mice!!!! what to do?

so i have the acer palmatums that have been in the ground for a few years problem free untill this past winter. mice seem to have found them. im not sure what to do any help would be greatly appreciated. id hate to lose these trees as they are almost big enough to start training. one trunk is 2 inches and the other is about 1.5 inches in caliper. the mice have taken the bark all the way around    do i add a pot and start a ground layer? or leave them be and hope in a few years the bark will grow back? i am heart broken and dont know what to do

my plan right now is as soon as leaf break i am going to air layer off the tops and make new unchewed trees but id hate to lose the current trunks....

i thought about it and hope with some spagnum and rooting hormone i can get new roots to grow from the chewed area... ill have to save the airlayers for next spring i guess. i dont want to put the tree under anymore stress than it already will be under once leaf breaks. i hope i can save these guys  

That is the work of voles. The trees appear to be completely girdled, but it's hard to tell from the pictures whether the cambium is still there or not. If they survive, there most assuredly will be a lot of scarring which could be good or bad. You really don't have a lot of options. I suppose packing the entire area with sphagnum moss may help the bark repair itself, as well as keep the voles from coming back to chew on what ever is left. I've had vole damage like this when I lived in MA during snowy winters but it was to smaller landscape trees that I didn't bother trying to save. I wish you good luck and let us know the outcome.

thanks dave. yeah they are completly girdled and void of any cambium. im going to pack a bag with spagnum and hope for a new root system to grow quickly

1 packet of traps and 1 jar of peanut butter should do the trick!

brian soldano wrote:thanks dave. yeah they are completly girdled and void of any cambium. im going to pack a bag with spagnum and hope for a new root system to grow quickly

Probably the best course of action. Good luck

Those look out in the open? but, In my greenhouse, cutting box andhoop house I solved the problem completely by tossing a few moth balls around in the fall.

yes they are out in the open and have had zero problems in the years they have been in the ground until this year  . if i can keep em alive they will have fortress walls and a moat for next fall/winter. and ill use the mothball trick as well as wrapping the lower trunk in wire mesh. i was warned but never had any issues until this winter. bummer is, they were getting trunk chops and root hacks in a week or so until i noticed the damage... oh well one more season of unrestricted growth i guess

We put mothballs all through our trees when we're packing them in for the winter. We put them on the surface of the soil, also around the perimeter of the bed. We haven't had a problem with voles since then. They don't like the smell, apparently.

So a couple years later and the maple was airlayered  and these are the new roots... The trees is kind of a mess so I'm going to let it grow out another year, maybe some guy wires and minimal pruning and see what it takes shape as

[url=https://servimg.com/view/18082002/59][/url

I just had a vole attack this winter. Just about killed all of my trees. Show trees. They worked their way down from the best.
Moth balls don't work. Traps don't work. Mouse poison won't work.
Building a structure out of 1/8" hardware cloth this year. All sides. Even the bottom. If you want to kill the things a remedy that sounds like it works real well is concrete mixed in the peanut butter.
I can't post the pictures here but they are on the Bonsai Nut site. They ate the best jack pine bonsai on the planet!

M. Frary wrote: I just had a vole attack this winter. Just about killed all of my trees. Show trees. They worked their way down from the best.
 Moth balls don't work. Traps don't work. Mouse poison won't work.
Building a structure out of 1/8" hardware cloth this year. All sides. Even the bottom. If you want to kill the things a remedy that sounds like it works real well is concrete mixed in the peanut butter.
I can't post the pictures here but they are on the Bonsai Nut site. They ate the best jack pine bonsai on the planet!

Oh no!!! Im sorry, thats such a bummer. Since this incident I now cut the top and bottom off a pounder can (the 24oz ones) and wrap my trunks when they get put in the ground for the winters. As well as rat poison and moth balls. I like the peanut butter and concrete theory maybe I'll add that to my arsenal against voles

my garden area where i heal some trees in for winter became pretty vole infested this past winter but i didnt know it until the snow melted...

but so far i have been lucky...

this year its gonna be like bowie said: "THIS AINT ROCK N ROLL... THIS IS VOLICIDE !!!
before they get to em...

unfortunately though, not so lucky with the rabbits...
they did me the favor of pruning every single branch they could reach

this spring its gonna be like a warner bros. cartoon in my back yard...
except one where i win... i hope

and next year the garden trees get wire protection too...

mike... super bummed for you...

brian... glad you was able to salvage something rather than a total loss...

I've talked about this on bnut but I'll share my experiences here. I've had problems with rabbits and voles when wintering trees outside. I was able to fence rabbits out of my nursery bed, but it's pretty difficult to fence out voles. So for my in ground pre-bonsai, I'll wrap the trunks with that plastic tree guard in the fall. It's time consuming and tough on the back, but so far trees that have been wrapped have not had any damage. I don't wrap everything, just the things I care most about and younger stuff that has small trunks that could be easily killed.

