i may have won a battle, but i lost the effen WAR!
 

my garden is a total loss.

VOLES!! day by day, a tomato or zucchini plant wilts. you tug on it and out it comes..the entire root ball is eaten. it's over.

the occasional take my cat gets, or myself with my bb gun is nothing. i am going to fall back, and do a potted garden.

ARGH!

i think it's time to nuke it from space..to be sure.

Time to get all Carl Spackler on their ass!
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/uploa...1399316237.jpg

I want one!!

Just get a Dachshund. They will dig em all up and have fun doing it.

Get an industrial size can of dried, ground cayenne pepper. Mix it in the soil around the roots of the plant you want to protect.
I have this problem and this is the solution I use.

This is what I do for gophers. It knocks them back for awhile, but they always come back. I truly despise them. The are so destructive to my landscaping.

http://i906.photobucket.com/albums/a...r/Photo062.jpg

I use those hanging pots for tomatoes and herbs, no gophers, few bugs.

Back in the day.....these were great and I fed the dirty bastards to the Dachshunds and Labs......


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Our HS had a problem with gophers burrowing under the baseball diamond. The head coach's solution was to install owl 'boxes' (read houses) around the perimeter. Says the owls will get 6-12/NIGHT. Problem seemingly solved.

My wife has tasked me with investigating whether this could work at home...

You need a different cat. Get one from the pound that has been one his own for awhile (fed himself). You will never really be friends with him, but him/she will come with a hunters instinct. Our cat, Oliver, lives to catch voles. His record is 5 in one hour, and that includes playing with his catch. Often he brings them to the center of the yard and drops them. Then he plays like he doesn't care if they run away or not. Once they scramble 5 or 6 feet he crouches, wiggles, springs and reaqcuires. Process is repeated until the vole become too injured to get way. Vole is partially consumed. Then the hunt for a new vole starts. We do not snuggle and give nose kisses to this cat.

I suspect a dog would tear the yard up more than a cat. Good barn cat and you won't see any sign of varmints. Cat like that won't last too long though, depending on what other critters are out and about. One time when I was out at my sister's place in Loomis, I found a half eaten yearling deer out in her pasture one morning; figure it was a mountain lion. Didn't bother her cat, the dogs stay in at night, horses in the barn. Guess that deer should have stayed the heck out of the tomato plants, or whatever he was eating. Did not bother the goats next door, or the sheep across the street, not sure what those guys do with their stock at night though.

Right cat can solve a lot of problems

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You likely would no longer have a nose were you to try!

Vash,

Sorry to hear about your mole or gofer problem. My friend bought a house in the hills and decided to landscape the entire hillside and flatten a section to grow vegetable with his little girl. Coming from condo living, he knew nothing about any telltale sings of those fir-ball bastards. Not one person said anything about the pests. Holes, eaten plants he planted was a common site. Sometimes we would sit there with a cup of coffee and a BB gun and shoot the breeze waiting for one to show up. That got old really quick. More fun to watch grass grow instead. He fought them for three years and finally gave up. He just left the hillside wild and water occasionally like all his neighbors. The goddamn neighbors did not say a word about it to him, until he let it go back to nature. I really hope you get em'.