Potatoes And Voles

Reader Contribution by Cindy Conner
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I’ve been battling voles in my garden for quite awhile, hoping the ecosystem would balance out on its own. My yield of potatoes, sweet potatoes and peanuts would certainly increase if I had less vole damage. The neighbor’s cat occasionally patrols the garden, along with other natural predators. I stopped mulching my potatoes long ago to discourage voles. Still, that doesn’t seem to be enough.

A few years ago I began planting daffodils around the perimeter of some of my garden beds. Supposedly daffodils are toxic to voles. Fall of 2010 I actually planted a whole bed in daffodils. Then in the spring I replaced some of the daffodils with potatoes. The voles found the potatoes anyway.  The daffodils perk up the garden in early spring and I will keep them around, but it is going to take more than that to keep the voles away. I’ve also added castor plants to the garden to discourage voles. I don’t have any results on how effective that is, but the castor plants add a good amount of carbon biomass to the compost piles in the fall.

A friend of mine used to mulch his whole garden heavily and never had problems with voles — until his dog died. He hadn’t realized how valuable his dog was in controlling them. His garden never recovered from the voles that moved in by the time he sold that property. Dogs and cats can help keep the vole population in check.

I’ve discovered that voles love yellow-fleshed potatoes the best, so I no longer grow those. This year I compared ‘Kennebec’ and ‘Butte’ varieties. The voles liked the Buttes the best. Our daughter, Betsy, Lightfoot Gardening Coach, grew the ‘Elba’ and ‘Red Norland’varieties. She also has losses from the voles and had twice the yield with ‘Elba’ varietiess as compared to the ‘Red Norland’ varieties. According to Cornell University, ‘Elba’ is currently the potato variety most resistant to late blight. ‘Kennebec’ has moderate levels of resistance. I don’t know if there is something there that also puts off voles, but next year I plan on growing ‘Elba’ and ‘Kennebec’ potatoes and comparing the yields.

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