Do Coffee Grounds Repel Voles? If you’re into gardening, you may be looking for ways to increase yields and grow a bumper crop of vegetables. Unfortunately, little critters such as voles, mice, rats, and rabbits like to nibble on plants, shrubs, and vegetables. There are all kinds of commercial products available to repel these little rascals. But why buy them when there’s a free pest repellent in your kitchen. This article will answer the question, ‘do coffee grounds repel voles.’
Do Coffee Grounds Repel Voles?
There are many ways to use coffee grounds in the garden; they can add nutrients to the soil and may also act as an effective natural pest repellent. The idea is to prevent voles from eating your plants by putting coffee grounds around the vegetable area to ward them off. Coffee has a strong smell that is unpleasant to many creatures, including voles.
Coffee grounds may be a good vole repellent in the short term. Once the voles get used to the smell, they will probably still come into your garden, especially if they don’t have any other food sources.
Coffee grounds will also lose their smell over time, so you’ll need to keep adding more grounds for them to continue effectively repelling voles. At least now you have an excuse to drink more coffee.
How To Use Coffee Grounds as A Natural Pest Repellent?
How many coffee grounds you use depends on the size of your garden. For small areas, 1 cup of dry old coffee grounds should be enough for a circle with a diameter of at least two feet. For larger areas, several cups would be necessary.
Place the coffee grounds on the ground around your vegetable patch and spread them out, so there is a circle of coffee surrounding each plant. Not only will this keep voles from nibbling on your veggies, but it may also repel slugs, ants, and snails.
What other products repel voles?
The list of commercial pest repellents is vast, but they can be expensive. There are various homemade recipes for natural pest repellents that use items you probably already have in your kitchen or garden shed. The strong smell of coffee may act as a pest repellent on its own, but there are other options:
- Vibration or sound devices
- Mix dish soap with castor oil
- Crushed garlic
- Tobacco
- Powdered red pepper
- Soak a cloth in chlorine or bleach
- Ammonia
- Plant strong-smelling flowers such as daffodils, marigolds, alliums, fritillarias, or castor beans.
How to tell if you have voles in your yard?
Voles are common rodents related to mice, lemmings, and hamsters. There are over 155 varieties of voles, and they are mainly found across Europe and Asia. Only a handful of vole species are found in America, and they are sometimes referred to as meadow mice. They often live near river banks and streams, but they can be found in almost any location with moist soil. Voles eat many things, including grubs, earthworms, insects, vegetation, and seeds.
When you have voles in your yard, these little critters make their presence known. Vole burrow underground, creating tunnels and leaving behind little mounds of soil. Voles are not likely to cause the kind of damage done by pocket gophers or moles because they do not create deep tunnels. The surface activity often causes more damage to plants than the actual burrowing.
Voles damage plants by eating them or tunneling underneath to create shelter. They will often eat bark right off small branches on trees, shrubs, and other plants.
Many gardeners mistake voles for mice because they do look somewhat alike. However, there are some noticeable differences between these two critters. Voles have short tails and coarse fur – not nearly as soft as a mouse’s. Mice also have hairless, almost shiny-looking feet with long whiskers and a pointed nose. While voles have darker fur and fur on their feet. They are generally between three and nine inches long.
Conclusion
Do coffee grounds repel voles? This seems to be a controversial question; some people swear by it while others say it doesn’t work. The theory is that the strong smell of coffee will keep pests away. If you’d like to try this experiment, put a circle of coffee around your vegetable patch and see if it has any effect.
Similar article: Does Vinegar Keep Snakes Away?