You’ve spent countless hours planning and planting, and just when the time comes for sitting back and enjoying the garden, moles appear. Or rather don’t appear, since they are subterranean creatures. But they make their presence known, as upheavals of dirt mounds dot the landscape and lines of ridges run through the yard as evidence of the mole’s burrowing habits. Now what?
There are many disagreements as to the benefits or detriments of lawn or garden moles. On the pro side, moles effectively remove grubs from your garden. Grubs can wreak havoc on any root vegetables you may be growing; they also enjoy munching on bulbs and roots of perennial plants. The favorite food of moles is grubs, so when moles are present, grubs won’t be. Added good news is that moles could care less about your plants and their roots. So really, how bad can garden moles be?
There is a con side to having garden moles. Their burrowing creates holes in the yard, pushes rocks up through the soil where they can be tossed about by the lawnmower as well as cut into bulbs and roots of your carefully planted annuals and perennials. Those same plants could be rudely uprooted and tossed aside as the underground tunnels progress. Moles enjoy eating earthworms, which are beneficial to your garden through vermiculture and its ability to produce rich, organic soil.
So there you have it; the pros and cons of garden moles. Now you need to decide whether or not you choose to live with them and the unfortunate side effects in your yard, or if you will be eliminating them. If you choose the latter, another choice faces you: how to get ride of them. You can kill them outright, as many do, by any means that you have available to you. You could purchase pellets or poisons that, when placed into the tunnels and eaten by the moles, kill them pretty effectively. There are traps that can be purchased that will definitely bring about the death of the garden moles through strangulation, impalement or lethal cuts.
You may decide you don’t want the unsightly result garden moles leaves in your yard, but you just don’t have the heart to kill them. There are also many traps available for purchase that allows you to capture the mole and then transport it far from your yard to release it to live out the rest of its life in the wild. An effective trap can even be devised on your own, using a simple empty coffee can placed at the very bottom of the tunnel.
Garden moles don’t realize they are damaging your carefully plotted garden. They have one mission in mind, and that is simply to find and eat grubs. It is up to you to either live with them or, in one manner or another, eliminate them from your garden.
