How to Keep Rodents Away From the Garden

Gardens attract rodents with the food, water and shelter they offer. It's nearly impossible to keep rodents out entirely. A few inexpensive strategies can make your garden less attractive to rodent pests, and you have options for protecting your plants and limiting damage. Although it's small comfort when pests are eating your plants, most rodent populations eventually decline or move on naturally. Traps and poison pose hazards to pets, children and benign wildlife. Consider nonlethal pest control options as your first line of garden defense.

Rodents that might try to spend as much time in your garden as you do include mice, rats, voles, gophers, moles and squirrels. Each kind of rodent has different habits and a different impact on your garden. Yet they all share basic needs, and making the garden inhospitable can deter them. Although voles, gophers and moles all burrow, moles are carnivores and don't eat plants. Still, mole burrowing can disrupt plant roots. Norway rats also burrow, and rats can damage plants and often carry disease. Voles can cause as much plant damage above ground as below ground. They eat plants and gnaw bark.

Rodents that usually feed or nest above ground -- including rats, mice and voles -- like areas with cover. Weeds, brush, low branches, tall grass and thick mulch make an inviting habitat for these rodents. Clear brush and weeds, keep grass mowed and trim all low-hanging branches. If voles are a major problem, clear mulch away from plants in a radius of one foot or more. Small rodents avoid areas where they have nowhere to hide; being out in the open puts them at risk of becoming a meal for predators. Don't keep brush piles, debris or woodpiles near the garden.

Plentiful food and drink encourage rodents to stick around and reproduce. It's easier to discourage a population explosion than deal with the results. When there isn't as much easy-access food and water, rodents are less likely to stay. Clear away fallen seeds, nuts, fruits, vegetables and all possible food sources including pet droppings every day. Keep garbage, birdseed and pet food in containers with tight-fitting lids. Don't leave pet food and water dishes outside. Repair any leaking faucets or sprinklers. Electromagnetic and ultrasonic devices don't deter voles, according to the University of California Integrated Pest Management Program. Despite marketing claims, these devices don't seem to be effective at repelling rodents.

To keep burrowing rodents out of the garden, create a strip of weed-free, uncultivated land around the property, such as a 4- to 6-foot-wide walkway covered with 1 inch or less of gravel. This serves as an inhospitable zone lacking in plant and insect life that can attract voles, gophers and moles. Erecting a mesh fence buried at least 2 feet deep in the soil and 1 foot tall can discourage gophers from burrowing into the garden or the beds you most want to protect. Wire baskets help protect individual plants from damage by burrowers. A complete enclosure, with wire mesh sides and roof might be the only way to keep squirrels out of a vegetable garden because squirrels can get over most fences, including electric ones.