It might still be wintertime, but there’s no better time to start thinking about how to keep your lawn looking fresh and green this coming spring. Of course, once it starts getting nicer and warmer out, the moles start digging holes for their homes, right in the middle of your yard. There are a few simple steps you can take to ensure a humane way of ejecting these pests from your lawn.
No, it’s not Whack-A-Mole! But the first step is determining that it’s actually a mole, which can easily be confused with voles or groundhogs because they all burrow underneath the ground.
Mike McGrath, host of the nationally syndicated radio program, You Bet Your Garden, explains the main differences between these three critters so you can properly go about getting rid of them.
“Moles only eat three things. They eat earthworms, they eat beetle grubs of the scarab beetle family, and they eat cicada larvae. So it’s really easy to remember: Moles are teenage boys. They wouldn’t eat a vegetable if you paid them. Voles are strictly vegetarian,” he explains.
So, how do you get rid of them?
While moles aren’t seen as a primary threat to gardeners since moles don’t feast on homegrown vegetables, they can still be an eyesore to your lawn. By digging up molehills atop your lawn and creating tunnels, it can cause excessive damage to the roots of your plants or give way to other rodents.
When you’ve determined that it’s definitely a mole causing issues to your lawn, McGrath advises purchasing a product such as Mole Scram. “You spread this material on the lawn and you water it in… The theory is that it makes the ground smell so bad that the moles would rather live in the neighbor’s lawn,” he explains.
In the event that Mole Scram doesn’t do the trick, McGrath has some other tricks up his sleeve.
“If that doesn’t work, however, there are natural ways to kill the beetle grubs in your lawn. One of the newest products, GrubHALT, uses a naturally-occurring soil organism. If you put this into the soil, it kills Japanese beetle grubs and other grubs of the scarab beetle family, so you’re eliminating at least one-third of the food source for moles,” he explains.
If all else fails, Nikki Tilley, senior editor of Gardening Know How, advises planting daffodils, alliums, and marigolds. “Moles tend to avoid these… I don’t like advocating the use of traps or poisons—killing these animals should only be your last resort.”
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Check out the video below for some others ways on how to remove moles from your yard: