Castor Oil for Moles & Voles?

Would that help repel them? My cat seems to be falling down on the job and the garden is riddled with little round holes and tunnels this year.

It worked for me against voles.

How did you apply it, Paracelsus? I just read that cats don't like voles, so I suppose I should stop calling the barn cat lazy, huh?

I didn't know cats didn't like voles. To eat? My cat Pickles used to catch them, eat the head, and leave the torso on the stoop as a gift. :) I used Mole-Stop, which is emulsified castor oil. You just water it in thoroughly. Very thoroughly.

Sounds like I need to have a talk with my cat Zinnia, then. Somewhere recently I had read that voles aren't attractive to cats. I bought a small bottle of castor oil; I suppose I could just add a little to water with some soap and sprinkle it around right before we put the water on that section.

Turtles are another story. My cucumbers and melons are always getting gnawed!

Pickles was a dedicated hunter, but even she could not keep up with the reproductive capabilities of voles.

If you have turtles, you must have a very wonderfully forest-like garden. I have seen them here only in the woods.

We have twenty acres; they are a mixture of woods, from whence we get our firewood, marsh, where we can see lots of wading birds, ospreys, and eagles, and pasture. The turtles trundle up the driveway from the wooded areas to the garden and I deport them whenever I catch them, but sometimes I only see the evidence after the perpetrator has departed. I was amazed years ago when I first found one of them red-jawed in my strawberry patch!

It sounds like a wonderful garden.

It's very nice but it's getting a bit too much for us. Last year we had a woman who came in and helped every so often, but she couldn't come this year and I couldn't find anyone else. Also with the heat this summer it's been hard to deal with the weeds as diligently as we should; it's very hot in the garden! I'd like to cut back a little so we'd have a better chance of keeping up with everything. But it's a gorgeous place; we've lived here almost forty years now. You are renting, aren't you? Or am I thinking of someone else?

Here's a photo from June:

It looks great! Yep, I'm renting. I have a mostly shady garden, so I kind of gave up on growing veggies in it and grow them mostly in pots on the driveway. I've got a ton of peppers coming in. But I also grow some veggies on a big trellis against the patio. Had snap peas and now cukes are climbing up. The rest is all herbs. They don't mind the shade.

So that's why my herbs do well under the peach tree! I have tried to avoid planting them right in the shade but maybe I don't have to be so careful!

Pots are a great alternative to in-ground planting, and you may be able to avoid some pests that way, too.

You know, I first started growing veggies in pots to get my tomatoes away from an invasion of stink bugs in my old place. I was surprised how well they grew in pots. Then I tried doing it with eggplant, which really loved growing in pots, because we usually don't get a lot of heat up here in summer (this summer's an exception!). I haven't gotten the water automated, like I do when they're in the ground, but you're right--there are pretty much no pests when they're in pots. And it really is nice to see them lining the car port and the driveway next to the house, where it's toasty for them.

The only herbs I have in full sun are the ones who like it dry--various types of yarrow, mugwort, wormwood, tansy, stuff like that. The rest are in partial shade.

I started my seedling eggplants off in flats on the balcony off our bedroom, to try to give them a head start before the flea beetles got to them. They decimated my plants last year. That worked really well, and I have lovely eggplant coming along. But I left some of the plants up on the balcony and they are barely fruiting. I can't figure out why, unless pollinators don't come up that high.

You have a wonderful herb collection! I just have cilantro, tarragon, two kinds of basil, parsley, rosemary, marjoram, chives, thyme and some different varieties of oregano. I had chervil, but it seems to have gone to seed on me.

I had voles earlier in the season. When I harvested the garlic, I cut off the leaves, and spread them around the garden. The voles vanished.

Either that's what did it, or an owl/snake/neighbors cat got to them. We also had some torrential rains around that time, and I wondered if they drowned in their burrows.

I've been trying to drown whatever lives in the burrow along the chickenyard fence. When I fill the cat litter box which I use for extra water for the geese, I flood that burrow until it collapses. But it's always there again the next day.

Too late to use those garlic leaves; I harvested it a while ago. What kind did you use? I tried Italian Late, and the cloves are almost too tiny to bother with.