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moles

melamela Posts: 2
in Problem solving

How  to get rid of moles without killing them

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Posts

  • PosyPosy Posts: 3,601

    Get someone else to kill them for you. That sounds unkind: there are hundreds of ways to get rid of moles but, having tried many, I believe that there are only two choices - tolerate them or have them killed. 

  • CeresCeres Posts: 2,698

    Posy is right. There is no halfway house with moles.

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User] Posts: 0
    The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • punkdocpunkdoc Posts: 15,039
    If you live in the country, Moles are always likely to be an issue. Some years our lawns resemble the Somme. I try to live with them, but some years the damage gets so bad, I call in the Mole man.
    Our new neighbours, who are townies were amazed to discover Mole hills on their lawn, they didn’t really know what they were.
    How can you lie there and think of England
    When you don't even know who's in the team

    S.Yorkshire/Derbyshire border
  • Joyce GoldenlilyJoyce Goldenlily Posts: 2,933
    Moles are very sensitive to noise so I have several empty, large, green, plastic water/juice bottles, upside down on the top of bamboo canes, planted around my garden. The wind rattles the bottles and this seems to work for me. I haven't had a single mole in my garden now for several years. Despite there being hundreds of molehills everywhere on the verges along the local roads and in the nearby fields.
    Aesthetically not particularly beautiful, but it works for me and cost almost nothing. No bloodshed either. I have learned to live with the constant rattle in the background, no idea if it drives my neighbours mad.
  • Paul CharnockPaul Charnock Posts: 123
    I fully understand that Moles can be a problem, especially if you like a neat lawn but they do not do a great deal of harm. One good thing is that they do improve drainage.
    I try and take advantage of their activities and use the nicely dug mole hills to rake the area and plant naturalising bulbs or even primroses. At the same time I add a little grass seed to reseed the area.

    It's voles that are the real problem in my opinion. They tunnel everywhere AND eat the plant roots too! Our cat and resident owls do their best to help out on this issue.
  • Bee witchedBee witched Posts: 1,295
    Pickled onions still working well for me so far @pansyface.
    But if they start pushing them out I might try sticking some cocktail sticks in them so they are not as easy to roll out of their runs.

    Bee x
    Gardener and beekeeper in beautiful Scottish Borders  

    A single bee creates just one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey in her lifetime
  • ObelixxObelixx Posts: 30,087
    We had loads of moles in our last garden and, because the soil was usually moist from all the Belgian rain, their tunnels could be just below the surface which made walking across the grass a hazard for anyone like me with slipped lumbar discs or an easily turned ankle.

    We tried a humane trapper device but they just kicked it out of the tunnel.  Noisy windmills, bottles, musical inserts in cards, moth balls all failed.  For a while we did use a device called a Détaupeur which is legal in France and Belgium but not the UK but we gave up with that too as new ones arrived every spring.   

    We learned to live with them.  If we did catch a live one - usually rescued from a cat or just accidentally dug up - I would carry them out of the garden and release them in the woods across the stream in the neighbouring paddock.

    No streams here so we just tolerate them  OH rakes out the hills to level them and occasionally gathers the soil up for dumping on veggie beds.
    Vendée - 20kms from Atlantic coast.
    "The price good men (and women) pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men (and women)."
    Plato
  • PosyPosy Posts: 3,601
    If you imagine that moles do little harm, you are, I'm afraid, mistaken. They do make a mess of lawns and that is very irritating, but the real damage is in borders and beds, where their digging breaks and exposes the roots of your plants. You first notice an obvious row of plants drooping for no reason. Annuals, perennials, shrubs, fruit and veg, they all start to fail and die.

    I'm trying the @pansyface pickled onion method at present and it seems to be working. After that it's the mole man. Yes, of course I regret having to kill them, but I sweep away hundreds of aphids without much thought. It's a tough world in the garden and I'm just not prepared to lose 30 years' work.
  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,143
    He's advertising that nasty plastic mesh again ... Flagged 😡

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





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