Diane,

I've linked Milky Spore info for you. The Milky Spore disease attacks and kills the grubs, and it is actually the grubs that lawn rodents are often after. I could tell a big difference in our yard the year AFTER we used Milky Spore....meaning that I put the Milky Spore on the lawn in either July or August of one year and then saw the results (less digging in the yard) the following summer. You have to apply the Milky Spore at the right time in order for it to work, and my mole/vole/gopher problem was relatively minor, because the cats killed every one of those animals they could find. However, transient armadilloes and skunks would come in and dig up every inch of yard and garden looking for grubs before I used the Milky Spore. They dug up my entire garden----every single plant---on the night before Mother's Day the year I applied milky spore (in fact, that's why I applied milky spore), an incident we still refer to as the Mother's Day Massacre.

Keep in mind too that while moles eat grub worms, they also eat other soil-dwelling creatures, including earthworms, so eliminating the grubs is only part of the solution. However, as a bonus, killing the grubs will help reduce your Japanese Beetle population.

I'm not sure how far you'd have to go down to beat those moles.....maybe a couple of feet? Hopefully Sammy will see this and respond because she has used hardward cloth to protect her rose roots, although I think she made individual cages for the roots of each plant rather than lining the bed. (My memory could be faulty on that.)

I know they make all kinds of mole traps and gopher traps (here where we live, if you have moles, you also have gophers but I don't know if that is true everywhere) and the wooden one made by the guy in Scott's part of the state is the one people seem to have the best success with.

Also, based on your new location, do you have groundhogs there? If you do, that elevates the mole/gopher battle to a mole/gopher/groundhog war and I am not sure if a barrier two feet down would be deep enough to deter a persistent groundhog.

Sometimes just having lots of human and animal activity around the garden will discourage the burrowing animals, but that's sort of a best-case-scenario that isn't guaranteed. A lot of the folks here who have sandy soil will have mole and/or gopher problems in 'waste' areas, like alongside the bar ditch or the edge of the woods or whatever, but not up closer to the house where there's lots of human and animal activity, so you might get lucky and find that describes your situation.

On the below link about milky spore powder, you'll see an internal link for Mole Control too. Hey...two links for the price of one!

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Info About Milky Spore Powder

Last Thanksgiving I had quite the family and friends reunion at my place. The house was full and the dining room was constantly being used for feeding. Just as I was shipping Thanksgiving platters out to the dining room I hear a lot of yelling in there. I enter and a family member (from Los Angeles) is claiming there was a dead rat under the dining table. I look, and lo! Mr. Lucky, the cat, had brought in his Thanksgiving contribution, a gopher! (In LA they don't know the difference between a rat and a gopher.)

Anyway, I will second Dawn's observation--cats are a good way to get rid of moles and gophers. However, don't be surprised if they bring them home to you expecting praise for their handiwork...

Dawn

"the wooden one made by the guy in Scott's part of the state is the one people seem to have the best success with"

More info or a link please, my mother's yard looks like the surface of Mars?

Myself with the black gumbo mixed with solid rock I don't have any trouble, lol.

Charlie

Robert, I got such a kick out of hearing about Mr. Lucky's contribution to the Thanksgiving meal.

Our first year here, we stupidly put in a dog door so our dogs could come and go through the laundry room door to the side yard. Obviously it was a huge mistake. Our big male cat, Moose, would bring his 'kills' inside and line them up on the pantry floor. He might manage to bring in a vole or two or a bird or two and put them in the pantry before we figured out what he was doing and closed the dog door. Not to be deterred from stocking up for winter, Moose would sit outside an exterior door with his new kill and wait for the door to open. Then, he'd run through the door and into the pantry. It was quite a game for a while. Moose did a great job of clearing the land of small animals, but we got rid of the dog door since there's no telling what he might have brought in.

I am so used to the animals proudly placing their dead "trophies" on the porch that I barely flinch any more. Well, except when our terrier-mix named Honey goes hunting. She apparently was abandoned and had to fend for herself until she found us and because of that, she's a good hunter. She likes to catch and eat rabbits and then leave the rabbit head on the porch for us. In fact, she leaves it on the Welcome mat. I am not a happy camper when I find a rabbit head on the porch.

Dawn

I have the same dang problem. FYI I have raised beds and all of my paths are covered with cardboard. The CRITTER (mole vole gopher) actually must dig under my garden and push up the carboard. I keep finding hills of dug dirt and missing plants. INSIDE my raised beds.

