If you love the cheery, colorful blossoms of daffodils, crocus and tulips in spring, now is the time to get those bulbs in the ground. Rodents love to dig down and eat certain spring bulbs. Protect yours with these ideas. Planting them now in the still-workable but not-too-warm soil allows the bulbs the four to six weeks they’ll need to get established before the ground freezes. And it’s also the time to protect those bulbs from hungry rodents like mice, voles and chipmunks.
If you’ve planted spring bulbs before and they didn’t flower, that may have been due to these nibbling critters. They dig down into your soil and help themselves to the buried bulbs. These tried-and-true methods can work, so plan ahead and you’ll save your investment.
1. Avoid pests’ preferred bulbs
The first technique is more of a preventative measure: Plant the bulbs that mice and voles don’t like! These burrowers love the taste of tulips but tend to not like the taste of daffodils, alliums, scillas and fritillaries, so if you can go without tulips, try to primarily plant these other flowers and avoid the critter-eating altogether. If you can’t imagine a spring without tulips in your yard, then outsmart the rodents and plant the flowering bulbs that they like alongside the ones they don’t. That way, if a mouse, vole or chipmunk chomps on an allium bulb, they might just assume all the bulbs in that space are allium and move along.
More: Vermont Garden Journal: Moles and Voles
2. Scatter sharp objects
Another method to deter burrowing rodents is to sprinkle sharp material in the soil that moles, voles and mice don’t like moving through. Crushed seashells are a great natural material to use for this method. Mixing jagged material like shells into the soil also helps deter another unwelcome pest: slugs.
3. Repel with smells
You can also try adding smelly repellents, like horticultural-grade castor oil pellets or sprays into the soil where you’re planting bulbs. The strong smell will keep pests away. These techniques will be effective for a season, but after that, the odor will dissipate. And some techniques like putting egg shells or diatomaceous earth into the soil don’t work as well, because those materials break down too quickly to be effective for long enough.
More: Getting that look of spring flowering bulbs popping up everywhere takes planning. Here’s how
4. Cage them out
Finally, if the rodents are decimating your spring flowering bulbs each season, you can always build a cage — not for the critters but for the bulbs! Create a small mesh or wire cage that has half-inch diameter holes. This allows enough space for the leaves and shoots to grow through, but are too small for rodents to access. Then bury the cage with the bulbs into the soil, and each season, you should be graced with beautiful flowers in the spring.
