Look at the ends. Does it looked chewed, rotted or snapped? If chewed, how big are the tooth marks?

If mice and squirrels are a problem, there are all kinds of mouse traps and poisons available to buy at many stores. Or you could get a cat. Don't leave snap traps or poisons out where pet animals could find them, though.

My guess would be voles; they have done that to my peas several times, usually just as the plants were beginning to bear. I used rat traps to catch them, baited with pieces of dried apricot... it was very effective.

Judging by the contents of the trap this morning, it is voles. Two more plants killed last night.

Is there anything I can bait the traps with that doesn't attract ants? Or do the voles not care whether their food is covered with ants?

Is there any other solution than traps? My fence can't keep them out, (could any?) and I don't really like the idea of clearing out the vole population in the area. Why did they decide to destroy my garden this year and not others?

My garden is 15 ft by 20 ft - any idea how many voles I need to catch to protect the beans?

Thanks for your help!

I have this problem at times. This year it is the worst I've seen. The're even doing this to my few remaining tomato plants. My solution is to lay a coffee can on it's side, by the base of my plants. I put a chunk of rat/mouse poison in the back of the can. The voles (and in some cases rats) find this, eat some, and die. In cases of heavy infestation I've had to rebait after a day or two. This is the only way I've found to stop the damage before the crop is lost.

I prefer a rat bait called "Just One Bite II." It's yellow and waxy, so it's somewhat water resistant. Cats shouldn't be bothered by.this. I make sure that my dogs can't get to it, though they dont seem interested.

The only other solution which I know to be effective is to have cats which hunt and prowl in the garden. But my livestock guardian dogs eat them, and even if they didn't, I'd be afraid that the cats might prey on our young free range poultry.

George
Tahlequah, OK

thanks for this idea even though you wrote it 8 years ago. we're having a terrible vole year and half my bean crop has been killed in a matter of days. If you are still around, did the cayenne work? i only wrapped the lowest portion of my bean stems - i had to remove so many leaves just to do that, and flowering lower stalks that would have produced beans. i also put the galvanized nails in by every plant; that is how i discovered that there was a vole tunnel - so thanks. i never would've known if not for this tip.

These were to be my winter beans - an excellent variety called Ely that is the best tasting bean there is, IMO. Next is to do this for my runner beans, which so far have not been touched. .

I also have heard of a cruel method of vole control that i might use in this one instance, since i found a vole tunnel in the bean bed. i know there are other tunnels in my very lush, overgrown garden - but live and let live - until they start chomping on my plants!

A farmer recommended this. Buy a package of juicy fruit gum, break a piece into small pieces and put into the vole tunnel or at the mouth of the tunnel. the voles eat it and it binds up their system and they die. i would rater use snap traps and kill them instantly - less suffering for the vole to go quick, but the farmer swore by this method so i'm putting it here for anyone else who is struggling with vole damage on their food crops.

Rats or Voles. We get the same problem. Here is the biggest problem. They reproduce like rabbits only worse! They are hard to eradicate! A female vole has 4 litters of about 10 annually, and each littler starts reproducing.... and the cycle is ongoing.

This year I'm trying a new thing - no mulch around the beans. The voles love the mulch, and they avoid open areas. So far so good, but it's hard to know what the pressure is this year. It feels very wrong not to have mulch and makes watering and weeding frustrating, but at least the plants are living.

I have also used small water bottles with the bottoms cut off and slit up the side to cover over the bottom of the vines (worked reasonably well, but sometimes they would just snip off the top above the water bottle). I string natural twine for the beans to climb up and use bicycle spokes as garden stakes for them, but it doesn't seem to matter to the voles to have the stakes in the ground. I think that was because they just travelled under the mulch, above the soil.

When I use traps I always catch at least one unwanted creature - even with traps right in tunnels and covered. There's a brown wren around here that really likes to go into tunnels and it makes me so sad to trap one that I have stopped trapping. Sometimes if I get the timing right, during a winter thaw the tunnels are very visible and I can trap some voles then - they are more desperate for the bait in the traps in winter, as well. But I'm not sure how much good winter trapping does, since more probably just move in during springtime.

One last thing I tried - pile up deer netting all around the base of the plants, like a huge tangle. It seemed to make the voles reconsider entering the area.

llgon, all good points.

We have since reconsidered the idea of getting a cat. I could do a whole short story on the process of getting our livestock guardian dogs to accept a cat, but suffice it to say that we succeeded. I've nicknamed one of the dogs "the keeper of 'the cat,'" as he prides himself on taking care of it.

The cat has worked better than anything else I've tried, for keeping rodents down in the garden. Just has to be about 6 mos to a year old. A great disadvantage of the cat is that they tend to get out on the road. We'v had a number of cats in the last 6 years.

Before getting a cat I had a year with about 90% loss of our sweet potato crop. Last year rodent damage was less than a percent.

Here's a picture of "the cat" with one of our livestock guardian dogs.

I've considered borrowing a neighbor's cat to put in my garden, but it's a small suburban garden and having a cat poop in it concerns me.

Another thing I wanted to mention - and I'm not sure I believe it, even though I saw it clearly. I happened to be in the garden, heard a rustle and just in time saw a vole squeeze and wiggle through the hardware cloth. 1/2" square. It looked like an adult vole, not a baby. And I checked afterwards and it was a normal piece, no missing squares. I was amazed. So if you choose to line a garden with fencing for voles, you need smaller than normal hardware cloth fencing.

@lingon Voles can squeeze in anywhere. They are the bane of our existence here. Oh, and gophers too. Voles snipped off all my caper cuttings that I carefully watered daily. One is left. I thought it would be safe, but your comments make me think twice. It's in a crack in a boulder. We may have to anchor some window screen over it. Jeeze!! It doesn't look green, but it is.

I wish we could get a cat, but we live on the edge of nowhere, and everybody keeps pets inside at night. Coyotes, Bob Cats, Mountain Lions, HUGE owls.

Trying to fence out voles is pretty much a lost cause IMO. If they can't squeeze through it, or chew through it, or climb over it, they will just dig under it.