How To Get Rid Of Moles
Burrowing Creatures Ruin Lawns, Cause Yard Problems
“Moles in Yard” is a very popular search term for people who have noticed that their lawns have become lumpy and uneven. This is because tunneling and burrowing moles can move through 18 feet of your lawn every hour, while they look for worms and other underground creatures to eat. Getting rid of moles in your yard is also fairly difficult, because the moles may be in a completely different section of your yard by the time you find their tunnels. Voles and Moles prefer to feed on underground food sources, and their tunnel systems can make short work of a flat lawn. Additionally, their tunnels can channel rainwater and sprinkler water into pools and wet patches, reducing the efficiency of your sprinkler patterns. Even worse, wet lawns attract more moles, because they create even more earthworms and grubs beneath the lawn’s surface. Aside from little mounds of dirt on your lawn, you may also be seeing dead patches in grass and around your foliage, because moles may be clearing away plant roots in the process of building tunnels.
How do you get rid of moles? Some of the old tricks just may not work. Using a garden hose to drown moles in tunnels may be counterproductive because the mole may have already moved on to a different burrow, but meanwhile you have created a better environment for more earthworms. In a lot of cases moles are symptomatic of an overwatered lawn. Using poison bait (some of which looks like gummy worms) has a certain effectiveness. In my childhood, we had a cat that was very good at reducing the mole population, since cats tend to wait patiently by the occupied holes (they can hear and smell the moles) and capture the moles as they come out. The downside is that your lawn will look like a woodland crime scene, so keep your shovel ready. There are also mole traps, which range from humane to the standard mole killing variety. Aside from that, the use of buried mesh can keep moles from getting to certain features on your lawn, which means that you can keep the flowers but you are going to have brown mole runways on the rest of the lawn.
Notes and Special Information
Special note: No matter what technique you use, moles can come back if you don't focus on prevention.