My bonsai are now all wintered inside my barn and garage. In the barn, the first couple of years I put them on the floor with mulch, but I had vole and mouse damage. To combat this, I built a roughly 10x10 shelter within the barn, it is wrapped on 3 sides with foam insulation board and the rest is covered with plastic sheeting. A thermostatically controlled heater keeps temps at 27/28 F or above. Now I store almost everything on tables in this enclosure and that has eliminated mouse attacks. The few things that still must go on the floor get the trunk wrap and the soil is covered with foil or wire (mice like to burrow into the pots to eat roots and store food).

As for deterrents...I've tried those ultrasonic rodent repellent devices but they don't seem to work...have seen mice run right over them. Have tried mothballs. They stunk up my barn but had no effect. Maybe I didn't use enough. I didn't put them right on the soil like some have suggested, but rather around the enclosure. I do set standard mouse traps baited with peanut butter which catch a few mice and voles.

I've had no problems with mice or voles eating trees so I'm pleased about that and commiserate with those who have. I've had two beautifully ironic incidents with mice in my garage and my shed though - first time the mice ate their way into my rat poison container; second time they ate their way into the slug pellet container. Goodbye mice!

So maybe slug pellets would also be worth a try.

JT - MK Bonsai

I told folks on another forum about cement and peanut butter. Seems like they think Im crazy. But my aunt in Northern Ga had a HUGE infestation of mice in their basement. They had dogs sleeping in the basement, so poison just wasnt an option. She read on google about mixing dry cement and peanut butter. They eat it right up, then get thirsty and the water kicks off the cement, making a concrete rock in their belly that is fatal every time. She had so many dead mice that the house was almost unlivable for a while! So Id recomend trying it because its non toxic, so animals who may eat them dont die too. And since its earthday, and organic solutions should be our future.

I told folks on another forum about cement and peanut butter. Seems like they think Im crazy. But my aunt in Northern Ga had a HUGE infestation of mice in their basement. They had dogs sleeping in the basement, so poison just wasnt an option. She read on google about mixing dry cement and peanut butter. They eat it right up, then get thirsty and the water kicks off the cement, making a concrete rock in their belly that is fatal every time. She had so many dead mice that the house was almost unlivable for a while! So Id recomend trying it because its non toxic, so animals who may eat them dont die too. And since its earthday, and organic solutions should be our future.

Eric F wrote:I told folks on another forum about cement and peanut butter. Seems like they think Im crazy. But my aunt in Northern Ga had a HUGE infestation of mice in their basement. They had dogs sleeping in the basement, so poison just wasnt an option. She read on google about mixing dry cement and peanut butter. They eat it right up, then get thirsty and the water kicks off the cement, making a concrete rock in their belly that is fatal every time. She had so many dead mice that the house was almost unlivable for a while! So Id recomend trying it because its non toxic, so animals who may eat them dont die too. And since its earthday, and organic solutions should be our future.

You are probably crazy,but that's beside the point. I'm going to try this out this year. Along with a cube made out of 1/8" hardware cloth to put the trees in.
No more of that crap.
On a different topic I've been out collecting to build back up. Got some nice tamaracks,jack pines and a couple scots pine so far. Today it's hawthorn.

mike - glad to hear you are scoring replacements to the collection...
but i guess that means the devastation was as bad as you thought, eh ?

if you get time, post up some of the new ones... here or on our site...

Yup, Im fairly crazy for sure! Crazy enough to move here (Costa Rica), alone then try to learn bonsai on the internet. In a place that has close to nothing for bonsai,much less a club. After 10 months I dont have a bonsai friend here..but I dont give up easily and I learn fast when obsessed with something. Like you said thats beside the point.
I wish my aunt were still with us to ask for details (and so much more, she was great). But I think google can tell you the ratios to make it work setting up the cement. I guess the peanut oil keeps it from hardening til water is introduced. Anyway, its a great trick that is eco griendly unlike poison. And Ive never heard of vermin that wont eat.peanut butter. That and the cage are probably going to get rid of your problem. Let us know, Id like to know what ratios work and how it turns out for you. Good luck!

beer city snake wrote:mike - glad to hear you are scoring replacements to the collection...
but i guess that means the devastation was as bad as you thought, eh ?

if you get time, post up some of the new ones... here or on our site...

Can't post here but yeah the devestation was bad. The started at the biggest and best and worked their way down the line. I lost at least one of every species. I have no more shimpaku. Best jack pine toast. Biggest American elm finished. Best scots pine. Amur maple. Hawthorn. The list is quite extensive.

damn damn damn !!!