Getting Rid of Moles in Your Yard (and Keep Them Away From Your Raised Garden Bed)

These small digging opportunities cause great damage. Use these techniques to prevent moles from invading expensive garden beds and prevent more moles from entering. Olle is about to tell you the following knowledge.

When you see a series of 3 to 5 inch round ridges passing through the surface of your lawn, accompanied by small soil volcanoes here and there, you know there is a mole around you. These small mammals can cause considerable damage in a short time, because their tunnels destroy any plants in their path. When they dig in the soil, they destroy the roots, so the ridge of their tunnel will soon turn brown. On the positive side, moles help aerate the soil and eat them when they are in the midst of destructive insects. However, if you need to remove moles before causing extensive damage in the yard, you need to know the following.

What is a mole?

Moles are burrowing insectivores. They are about 6-8 inches long, with gray to black velvet like fur, a slender hairless nose, small eyes and ears. The mole's big front foot has long claws, which dig like a hoe. Except for the breeding season in early spring, the mole often lives alone, so the multi tunnel model in the yard may only have one mole.

Before you learn how to get rid of moles, you need to understand how they live. Moles keep building new feed tunnels and may not use the same tunnel twice. You may find the entrance and exit mounds, which are usually round and symmetrical and are pushed up by the mole. The hole usually has soil, but it is still visible. The mound was connected to the main runway that the mole used repeatedly. The runway is 12-18 inches underground and is usually invisible.

Moles feed on insects and insect larvae, but they especially like white maggot, which is a common lawn pest. If you can choose, the mole picks wet sandy loam on dry, heavy clay. They are most active in warm and humid months, although they live underground all year round.

Confusion with pocket gophers

Homeowners sometimes mistake the mole tunnel for the tunnel made by the pocket gopher. These small rodents are also in the underground tunnel. However, hamsters do not form ridges when walking. They eat grass and other plant roots and pull them into underground caves, which often push the soil aside. Their tunnels look flatter, with fan-shaped or semicircular mounds. Each mound may contain a visible hole, although the clod may disguise the hole.

Mesh barriers, traps, and poison bait can be used to kill pocket gophers. Avoid using the bait containing brucine, because the poisonous hamster of predators or scavengers may also die.

How to get rid of moles

The mole may be a creature difficult to expel because it lives underground. Insect repellents, poisons and fumigants are all options, but if you have pets or children who may be exposed, you should avoid using them. You may also have heard of home remedies, such as placing mothballs in tunnels or spraying castor oil in the area, but none of them worked. The only reliable way to get rid of a mole is to kill the animal using a mole specific trap. You can find underground and aboveground traps to do this. Properly place according to the packaging instructions and move the tunnel traps every day while you are still noticing the activity to increase the chance of eliminating moles.

Spring and autumn, when the ground is not frozen, is the best time to get rid of moles in a year, because that is when they are most active. Usually, you only have one or two moles to catch to solve the problem, because they don't live in groups.

How to keep away from moles

Moles are more likely to visit some places, usually in rural or suburban yards with large open areas or lawns. If you often have moles around the lawn and don't mind opening several tunnels around the lawn, you may want to try barrier methods to protect smaller spaces, such as vegetable gardens or colorful flower beds in the front yard. You can lay metal mesh (available in Olle Gardens). If a mole tunnel enters this barrier, it usually decides to dig elsewhere.

Since moles prefer to live in areas where the soil is kept moist, you can try to improve the drainage of the house to prevent them. If the problem is not serious, you can simply wait for it to see if the mole moves to another location by itself. However, if the damage to the lawn or garden seems to be getting worse, it is better to take measures to get rid of moles.

Fortunately, you may never notice more than one mole tearing your yard at a time, but that doesn't make them less troublesome. Using these techniques to get rid of moles, you can deal with those who are trying to tunnel under your lawn and hope to prevent more people from arriving by adding obstacles or improving soil drainage.