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Hi I'm Tricia an organic gardener. I grow organically for healthy and safe food
supply,
for a clean and sustainable environment,
for an enjoyable and rewarding experience.
Moles are small animals
that tunnel in the ground and slurp earthworms
and what happens is they disturb the roots of plants and it can kill the plant
because the roots will dry out
they also can kill lawns and pastures because of their mounds.
There are few things to consider before you start trying to control your moles.
First make sure you have a mole and not a gopher
mole mounds look a little like a volcano.
Next, take into account the benefits moles can provide
and weight it against the damage that they may cause.
Moles help aerate and loosen the soil
and they eat large amounts of harmful bugs.
White grubs are preferred mole food
they also eat among other things, snail and japanese beetle larva
if you decide to live with moles you can mitigate damage
by tamping down surface runs and shoveling mounds off your lawn before it
kills the lawn underneath
however if you do you think you need to control the moles
there are several no kill options available.
Gopher baskets can be put in the hole prior to planting you can also install
gopher wire along the bottom of any raised bed.
You can also create a subterranean fence by burying galvanized gopher wire
at least two feet down into the soil
the wire should come six inches out of the soil and be bent away from the planting at a
ninety degree angle
if you leave a foot of wire above-ground this method can be adapted
to exclude gophers as well.
If you capture them live they can be relocated to less sensitive areas within
your garden. Check out our
blog
to get ideas on how to make a simple live trap.
You can also use repellents like these from chase
or liquid fence
which will help steer the moles away from sensitive plants.
Exclusion, coexistence and relocation may not always be options and in that case
the best mole control is trapping.
Gopher traps and mole traps are not interchangeable
a moles sensitive snout will often detect foreign objects in the tunnel
and circumvent a gopher trap before it ever gets to the trigger.
The most effective traps
are scissor jaw, choker
or harpoon.
And these are the kind of traps that go on top or on the sides of the mole run.
To trap moles effectively locate an active runway
or one of their deep permanent tunnels
to locate an active runway tamp down surface runways and see if they return
in twenty-four to forty-eight hours if they do
this is an active runway.
Moles are often active in an area for a very brief time and then they moved on.
Mole hills are made by a mole pushing soil out from the construction of a deep
tunnel
probe eighteen inches
from a mole mound
and about eight to twelve inches down
to locate a permanent tunnel.
Scissor type traps like this easy mole trap work best in a permanent burrow
using a trowel dig out a section of the burrow so you can find the direction of
the burrow,
backfill it with the loose dirt so that there's something for the trigger play
to rest on,
set the traps so the trap jaws straddle the tunnel that you found.
Comeback after two days and check to see if the trap has sprung, if not you're gonna
wanna relocate.
Common reasons not to have caught a mole
is that the mole abandoned the runway
or it was disturbed too much
or the mole detected the trap.
According to UC Davis and other researchers
there are quite a few things that have been tried that just don't work:
ultrasonic repellents, scare devices, chewing gum, bleach, human hair, mothballs,
gopher purge, broken glass or razor blades just to name a few.
Protect your plants
control your moles and grow organic for life!