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Gardening

Mole deterrents

(9 Posts)
shysal Mon 08-Jun-20 13:45:37

Moles are ruining my lawn and beds. Does anyone know of a deterrent which works? I don't want to harm them but would prefer them to live in the field behind my garden.
I have seen scatter granules and sonic spikes and heard old wives tales of childrens windmills or sunken open bottles, but don't know if any of them can help.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdqW6289GSw

midgey Mon 08-Jun-20 14:03:26

I have heard that musical birthday cards down the hole work! Not tried it though.

PamelaJ1 Mon 08-Jun-20 18:04:39

Well you can only try them.

We gave up on the kind response I’m afraid.

Susan56 Mon 08-Jun-20 18:12:48

I was advised by a gardener years ago to use the children’s windmills and they definitely worked.

Ellianne Mon 08-Jun-20 18:19:29

Moles are a nightmare. You could try getting a cat with super fast reactions. Moles have very good hearing but our cunning cat managed to grab a few.
The farmer next door used dynamite to blast the moles out. This was France, of course! I think it was called detaupeur.
Needs must sometimes.

lemongrove Mon 08-Jun-20 19:56:50

We bought mole traps from Amazon shysal ....we didn’t want to harm them either, but they just wouldn’t move on to pastures new!

Davidhs Mon 08-Jun-20 21:27:16

Children’s windmills are not a daft idea at all, moles are very sensitive to vibrations and that sort of noise might just do the trick

WOODMOUSE49 Mon 08-Jun-20 21:49:18

Having awoke to find up to a dozen or mole hills by or between the slabs that make up a path around our house, I decided it was me or them.

I'd tripped three times on the then uneven slabs caused by it tunnelling underneath.. Once going my full length and cracking two ribs.

We live in a very rural isolated area and have, to some extent have accepted we have to live with the visiting mole! Their favourite place is the meadow.

Moles are solitary creatures and it will be one mole making all your mole hills. Their territory can be up to 2 acres! They can dig up to 100m of tunnel in one night. shock angry

Over the years (many of them), I've been kind and have tried to deter them with vibrations, smells, sounds etc. Some very costly methods too. Nothing worked. My DH was determined to use the Jasper Carrot method. However...

Now I am armed with 7 mole traps (from Amazon). After watching a brilliant YouTube vid on how to catch them I have caught 3. We get less and less now as the vid recommended that the "deceased" mole should be buried where it was caught. This prevents another mole using the tunnel.

Nearly 24 months on, I'm quite the expert. We replaced the slabs late last year and filled in all the tunnels (I'd kept the soil from the mounds).

Good luck shysal. You have my sympathies.

MamaCaz Mon 08-Jun-20 22:35:49

I tried lots of things, including windmills, bottles and garlic, but none made any difference in my garden. The moles just pushed the bottles out of the grounded again!

Moles might be solitary creatures for some of the year, but having caught 18 moles in two months in my not very big garden, many in the same holes (and even two in one trap one day), I can assure you that there can be many moles in a small area when they are breeding.

Also, it is often only a matter of days (sometimes only hours) before a very recently vacated tunnel will start being used by another mole.