Moles

A keen gardener friend of mine told me that moles hate vibration and noise. He used to part bury a glass bottle in the ground (with the top half or 2/3 above the ground) and put one of the children's plastic windmill toys in it. When the wind catches the windmill the sails going round creates vibration that passes through the tin into the ground. Cheap & cheerful and effective - also easy to move around.
Good luck!

Thank you. It will look pretty also.

I can't remember exactly what they were, but we tried some sort of explosive charges ... unsuccessfully.

We eventually had to resort to the local mole catcher. I hated doing it but the lawn was starting to resemble the Somme.

I think you are supposed to get men’s urine and put it in the holes.

I’ll mention that to DH. 🫤

I didn’t try that, nor would I!

Oh no!,

The U.K. has one of the worst bio-diversities in the world. Please don’t kill them. They are the dearest little things and they are perfectly entitled to live their lives without human interference.

Re-think your garden.

They are burrowing under my fruit trees, disturbing the roots. We don’t want to kill them, just get them to move on.

You wouldn’t say that if you saw the extent of the destruction Wwm. We are by no means keepers of a perfect lawn and we have several wildlife areas, but moles are horrendously destructive. I know they look cute, but I have never before seen such utter devastation.

Exactly . We have already lost a very special lilac.

Known as little gentlemen in velvet jackets!
I know the molehills look unsightly and can be dangerous, but moles themselves can greatly benefit the garden by eating all sorts of creatures and they aerate the soil as they tunnel.
However, if they’ve got to go, hope you can find a kind method.

We had mole hills all over the garden when we moved in. I researched on line- this method worked for us.
Scrape the molehill soil away - dig down to the tunnel. Put in the hosepipe and flood with water. When drained a little put in mothballs /garlic cloves/chopped lavender. Fill back up with soil. Within a few days all our moles left!! Theory being they don’t like wet tunnels or smelly stuff.
Previous home - tried expensive mole scarers( didn’t work) & then mole man who gassed them. Couldn’t do that again. Too sad to kill other creatures living outdoors.

Don't moles have a series of tunnels and they just escape from one tunnel to another tunnel area?
(I learnt that from Animals of Farthing Wood, I think.)

I'm another who would not murder them! Why not try herding them out of the garden? Place several glass jars with windmills around the garden, leaving one side of the garden open (where you want them to go) then maybe they will move in that direction (away from the noise) and leave the garden. Then you can leave a few windmills over that side of the garden to remind them not to come back. Sounds like a plan. It may take days/weeks, not overnight. Just give them a chance to move out.

Read "Wind in the Willows" and leave them in peace.

Germanshepherdsmum

You wouldn’t say that if you saw the extent of the destruction Wwm. We are by no means keepers of a perfect lawn and we have several wildlife areas, but moles are horrendously destructive. I know they look cute, but I have never before seen such utter devastation.

Your destruction is the moles way of life.

Other species always suffer when they don’t “fit” with what the human species sees as their land etc.

My goodness this is exactly what has got us to the state we are in today.

The U.K. is bereft of diversity.

I was told that moles were usually visitors only. If you make sure they are not too comfortable they will move on. The children's windmills worked for me.

We tried some of the above methods with no success so we decided to do a mole watch. We sat in the garden and waited. My DH had a box with holes in it ready. When we saw activity he swiftly caught the mole as it came up.
It was shrieking and I felt sorry for it.
We drove it to a wild grassy area and let it go.
No more mole hills in our garden but we noticed on a walk that the mole had made himself another home.

Well wwm, I’d like to see your reaction if your garden was excavated by a number of moles as ours was in the mating season. When I say the grass looked like The Somme I’m not kidding. I have other wildlife in my garden which I feed and encourage, but there’s acres of meadows behind us which the moles can dig up.

But I suspect you only encourage the “right” sort of wildlife.

Nothing that is messy or likely to dig, like foxes or badgers.

Do you have a garden wwm? Has it ever been excavated by moles? I encourage and feed deer, hedgehogs, foxes and birds, all of which make a mess. No badgers nearby, thankfully. Moles are too destructive. And yes, it is my land so I decide what is welcome. In a very rural area such as this, moles have plenty of other opportunities.

We are going to try the windmills. Mr Mole is really making free with our garden and is now in the raised beds.