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Fruit & Orchards

are cherry trees prone to winter vole damage?

12 years ago

I have always protected young apple and pear trees from voles during the winter.

This year we put in a number of pie cherries. I suspect I will go ahead and put hardware cloth on them when I do the rest for the winter, but do they really require it?

I have never seen vole damage to a wild pin cherry, so I was wondering if perhaps voles simply do not find them attractive?

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Comments (9)

franktank232
12 years ago
YES... I had a sour cherry that almost died from voles. They really did a number on it. It ended up growing (they didn't ring it completely) and it healed up pretty well over the next 2 years... I did end up getting rid of it because of the spot I had it planted in.

My personal opinion is to protect everything. We just get too much snowcover and those voles love that.
dirtslinger2
12 years ago
I have the bark chewing voles here- and in 6 years haven't had a cherry chewed yet. Plums neither. Everything else including pine trees have been chewed though.
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I protect my new trees with 1/4" hardware cloth. I bury the bottom in the soil so they don"t go under it. If you live in a high snowfall area you would want the cloth to go above the snow line. Here in Missouri we don't usually get deep snows so mine is only a foot high. Voles usually prefer a meadow like unmowed or disked place to have their underground homes. If this is what you have near your trees you will need to protect them. If you choose to use poisoned bait for them. I've found it most effective to find their hole and put the bait near the entrance. They usually clean all of the grasses or plants in a line straight out of the main entrance so you have a good line to see to help find their holes. Most of my experience dealing with them was in the central valley of California as a landscaper. No snow to deal with there so I don't know how winter long snow cover will change your experience. I found that as the trees matured and put on bark they became protected from voles. Good Luck.
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unfortunately it can be difficult to be certain or even confident. we may get the right conditions for a fungal attack or another difficult winter that could push an already crippled tree past its ability to recover. it is a simple enough thing to transplant the tree to a less desirable location on your property and replace them with healthy trees in the spots you really want them, then hope for the best and learn from your observations. I have had luck transplanting in the past, but those were healthy trees, and moving a damaged one may be more than it can take too. If they do recover they should be able to cope with the injury better over time, but it will set you back some. Its really a chance, but it is hard to cut down a living apple tree you have already time, money, and hopes invested in. On the other hand, establishing a healthier tree may well be the way to go, and less angst over time. I have a huge wolf river tree that was backed over by a bulldozer, run over by a tractor, browsed back by deer and battled shade its whole life. It is the healthiest tree in my orchard (though a little misshapen) Trees want to survive! Good luck!
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That is the work of pine voles - the subterranian monsters of mousehood. Pea stone won't really prevent this animal from doing this and baiting or trapping must be done in fall to kill them. I'm told this is the only time they come above ground to feed and I know from trapping them that it is a time they come up. I believe pea stone is to discourage meadow voles as pine voles work well below a few inches deep as you've found out. Hard to say if it's worth trying to save. Partially depends on how much room you have. You can wait until spring to see if there is enough root to generate reasonable vigor- if so it may eventually recover, but probably not as well as a new tree. Remove the flowers and cut back spur wood if you intend to give it a chance.
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Konrad___far_north
12 years ago
Same here, never seen them on cherry, pin cherry and pie cherry I have.
denninmi
12 years ago
They chewed up a couple of young sweet cherries last winter. One completely. The other one was chewed about a foot above the graft union atop the snow during the depths of winter (I guess it could have been a rabbit, but never saw tracks, did see tunnels) and it regrew.
windfall_rob
Original Author
12 years ago
Sounds like they will do it occasionally, but not by preference.

I hadn't even thought of the plums! they are new this year too. I suppose the safe route is to protect everything....but with all the stone fruit we put in this year it does add up to some time.

Still it just takes one hungry/bored rodent to really do a number on a young tree.
alan haigh
12 years ago
In twenty+ years of growing all the major fruit species I never had anything but minor rodent damage on anything but apricots (just once, 1 tree, 1 site) occasionally pears and frequently apples until last year when I lost a nectarine and pluot. Last year I saw major damage on a couple of quite old apple trees- one about 20 years the other only about 5 while in the past it was always young trees.

The damage I have seen has been from both pine and meadow voles as well as rabbits (last year was all meadow voles). My conclusion is that you never know.

I still will only mechanically protect apples and count on trapping out the voles to protect the rest. This continues to work for me and the trees I lost last year were in an area where I didn't do trapping.
franktank232
12 years ago
In case anyone here thinks i'm full of it:

{{gwi:57493}}

That is a sour cherry and that is vole damage.
ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
12 years ago
when thinking about protection.. the variable that you can not nail down is the harshness of winter ...

if its a bad one.. in the eyes of a vole in this case ... then they will go after anything to survive ...

i suggest you protect simply to reduce worry ... and let them get a bit bigger ... mature trees can take a lot more damage.. especially after forming a real bark ...

but tender babes ... they most likely need help ... in other words ... if you dont do it.. where will you be.. complaining all next year ... lol ...

ken
J Burritt
last month
I know this is old thread, but wanted to comment. I have a large row (57) of fairly big (8 years old) sour cherries. voles never touched before but chewed about 50 this past winter. The chew marks definitely indicate voles and not rabbit. i have lost about 70 young apple trees to voles about 10 years ago

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