garden cleanup: targeting mice and voles
As with any animal or insect pests, the work starts with reducing habitat—especially places they can overwinter. Close-cutting the entire lawn here is one of the final things I do in late fall, lowering the deck to 3 inches to reduce places to hide in general.
For mice and voles, it’s essential to install fine-gauge hardware-cloth collars (or heavy plastic ones) around young trees, in particular, though these and other rodents will chew wood young or old if hungry. It’s especially to make sure that the immediate area at the base of trees is clear. Friends with orchards do not allow turf to grow right up against their trees, for instance. Mow low around woody plants that are planted in grassy areas, or remove the immediate circle or strip of turf, and also remove weeds so there’s a ring of bare soil or at most a little mulch around the base.
I trap all year in areas around the house, and in spots where I see evidence of activity. Then starting late August each year, I accelerate my trapping of these rodent pests before everyone looks for winter digs. I have some tricks—including an idea for a box built to enclose mousetraps that I borrowed from the sustainable farming expert Eliot Coleman—who recommends baitless traps for voles. I use peanut butter. I never use poison bait, known as rodenticides; releasing that into the environment is anything but natural or organic, and represent a danger Read more on awaytogarden.com
