If you’ve ever dealt with a mole infestation in your garden or lawn, you know that these burrowing rodents are a frustrating nuisance. Find out how to keep moles away and prevent the damage that their underground tunnels cause.
Raised tunnels and molehills are unsightly. Moles’ burrowing habits also severely damage the plant roots, causing your lawn or flower beds to struggle and sometimes even die. Their holes are also a hard-to-see hazard in lawns and can result in a sprained ankle if you unknowingly step in one.
Moles themselves are insectivores, which means their food source mainly consists of grubs, earthworms, insects, and larvae. They are in the same family as shrews and bats. However, smaller rodents that eat plants, like voles, often use mole tunnels as an easy entrance to your garden.
Natural Ways to Keep Moles Away
Prevention is generally the best form of pest control. There are various home remedies and natural ways to keep moles away using simple household ingredients. Find the best way to keep moles away that suits your needs.
Moles are an important part of the natural environment. They provide natural soil aeration through their tunneling behavior and mix topsoil with deeper and more nutrient-rich layers of soil below the surface.
However, mole activity causes significant problems for homeowners when they take up residence beneath your lawn or vegetable garden. Whether you simply want to relocate them or use a homemade mole killer for lawns, we have a few ideas for you.
There are numerous simple and easy solutions for how to get rid of moles without using toxic poisons around your home. Read on to discover natural ways to keep moles away and prevent mole damage. You can also find recipes for homemade mole poison if you want to completely eliminate the problem.
How to Make Homemade Mole Repellent
Since moles are virtually blind, they rely heavily on their keen sense of smell. They are repelled by strong odors like castor oil and peppermint. These are the principal ingredients in many commercial rodent repellents.
Follow this recipe to make your own homemade mole repellent. This repellent is effective against gophers and voles, as well.
Combine the ingredients in a clean bottle or jar and shake vigorously to blend. Soak several cotton balls in the mixture for at least 15 minutes. Place the saturated cotton balls into the moles’ holes.
How to Keep Moles Away using Sound and Vibrations
Moles have highly sensitive hearing and are exceptionally perceptive to vibrations in the ground. Loud sounds and vibrations are effective home remedies for keeping moles out of the garden and as a way to get rid of moles in your lawn that you may not have discovered yet.
Many pest control and gardening shops sell ultrasonic devices that emit intermittent vibrations that drive moles away.
Another option is to try installing wind chimes around your garden. The sound is pleasant to your ears and helps encourage moles to burrow elsewhere.
Best Way to Keep Moles Away with Companion Planting
The idea behind companion planting is to use individual plants’ natural properties to support the health of the whole garden and minimize your dependence on insecticides and pesticides.
There is a wide variety of plants that effectively repel moles and other pests. Use your flower bed as your first line of defense against problematic critters and to keep chipmunks out of the garden. Here are several examples of plants that repel moles.
The best way to keep moles away is by creating an environment that doesn’t suit them. Planting these helpful flowers throughout your garden, and especially around the borders, naturally drives moles away without the use of harmful chemicals. Plant castor beans cautiously, as all parts of the plant are poisonous except the beans.
How to Keep Moles Away with Coffee Grounds
Old coffee grounds are instrumental in the garden for many reasons. They are an excellent way to augment your fertilizer routine, as well as an efficient way of dealing with a mole problem.
Sprinkle used coffee granules wherever you see mole activity. Concentrate on the entrance holes to the mole tunnels by placing the coffee grounds directly inside the hole and covering it over with soil to diffuse the coffee’s smell.
Attract Moles’ Predators
One of the most natural ways to keep moles away is to let Mother Nature do the work for you. Owls are one of the moles’ main predators and one of the best home remedies to kill mice that may also make your yard their home.
Try installing a nesting box near your garden in the early spring when owls and other birds of prey begin to look for a nesting site. This way, the owls help control the mole population and other pests like voles, shrews, gophers, rabbits, and mice.
Install Barriers to Deter Moles
Mole tunnels tend to be close to the surface. If you have an ongoing problem with moles in your garden, consider installing a solid barrier around the space to prevent moles from tunneling inside.
Bury hardware cloth, aluminum sheathing, or quarter-inch stainless steel wire mesh at least two feet deep and construct a fence that is at least two feet high. Make your fence at least six feet tall if you’re also trying to keep our larger pests like deer.
How to Make a DIY Mole Trap
If you have a severe mole infestation, you may need to take more drastic measures toward mole removal.
Even if you do need to kill moles, it’s still best to avoid using poison, which is dangerous for pets and children, contaminates the soil, and could kill the predators who may eat a poisoned mole.
One common chemical repellent touted for getting rid of snakes and moles is mothballs. However, these are not very effective, and the chemicals in mothballs are toxic to both humans and pets.
Spring-loaded or choker-loop traps are available at pest control stores. Alternatively, it’s possible to live-trap the moles and relocate them. Follow these straightforward directions to make your own eco-friendly DIY mole trap.
For one of the natural ways to get rid of moles, find the most active tunneling site. Dig a hole that is slightly more than wide enough to fit the bucket and roughly three inches deeper than the bucket is tall.
Make several holes in the bottom of the bucket so that the moles have a sense of openness below.
Place three to four inches of soil in the bottom of the bucket. Place the bucket in the hole and backfill around the sides with loose soil. Slope the sides toward the top of the bucket.
In the small plastic container, place six to eight earthworms in the bottom with enough soil to keep the worms alive, but not so much that they can escape. Work the container with the worms into the soil at the bottom of the bucket as bait for the moles.
While installing the trap, stand on boards to avoid compacting the surrounding soil. Once you set your trap, cover the top with mulch or turf.
Check the trap every few days, but not too often to not give too much sign of human presence. Wear gloves when assembling, setting, and checking the trap to mask the human scent.
Mole tunnels sometimes cause severe problems for homeowners. They result in plant damage and sometimes lead to other rodent invasions. However, there are various natural ways to keep moles away.
From applying repellents like castor oil and coffee grounds to employing the help of Mother Nature through companion planting and attracting natural predators, mole removal can take many forms.
Use these tips and home remedies and learn the best way to keep moles away from your property.
If you found these tips about how to keep moles away useful, please share this article about what keeps moles away with your friends and family on Pinterest and Facebook.