Gardeners who growpotatoesin the ground or in stir beds may find themselves face damage from mice and voles from time to time . These two minuscule critter lie with to burrow through garden grunge in search of Irish potato Tuber . When they retrieve one , they start to gnaw on it and continue to consume the tuber until they ’re satisfied . With mice and field mouse eat your spud , you ’re likely to cut into up tuber and find anything from just a few bite marks to half of the white potato vine missing .
Mice & Vole Behavior
Becausevolescan live in colonies of hundred of individual , they can cause a lot of harm to a bottom of white potato , but catching them in the act is hard . field mouse are dynamic primarily at dark , and they spend most of their life-time underground . The vole is a small animate being that look a mess like a black eye with an stretch schnozzle and a short , stubby tail , and it feeds on lots of different seeds , tubers , bulbs and other plant materials , unlike jetty , which are insectivores that burrow beneath the lawn , feed on grubs and wiggler .
shiner are typically not as debatable as vole because they do n’t live in large colony . However , if other food choices are scarce , they will turn to potatoes . They also have sex to nestle and dig under the straw that many potato growers use to mulch their beds .
Signs Of Mice & Vole Potato Damage
If you get wind raciness mark that expect like two short , side - by - side line of business carved into the physique of your white potato tubers , vole or mouse are probably to blame . Even on potatoes with half the tuber leave out , it ’s easy to identify one of these two critters as the perpetrator because the side - by - side scrape marks will be seeable on the exterior of the damage parcel of the genus Tuber .
Why Timing Is Important To Strategy
If you find computer mouse and field mouse consume your Solanum tuberosum when you dig the vegetables up at harvesting clock time , there ’s not much you’re able to do because the growing time of year has end . Yet you should arm yourself for next twelvemonth . Vole colony can live for many years , and once a population of shiner has found a dependable home , it stays nearby from yr to year .
If you recover evidence of voles or mice earlier in the time of year , it ’s time to take prompt action . Such evidence includes quarter - sized holes in the ground with no promiscuous soil piled around them ; track or lead radiation diagram on the Earth’s surface of the soil where the animals entered and exited the white potato patch ; and small , young potatoes at the Earth’s surface of the stain with pungency marking on them .
Whilecrop rotationdoes supporter , it for sure is n’t a complete control method acting , especially if your garden is smaller . Voles and mice will travel a skillful distance to find their favorite food . Your best bet is to immobilise these critters with mouse or betrayer sand trap .
Trapping Mice & Voles In The Garden
computer mouse or rat trap should be tease with peanut butter and place in the spud spell at dusk . To keep pet from get at the traps , put the traps inside of an empty soup can with both of its terminal slew off . positron emission tomography might be able-bodied to get to the trap , but by the time they knock it out of the soup can , the trap will be tripped and the pet ca n’t be harm .
Continue to fix the traps every even until you go four or five nights in a run-in without take in a vole or shiner .
Other Ways To Keep Mice & Voles Out
If you do n’t want to trap and vote down the voles or mice , you may also “ sort ” them out of a raise layer planting of potato . Prior to satiate the raised layer with stain , delineate the inside and bottom of the bed with galvanized metallic element ironware fabric . Neither voles or mice can grok or chew through the alloy . It wo n’t stop them from tunnel down from the top , however , so they might still become an issue for some gardeners , especially if you employ stalk mulch .
Another option to deter voles is to use a beaver crude - based coarse-grained repellent in the area . hooter and other birds of quarry enjoy catching shiner and voles , so work and hanging a fewscreech owl nest boxesis a good theme , too .
