! Please let us know when you get a few of them. I am so pleased to find someone rejuving their rose beds. |
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- Posted by jasminerose4u 9b (My Page) on Sat, May 10, 14 at 12:19
| I have no personal Vole experience. But I found an article about Vole Control on about.com. Hope it helps :) |
Here is a link that might be useful: Vole Control
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| I will give this bit of advice. Beware of using poison bait. We loaded the tunnels outside our fenced in yard once with poison bait and the voles carried the poison bait back into our yard where our pets roam... Luckily I counted and wrote down each location they were placed so I could retrieve them all... Almost a diseaster for us! I ended up using traps to kill them which worked out ok. I watched a video on Youtube on the subject... |
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- Posted by meredith_e 7B Piedmont NC (My Page) on Sat, May 10, 14 at 16:34
| I plant in hardware cloth cages now. That completely works, but replanting established roses is a pain, of course. Good luck! |
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| I'm sorry, but sticky traps are so inhumane; I hope you find some other way to solve your problem. |
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- Posted by bunnicula03 z6b NJ (My Page) on Sat, May 10, 14 at 20:39
| When voles are in my house, running around my bedroom and going in my bird's cage to get her seed, my main concern is not treating the voles humanely.I thought they were just brown mice, til my rose roots started getting eaten and I looked up voles on the internet. Indeed, another name for them is field mice. But they are voles, and apparently propagate like crazy. Thank you Jim, I do have a dog, so have been hesitant to try any poison baits. And thanks to those of you offered some aid. I'll look at YouTube some more, though I did do some searching there last night. Has anyone tried the castor oil treatment? I bought a container of mole/vole repellent and the main ingredient is castor oil, which I've read that voles dislike. |
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| I have had reports of folks in NJ using poison, traps, moth balls to repel the voles, putting chewing gum in the holes, and putting a hose in the runs to flush out the critters, all with varying degrees of success. I'll post a note on the Jersey Shore RS's Facebook page to see if there are other opinions. Meredith_e mentioned hardware cloth. You have to use these for planting if you have a vole problem. The method is to get the "cloth" (actually metal mesh) from the hardware store, cut a section to line the planting hole, making a sort of container, and plant the rose in the lined hole. Good luck, there is no easy solution. |
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| Voles are almost as bad as deer, IMO. They eat the roots of fruit trees, roses, and many perennials (probably). It is so incredibly disheartening. |
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- Posted by meredith_e 7B Piedmont NC (My Page) on Mon, May 12, 14 at 13:31
| It really is awful. Mine are the type that might not run around above ground, but they do use mole tunnels. I have both moles and voles, and so the tunneling is extensive. If you see holes in the ground that are like a quarter in diameter, those are the vole holes. I use 1/2 inch-spaced hardware cloth and cut it with straight-tipped "tin snip" metal cutters that look a bit like scissors. I'm really fast and good at making the baskets now :) It works wonderfully. I've seen holes where they tried to go in from below and couldn't do it, or where they changed their mind if they went in the top. When they hit the metal, they change course either way. I did have to dig up all of my established roses when the voles found the roses. I was losing too many, so fast! There is a bait that does not cause the same damage to dogs, etc, but it would hurt squirrels and smaller rodents that ate it. I bought some once but was still too afraid to use it. I just have so much wildlife here that I didn't risk it. The baskets work the best anyway, so that's how I handle it now. And I encourage the snakes that the neighbors had practically killed off. That'll help :D :D |
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