How to get rid of moles in your yard

Maybe you've read "Wind in the Willows" or remember having it read to you when you were small, maybe you you just remember the Disney film version. Remember how cute the mole was? Nice little fellow with the velvet coat, doing his spring cleaning. Not so cute when he moves into your yard and does his spring cleaning in your lawn.

It can certainly send you into a rage when you lovingly tend your lawn for years then one morning you look out and see the molehills making your yard look like it's been under mortar fire.

People have been known to lose all sense of reason and take a gun to the molehills! Might make you feel better but it won't bother Mr Mole.

So how do you get rid of moles in your yard? Well we've already decided shooting holes in your lawn is good therapy but probably not very affective, so that leaves poisoning, trapping or a variety of ingenious "folk remedies" if you like.

Poisoning may be effective but it has it's draw backs, such as the risk to your kids if you have any and also the risk to family pets. then there's the risk to other wildlife which may pass through your yard without usually doing any harm.

Be honest even if you're hopping mad at the damage the moles have caused to your lawn, wouldn't you rather despatch the little blighter quickly and humanely?

Moles have a fine sense of smell, so good in fact that if you plan on using a trap you should boil it first if possible or wipe it clean with alcohol and wear rubber gloves to install it in the garden, if the mole smells human scent on the trap he'll avoid it.

Because of the moles sensitive nose some people advise putting various smelly substances down the mole holes to drive them away, but be careful that what you put down won't also damage your garden or other animals.

That reminds me of a story I heard years ago about an old lady who was plagued by moles in her yard, a friend told her to use mothballs to get rid of them but forgot to mention they were used because of the smell. Next time the friend saw the old girl they asked if she'd got rid of the moles. She replied that she'd spent hours lying in wait but on the rare occasions she'd actually seen a mole her aim just wasn't good enough to hit them.

I did read that you shouldn't put mothballs down mole holes as they could kill bacteria and have a damaging effect on your garden.

another mole deterrent which has been spoken of for years is the one where you bury glass bottles in the ground so that just the neck of the bottle is showing, the wind blows across the open bottle and the sound it makes drives the mole away. It probably stops the flying pigs from landing in your yard as well. Seems to me that burying bottles all over the yard will make more mess then the moles will.

Apparently moles hate vibration which is presumably the reason some commercially available mole deterrents emit a deep vibration, the moles think it's a predator digging to get at them. some of these devices are solar powered for low maintenance. A cheap alternative is childrens pin wheels or windmills which rotate in the wind, just push the sticks into the ground to drive the moles away.

As mentioned earlier moles don't like the smell of humans so it is said that if you can get a good quantity of human hair clippings from a hairdresser and put it down into the moles tunnels they will move out of your garden.

Some plants with strong smells are recommended for getting rid of moles. "Skunk Lillies" are one plant you could use, you could also plant garlic around the edges of your yard, that might do the trick.