How to Get Rid of Moles in the Garden

good morning everybody today I am revisiting a video that I posted almost four years ago this video on getting rid of moles in the garden at the time that I shot this video I'd essentially tried a whole lot of things that didn't work and a few things that worked but were too problematic or timeconsuming to continue using since I posted that video I have gotten hundreds and hundreds of suggestions from you all on how to effectively take care of the mole problem here in my Ohio Garden these suggestions ranged anywhere from using Juicy Fruit gum to getting a cat to peeing in my garden to using dynamite and over the last couple of years I have tried some but not all of your recommendations in today's video I will be sharing the two tactics that have worked the best for me one of those tactics is a method to repel moles and one is a method to terminate them and just to clarify I am only looking to remove moles from my garden they tunnel all over our 5 Acres of property Through The Lawns through the woods and that really does not bother me moles are an important player in the underground ecosystem and they definitely serve a role in their environment they're great for ating heavy clay soil for one moles don't actually eat plants or plant roots unlike their very annoying kin the VES but they can become problematic in the garden when their tunneling disrupts plant roots this can be especially detrimental for young seedlings that have yet to get established their tunneling can also cause seeds to drop deep into the Earth where they are unable to germinate and grow properly so let's jump right into those two methods that are working the best for me and I mentioned the first one is a method of repelling the moles this one was recommended to me by brainstorm Acres thank you very much for this suggestion and it's deceptively simple it's from Layman and it is called a mole Chase windmill you can see it here behind me the story goes on the Layman's blog that the designer got the idea for this windmill after seeing the clunky wooden kind of decoration type windmills in his I forget if it was Father's or grandfather's Garden they clack around and make a lot of noise and his father always said that that noise repelled the moles well he wanted a slightly more effective and elegant solution and came up with this metal Windmill and supposedly this worked to drive moles away because as this windmill spins it vibrates slightly on its post and sends vibrations down through the ground the moles don't like those vibrations and it sends them elsewhere now according to Layman this offers nearly 20,000 ft in coverage that's 75 ft in each Direction in my personal experience that's a bit of a stretch in my own garden it seems like about 40 ft is about the max distance that this thing works to repel moles from they also say that this is extremely effective in more clay based soils where those vibrations will travel more effectively through the soil it's less effective in Sandy and very loose soils the setup is super easy you just screw together these blades and put this a top a half in steel rod which is not included now for best results Layman does say install with an 8T grounding rod and that is what we use used here driving this thing about 2 to 3 ft in the ground Layman also notes that this is not effective on groundhogs in my experience it is in no way effective on VES or Chipmunks either unfortunately because I have big problems with those in my garden as well but in the 3 and 1/2 years that I've been using this here in this spot I can say that as long as the wind is blowing it seems to be quite effective now I will say if I get a few days in a row with absolutely no air movement at all and this usually happens later in the summer the moles do come right back into the garden so I have to be on defense then but the good thing is at that point in the season all of my plants are generally established so they aren't as detrimental to the crops but if you live in a place that has very little wind very little air movement this is not going to be effective for you another negative that I noticed is that the screws that come with these blades originally are quite short and after using this for not all that long the first season with that constant movement the screws ended up kind of wriggling their way out and I lost two of the three screws that came with this not a big problem we simply replace these with longer screws and this is held tight and secure for multiple Seasons at this point I've also had one of these over at my mom and dad's for a couple of seasons and it seems to work pretty well there too but again I'm not getting that 75 foot in all directions kind of range off of theirs 35 40 feet maybe tops so if you have a big big area to cover multiple windmills might be the way to go now my second tactic is a method of terminating the moles so if killing Critters is not something that you are okay with just shut the video off now I mentioned in my first video I don't like to kill creatures in my garden either I generally will go out of my way to make sure that they're allowed to live in peace but when my family's food is coming from from a garden and there is an animal that is making it nearly impossible to grow anything sometimes I have to choose violence now I tried another mle trap in the past in the first video I mentioned that I was using the Magnum mold trap and it did work the first couple of times but after that again for like three and 1 half years I've tried it intermittently and have not had one single kill with it I'm not sure exactly what the problem is but it just doesn't seem to have enough spring power to really cut through the ground and get the moles effectively a lot of times that trap would be set and it looked like the mole had just gone right through it or in some cases they got smart and started tunneling around it but again thanks to a recommendation on that video I decided to give the scissors style mole trap a try and specifically the wire Tech brand of mole scissors trap and these traps have been astoundingly if not frighteningly effective these traps open like a scissor they have this part here that rests on the soil surface and as soon as a mole tunnels through there and bumps up that soil a little it hits this mechanism sets off that trap and the trap Springs shut now you're supposed to wear gloves when you're setting these traps to avoid any kind of human scent on the Trap as moles are supposed to be very sensitive to smell I not done that I've used my bare hands and I've still had really good results you'll also have the best results if you target their main tunnels and this was a mistake that I was making in the past moles have two primary types of tunnels the first type is a subsurface tunnel and these are generally right below the surface of the soil and these are the tunnels that moles make in search of food generally they can Meander all over the place they can increase the length of these tunnels by up to 100 feet a day and sometimes they don't revisit the tunnels more than once however these subsurface feeding tunnels connect to the next type of tunnel which are their deep deep tunnels or their main tunnel these are generally 3 to 12 in below the soil surface and these are the main tunnels that moles use to connect from their nest to their feeding areas the soil excavated from these tunnels is often visible above the soil in