Last fall I planted thirty-five new tulip bulbs to join the fifteen to twenty I already had, because seeing the tulips come up in spring is one of my favorite things and I thought it would be nice to have more of that.
The results this spring: eight tulips. Total. Of those, seven are extra bulbs I’d planted in a new location because there wasn’t room for them in the main tulip patch; only one tulip came up where I used to have twenty and was hoping to have more like forty. Our diagnosis so far is VOLES, from seeing certain kinds of evidence (tunnels in the melting snow, tunnels in the top of the dirt) and from listening to the words people said with their mouths after I finished weeping and wailing to them about it.
I’m trying not to treat this like some sort of catastrophe instead of a minor gardening setback of a purely decorative nature—but it gave me this Big Picture feeling of “But I only have a certain number of springs to see the tulips come up! And now this one is lost! LOSSSSSSSST!!”
Also, if the tulips had just been victim to some one-year-only weather issue, I’d just think, “Well, I’ll plant more this fall, and everything will be fine.” But if I plant more this fall, the voles will probably eat them again, and I will feel EXPONENTIAL despair NEXT spring.
We have been the recipients of many vole-repelling suggestions, but all it does is point out to me how unwilling I am to do any of them. I am JUST BARELY willing to put tulip bulbs in the ground; THAT is my level of interest in gardening. I am not willing to:
1. Dig up, store, and move the bulbs each year to a different location
2. Put out vole poison
3. Dig up the whole flower bed and put special cloth around the bulb section
4. Plant narcissus instead, because voles hate narcissus
Well, although, about #4: we have a bunch of very nice narcissus (I don’t know what kind, but they’re small and white with a tiny ring of red around the rim of the trumpet, and they have a nice strong scent) that the previous owner of our house planted along the back of the house, where we never see them and where they rarely bloom (no sun, or too crowded, or proximity to raspberry brambles—I don’t know anything about them). In a fit of vole-related rage yesterday, I dug up a large clump of narcissus that had spread out too far into the yard and transplanted them to where the tulips should have grown. This is a project nearly entirely doomed to fail (there could hardly be a worse moment to try to transplant bulbs), but maybe it will show those stupid voles a thing or two.
I am sorry. We cannot plant tulips because of voles underground and deer above. But we plant lots of daffodils, and I wanted to let you know that if you google around, you will see that many, many people “break the rules” and transplant their bulbs in the spring. To the point where “transplant those bulbs in the spring, when it’s easy to find them and the ground is easy to dig” is practically a rule of its own.
Voles and rabbits – CURSE THEM ALL! At one point in my life, I hated the rabbits so much that my family called me Elmer Fudd. I spent way too much time and energy (thereby depleting my sanity reserves) on outsmarting those animals. I wish you luck and please share if you find some way to deter those vile pests.
We have some daffodils in the back yard that just appeared one year. I think a squirrel may have dug them up from a neighbor’s yard and re-gifted them to us. So sometimes rodents come bearing flowers.
I know what you mean about losing the year, though. When my daughter was in preschool she snapped half the about the bloom buds off my tiger lilies and I was in despair about it.
about-to-bloom buds, that should say.
This could just me being dumb…but what if you planted the tulip bulbs in the middle and then put a thick ring of narcissus around the tulips? Would it fool the voles into thinking the whole bed was narcissus?
I was just coming on here to (probably) show my ignorance by suggesting exactly the same thing…
I’m so sorry. That’s very disappointing.
Has anyone mentioned purchasing, along with the bulbs, the cages you plant the bulbs in? Not sure if they work for voles, but at our local mega-store-that-everyone-loves-to-hate, the cages are for sale right now in the same place as the summer bulbs.
Also, I don’t know if this helps or hurts, but the advice I read is to think of tulip bulbs as annuals, rather than as perennials, (1) because they are such popular snacks and (2) often don’t find growing conditions enough to their liking to come back year after year.
My personal solution to all garden-related problems may not work for everyone, but I offer it just in case: enjoy other people’s flowers while walking/driving around in the spring. Seriously – this year I’m getting 90% of the spring-related joy and delight, while having put in 0% of the work, compared to previous years.
This is my method as well, along with buying the occasional bouquet at the grocery store. I have tried to like gardening, but did you realize you have to do it outside? Where the bees and spiders and squirmy gross centipedes live?
Freaking voles. I too, have spent summers trying to rid my yard of them. But when your yard connects to a whole neighborhood of yards and some of those yards put out birdseed, peanuts, and corn to feed the poor voles, squirrels, and chipmunks, well…. It’s a losing battle. I count myself lucky if they all stay out of my house.
There are several elderly couples in my neighborhood, and they do this. Makes me crazy, because I’m the one walking my dog at 6 a.m. and being menaced by the raccoons that are enjoying the sidewalk buffet. We have really big raccoons around here, and they fear neither me nor my golden retriever.
When I mentioned a vole problem recently on Twitter, I was told that a female cat is the best way to take care of a vole problem. I happen to have a female cat who DESPERATELY wants to go outside, so we let her stay outside a few nights. So far, she has…er….eliminated…2 voles!
So. Obviously, this only works if you have a female cat who wants to go outside and you are comfortable letting her out. GOOD LUCK.
Oh! Also, Husband insisted on planting tulips last fall, despite my dire predictions of squirrels, etc., and we laid a piece of chicken wire over the area after they were planted, and they did actually all come up! (Once I started to see them poking up, I hoped no animal would be interested in eating them, and I took up the chicken wire so they didn’t get stuck.)
That is THE WORST. I know, because I finally managed to plant actual tulips last fall, and something at least TRIED to eat at least one. I fretted all winter that skunks – I assume skunks, given my history of having the skunk hotel in the back – ate all of them and that all my buying and digging would be for naught, but they do seem to have all come up!I did spray “Critter Ridder” on them a few times in the fall when I remembered. But a child stepped on one immediately and it broke. And they’re not blooming yet even though everyone else’s tulips bloomed two weeks ago, so I dunno. Gardening is very very far from my forte.
But gah. So sorry about your vole problem. The “Critter Ridder” is a very low-investment fix, so maybe try that? But I am suspicious that it would work on voles because I think they actually dig tunnels?
If you have a deck or a porch that’s up above ground, why not plant some tulips in pots and keep them up there? I have a thriving rabbit population in my yard, and anything I really want to keep safe from them, I put in a container on the deck. You can still plant in your yard in the hopes that the voles won’t get what’s out there, but the ones in the planters can be your happy tulip safety net.
Or you could only plant tulips in the planters and plant different things in the yard that aren’t as interesting to the voles? The rabbits pretty much ignore my flax, bluebells, and rosebushes. I have no idea if voles are the same or not.
I’m sorry. I had a spectacular tulip fail this year, too – where last year there were many, this year there were none. I have no idea why, and I know nothing about voles. Since tulips grew in other places, I’m going to plant more bulbs this fall and hope for the best. My goal is to have at least one lovely spring season with a nicely landscaped and flowered yard so I can take photos before we sell the house. I figure I have two springs to get that right.
This may not be what you’re looking for as far as the whole ‘magic of spring’ thing goes, and it may be more effort than you’d like (I don’t know how much effort is involved; I’ve never done this), but it’s possible to force tulips in a vase. I’m sure a quick google will give you more information than you ever wanted, if that sounds like something you might be interested in.
I realize you probably aren’t looking for suggestions but I have to say that the cheapest, best protection I’ve found is mothballs. I don’t know if it’s 100% effective, but I’ve heard they can’t stand the smell. And I derive great satisfaction from poking those little balls into their tunnels. Take THAT, stupid voles!
I had to google “vole” because I had never heard of one. Now I wish I still didn’t know what one looked like!
I thought about googling voles, and decided against it because I don’t want to know!
Thank you for this, because I was just about to google to see what it was. I keep reading it thinking “they all mean Moles! Moles are a thing!” but apparently I just don’t live in an area where I’ve ever heard of them. Or something.
I’m sorry. I’ve never had luck with tulips. I don’t know whether it’s voles or they just aren’t happy where I plant them.
We have the same problem but with deer. And it is… You’re right. Despair is the only way to describe it. Utter impotence and disappointment and… now I have about 20 headless bulbs of one sort or the other because the deer came around and mowed them down RIGHT as they began to bud. And I’m sure they are only flourishing in their greenery temporarily, as the jerkhead deer are bound to come back and snack on the leaves and stems. WOE.
So sorry about your gardening frustration. Greedy voles. It is at times like this that living on a high rise and having only container plants doesn’t feel so bad.
Despite empathizing totally with you, I had a very big belly laugh at your “but I only have a certain number of springs…” because I realized that since turning 60 (five years ago, alas) that is how I view life. It can get quite dramatic sometimes because I do it even with food; i.e. Cadbury Creme Eggs.
we have the perfect solution to voles-our cats! they are a tag team of death–last year all the fruit bearing trees on property around us had what is called girdling, basically voles eat the bark of trees right below snow height-many people lost old growth apple trees (15 years old, very established is what I’m calling old growth here) we however lost nothing due to vole damage….now mastiff damage? we got that in the form of crushed tulips…cats can’t seem to kill her although I dare say they’ve tried
My parents had a real problem with gophers in the yard and my dad came up with a kind of cockamamie solution to it that actually worked. He took the clumps of cat litter where the cat peed and put them down any gopher holes he found. His thought was that the gophers would be repelled by cat urine because cats are a natural rodent enemy (the cat is well past hunting age so he’s of no actual use). I’m hesitant to even suggest this because this really seemed like a harebrained (and kinda gross) idea when he did it, but I gotta be honest, there have been zero gopher problems since. I wonder if it might work for voles?
Ugh, voles. They ate my gorgeous irises and an entire row of nandina shrubs a couple years ago. They (the shrubs) fell over one by one, and you could see where the roots had been gnawed from underneath. Grrr. Voles are worse than chipmunks.
My local garden stores recommended something called PermaTil which looks like pea-sized gravel but is made out of volcanic rock, which (it was explained to me) is sharp and so hurts their widdle paws as the voles try to dig through it. It’s a pain to have gravel-like objects in the flower beds, but now I understand its appeal. I’ve been sprinkling a little around any new bulbs I plant, and so far it seems to deter the voles. Next year I’ll tackle replacing the larger shrubs and cross my fingers!
My only suggestion would be to go to a dollar store and buy a bunch of plastic pots. Plant the bulbs in the pots, plant the pots in the ground. Or try terra cotta pots, they’ll last for years, can’t be chewed through and aren’t really any harder to plant than bulbs. I had my mom do that with her iris’s so the moles can’t get them and so they don’t spread like crazy.
I’d plant more daffodils and narcissus.
BTW the ones you have sound like Pheasant’s Eyes.
We can’t have tulips because DEER.