FILE PHOTO

Image Credit: WIKIMEDIA COMMONS / John Freshney

Kamloops resident Christine Rissanen is losing her precious garden to pocket gophers and voles for the second year in a row, and recently captured video of one tiny criminal in the act of snipping off a daisy stem and dragging it into its hole.

“I think it’s a vole, I did catch a glimpse of it’s head before starting the video and it wasn’t as big as a pocket gopher and didn’t leave the dirt mound that pocket gophers leave,” she said.

A tiny crunch can be heard as the daisy stem waves around before disappearing into the ground. 

Rissanen said rodents destroyed her garden last year, eating all of the bulbs and most of the perennials. This year she planted vegetation she thought might deter the them, like castor bean plants, and even tried flooding the tunnels with water, but it didn’t work. 

She doesn’t want to put poison out because she has dogs and there's a high number of birds in the area.

“I tried to flood or fill in holes before planting this year, but the tunnels must be extensive because the water just keeps flowing,” she said. “When walking in the area there are a lot of soft spots which must be tunnels collapsing.”

Voles are known to drive gardeners and homeowners crazy with their extensive tunnelling and appetite for stems and blades of lawn grass, according to the Old Farmers Almanac.

The tunnels are close to the surface so the voles can access plants easily, nibble on root vegetables and eat flower bulbs.

“I’m losing the battle against rodents, literally watching the daisies disappear,” Rissanen said. “The video is funny, I have to laugh.” 

READ MORE: Strawberry dilemma: Buy cheap American or more pricey Okanagan grown

Some suggestions for controlling vole populations without using poison is setting up traps baited with peanut butter, using repellents like coyote urine, and powdering bulbs with fungicide when planting them.

Vegetable gardens can be protected by fencing in plants with a half-inch of mesh placed at least a foot above the ground and buried roughly eight inches deep.

A variety of irritants can be sprinkled into vole tunnels including cayenne powder, garlic, castor oil and ammonia, but one of the best ways to control voles is having an outdoor cat or a ratting dog.

To contact a reporter for this story, email Shannon Ainslie or call 250-819-6089 or email the editor. You can also submit photos, videos or news tips to the newsroom and be entered to win a monthly prize draw.

We welcome your comments and opinions on our stories but play nice. We won't censor or delete comments unless they contain off-topic statements or links, unnecessary vulgarity, false facts, spam or obviously fake profiles. If you have any concerns about what you see in comments, email the editor in the link above. SUBSCRIBE to our awesome newsletter here.

News from © iNFOnews, 2025