those kind of like little Hills or volcanoes that you will see in the yard and they are typically a lot straighter and more direct than those feeding tunnels are now when I realized this I noticed that we typically had two sets of main tunnels I had one that was leading from the direction of the woods into the garden and I had one that was leading from the barn into the garden when I started targeting those tunnels instead of trying to Target the feeding or subsurface tunnels that were in my garden I had much improved results so with a scissors trap specifically it's pretty easy to set once you get the hang of it you'll find the tunnel that you want to use push the Trap into the center of it and step on the trap to open the Jaws it's a good idea to rock the Trap Back and Forth with your foot on it to get the Earth to open up really really well in this area I then like to smash down a couple feet on either side of the trap moles are notorious for wanting to come back and quickly repair any part of their main tunnel that has been destroyed so I find this often brings them back more quickly you want to be sure when you're setting this that you get this pad to really rest on the top of the soil surface otherwise the Trap won't be triggered by the the mole movement underneath and that's it once a mole comes tunneling through here the Trap will be triggered and the mole is very very quickly killed now one thing to note if your trap doesn't seem to be working check the nuts on the side of the trap to make sure they're not too tight in many of the reviews that I've read this seems to be the overarching problem now the absolutely most effective time I found to trap moles are early in the morning or right around dusk in the evening especially if you've recently got gotten some rain I've been able to catch multiple moles in quick succession sometimes in the mornings when I'm out early and setting these traps and as a general rule if I've set a trap in a location and I've not had any action on it in 24 hours I'm going to move it and try someplace else now one thing I do want to point out is I think that these scissors blades could probably cut right through a finger so never ever try to set this thing when it is above ground and if you have kids make sure that they know that these are absolutely not to be touched or played with in any way the good thing is it is very very difficult to open these up outside of the ground so it's probably not going to be an issue where kids are able to open them themselves but if for some reason you would have a trap set in ground and they would get the bright idea to like stick a finger down underneath it that would be real real bad so just make sure that your kids know or put some kind of protective device up around it now along with with these tactics that have been very effective for me I wanted to mention a couple that you might consider avoiding the first is a mistake I made early on before I really knew the full risks I was using mole poison to try to get rid of my mole problem but please be aware that with many of the mole poisons on the market there is a risk of secondary poisoning so if a mole would eat the poison and get sick or die and then another creature would come along say a hawk or an owl or Fox even a pet dog or cat and eat that poison mole they risk getting very sick or even dying from secondary poisoning and even when I was using the poison I didn't find it to be super effective the scissors traps are actually much more effective in my Gardens and I feel a more humane way to very quickly and almost painlessly kill the moles versus a slower more agonizing death of poisoning the second have to touch on because it was by far and away the most common recommendation that I got on my original video for getting rid of moles and you've probably heard of it or used it yourself and that is the Juicy Fruit gum option this idea that if you put pieces of Juicy Fruit gum in the mol's tunnels that they will be attracted to it eat it and it will Gunk up their insides and slowly kill them over time because they can't digest or go to the bathroom again if it worked a fairly slow and terrible way to die so out of desperation of course I tried this method because what was I going to be out like a dollar for a pack of Juicy Fruit gum but spoiler alert it did not work this is because moles are essentially carnivores more specifically insectivores some 90 plus% of their diet comes from earthworms and the rest are grubs and certain larvae that type of thing there is nothing about Juicy Fruit gum from the smell to The Taste to the texture that would be appealing to moles or mimic anything that would be in their natural diet so chances are very very high that a mole is never going to eat a piece of Juicy Fruit gum there's also no scientific evidence out there backing the fact that this technique would actually work though if anyone listening out there is from a university or does any kind of research I'd love to see a study on this particular I phenomenon now there are folks that absolutely swear that this technique Works they will say I put Juicy Fruit gum down and the next day the moles were gone they eat it they died they left what have you I'm really glad that this is working for you but what is probably more likely that is happening is moles are pretty sensitive to disruptions to their tunneling system so if you were to go and stick a whole bunch of gum in a mol's tunnel especially if it's the secondary feeding tunnels they're likely just going to go someplace else and look for food and make tunnels this could be the explanation for a lot of the instances where people put the gum down and then don't see any more tunneling in a particular area keep in mind too that as the season progresses as the weather gets warmer and drier moles will typically move to different areas of a property so here for instance I see a lot of activity up here in the main Gardens and surrounding areas during the early spring when the soil is nice and moist and cool but as the season goes on and things dry out and get really hot I see all of our mole populations move to the lower part near the woods where that soil is staying cooler and damper longer into the season all that being said if you're one of the folks that the juicy fruit has worked for I'm happy for you whatever the mechanism I'm just glad that your moles are gone but the combo Windmill and scissors traps are working really really well for me here now my next big project is a figure out a way to repel and get rid of the vs and the Chipmunks so if you all have any advice about those two Critters drop a line in the comments below and let me know and if you found today's video helpful please consider subscribing to my Channel growfully with Jenna thanks for watching and I'll see you next time

Channel: Growfully with Jenna

Views: 18,540

Keywords: how to get rid of moles in the garden, how to get rid of moles, get rid of moles in my garden, how to get rid of moles in your garden, how to get rid of moles in your garden naturally, mole damage in garden, garden pests moles, natural mole repellents, garden mole control, how to get rid of ground moles, how to kill moles in the garden, ground moles how to get rid of them, how to repel moles, how to kill moles, best way to get rid of moles, growfully with jenna, growfully, garden

Id: arjzXYr4mag

Length: 14min 58sec (898 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2024