How to Protect Tulips from Voles
If you’ve been following along for a while, you know that voles (small little mammals, similar to mice) are a huge problem on our farm. Voles love to eat all sorts of vegetations, but bulbs are their favorite food.
My first season on the farm, I planted 125 Tulips bulbs… and the voles ate 123 of them.
My second season, I planted about 500 bulbs… and the voles 2/3 of them.
I realized this was a SERIOUS problem and I would have to find ways to outsmart the voles.
In November of 2019, my husband and I drove all the way from Michigan to Philadelphia so I could spend a day learning from Jennie Love, of Love ‘n Fresh Flowers.
I’m grateful for Jennie’s wisdom, generosity and enthusiasm. She is an inspiration to me and I love learning from her, whether it’s in person, through one of her online courses or listening to her podcast, “The No-Till Flowers Podcast”.
When I saw her “No Till Tulips” planting method in person, I was fascinated and wanted to try it myself.
The method is brilliant. Instead of digging individual holes for each bulb or a giant trench, she creates a temporary raised bed on the surface of the soil. This makes harvesting the Tulips much faster and creating the beds is so simple.
On Jennie’s farm, they don’t get a lot of snow cover, so her two fierce barn cats can hunt all winter and keep the vole/critter population at a manageable level (side note: barn cats are MUST on any farm!).
In Michigan, we often have deep snow cover over the winter. The voles make their tunnels deep below the snow and our barn cats can’t catch them… so the voles basically have free run of the entire farm and can do massive amounts of damage.
I decided to try Jennie’s “No Till Tulips” planting method, but with a twist. I would line the BOTTOM and the TOP of the bed with wire mesh hardware cloth and staple it the sides of the beds.
Below, I’m going to walk you step by step though the process of how I did it. There are LOTS of photos, because I suspect you are a visual learner like me.
1. Rake planting area smooth and lay out the boards for the beds. These boards are 6” tall. I wish they were 8-12” but we worked with what free materials we had on hand.
This bed is 3’ x 50’ and I fit 4,200 Tulips bulbs in here.
2. Roll out wire mesh hardware cloth. I bought this from Home Depot and it’s the 1/4” mesh. 1/2” is too big - voles can fit through 1/2” spacing. I pinned it in place with landscape staples.
3. I started creating the sides of the beds. The boards are simply held in place with rebar stakes on either side of the boards.
4. I bent the wire mesh so it cradled the boards. Then I used a staple gun to staple the mesh to the boards.
5. I started filling the beds with about 2 inches of compost and a sprinkle of Bone Meal.
6. My farm hand, Kathryn, helped me plant the bulbs. This part goes really fast. We were able to plant over 4,200 bulbs in a couple hours.
We placed about 25-30 bulbs per square foot. They are nestled close together, like eggs in a crate.
7. After the bulbs were placed, we filled the beds all the way to the top with more compost.
8. Just for refence, this is what 100 Tulips bulbs looks like. They hardly take up any space at all.
9. After the bed was filled, I rolled out another layer of wire mesh hardware cloth over the top of the bed and stapled it to the boards. Now the Tulips bulbs were in a “cage”, completely encased in wood and wire mesh.
10. Over the winter, whenever there was a thaw, I’d see lots of vole tunnels all around the Tulip bed…
11. In March, I visited the Tulip bed every day to look for growth. As soon as they started poking up, I removed the wire mesh top.
By this time, most of the snow as gone and the barn cats were able to hunt again.
12. In April, the Tulips started to wake up.
13. Our spring was extremely cold and cloudy, which delayed Tulip growth. We hoped they would be ready in time for Mother’s Day, but alas, most were not.
We even tried covering the bed with hoops and plastic to warm them up faster, but it didn’t really work since it was so cloudy and windy in April (if you try this, be sure to keep the sides vented. When the sun comes out, it can heat up REALLY fast and cook the Tulips to death).
14. By the first week of May, a couple of the varieties were ALMOST ready to harvest.
15. When we harvest Tulips for cut flower use, we pull the entire plant, including the bulb. With the bulb still attached, they can be stored in a cooler for up to 4 weeks.
16. We harvest when the buds swell and begin to show their color. This allows the bud to open up in the vase and the customer get the best and longest vase life.
17. Tulips are harvested into crates or buckets and stored dry in the cooler. They don’t need to be in water.
18. After a cold cloudy spring, the temperatures soared (literally doubled in 2 days), the sun came out and all the Tulips were ready for harvest in a 3 day period, instead of a 3 week period.
We harvested up to 5 times a day to make sure we caught them before they opened. We had to scramble like crazy to harvest everything in time AND mash them all into our walk-in cooler.
19. After the harvest was over, I disassembled the raised bed. I pulled the sides off and raked the compost into the beds nearby to use for a new planting area.
20. And look what I found under the wire mesh! There are so many voles tunnels under the mesh.
I rejoiced that the mesh did it’s job and we didn’t lose a SINGLE BULB to those awful voles. Take THAT, voles!
I hope you enjoyed this step-by-step explanation of how I finally outsmarted the voles. If you struggle with voles too, use this as inspiration to find a solution that works for you!
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