I am resorting to murder. I hate killing anything, but I am seriously at my wits end. I lost all of my sweet potatoes and many sqyuash and bean plants this year to whatever this is.

I ordered traps. Grrr.

Sorry Diane.

Jo

Larry! I've tried that trick with Chardonnay, and it does not work.

Jo

Oh, no. This does not sound very promising at all. *sob*

So maybe we could do a 10-foot-in-ground concrete perimeter around the entire property, then drop a small nuke in the middle of it?

The "tracks" I've seen are in the back yard between the house and the future garden spot. The area is bare ground as it was just graded before we bought the place but we've seeded it. The garden area beyond that was cornfield. I did see, when we first got here, a few spots here and there in the front yard that could have been them as well but it's more difficult to tell as that's established lawn.

Wild turkey, huh? I'm taking notes...

Diane

This certainly wouldn't be cost effective for a whole garden & I'm not even sure you could adapt it, but my son had a terrible mole problem in his yard, tried everything but nothing worked. When they moved the previous owner had installed the underground invisible fence to keep the dog in the yard. There are mole hills in the neighbor's yard right up to his "fence" line, but none in theirs.
Patty

Patty, I hope more post on this, I have never heard of it but would invest in a system if it worked. I mowed my lawn close today, it looked like it had vericose veins and I had enough dirt on my face and in my hair to plant another garden.

I hate moles and gophers, but atleast you can trap gophers.

Larry

I don't think the invisible fence would work, as the pet needs to wear a transmitter collar to get the warning and te shocks. Moles and gophers etc are notorious for chewing thru invisble fencing wires, in fact. You'd have to catch and put collar on all of the moles!

It had to just be a coincidence, or maybe the dogs kept them out.

What are these wooden traps I keep hearing about?

Jo

How do you store geraniums for the winter for replanting next spring? I have tried hanging them upside down, leaving them in a pot in my basement, and throwing them in a box with no luck. Any ideas?

Jo,

The gopher traps Scott says works best are mentioned in the thread from this summer that I've linked below. Click on the link and go down 5 or 6 posts until you see a link for the "Gopher Getter". That's the one!

Hope this helps.

Diane, I think you'll have to take a multi-pronged approach and I don't envy you one bit. Hungry farm cats who like to hunt may be your best ultimate solution. Or a little rat terrier that likes to kill small varmints.

If we didn't have a lovely collection of felines who believe it is their duty to rid our property of field mice and voles, we'd be overrun by them....and it is a never-ending war. We have less trouble with moles and gophers. They seem to "get the message" that if they try to move back onto our property, the cats will wipe them out. The field mice and voles never get that message....they just keep coming. Here where we live, you can't have a nice bed of ornamental plants or raise fruit or veggies unless you have some aggressive rodent-killing cats. I cannot imagine attempting to garden without them.

For me, the most important thing about the cat/yard rodent connection isn't even that the cats keep the critters out of the veggie garden, but rather that the fewer little furry things we have hanging around, the fewer snakes we have. A neighbor of ours had a persistent problem with snakes, especially copperheads, hanging out all around the house, yard and barn for years and years. After finally acquiring a couple of cats, they were amazed at how the snakes just 'disappeared'. It isn't that they never see snakes any more because we'll always have them here being surrounded by thousands of acres of grassland as we are, but they see significantly fewer since the cats have brought the vole and field mice population under control.

And, I hate to even mention this because I don't even use pesticides, but there are some poisonous gopher bait type things you can use. I know I see them at our local farm supply/feed stores. I have no idea if they work.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Previous Gopher Thread With Trap Info

I dont use the gopher and mole poison but have had frends that did and killed pets also, For me it is not worth the risk.

Larry

Dawn

I assume the Gopher Getter trap does kill the gopher when trapped?

Charlie

Well, dang. We only have inside cats here. We'll have to get a couple from somewhere. We do have the dogs but they're not yet able to roam the whole place. Once we get fencing up for them, larger than their current small space, I betcha that'll help quite a bit. Kong'll give 'em what-for!

I'm going to go blog that "trail" photo I took. Be right back with the link...

Here is a link that might be useful: Mole pic is first one.

The Gopher Getter box trap does kill the gophers 98% of the time. I have had 3 instances where only a leg was caught and it allowed me and the kids to study the gophers for a few hours. It was very interesting. I have also caught 5 moles in gopher traps over the years.

The moles are really bad here when it gets dry. The gophers have taken some more of my trees in the last month. I took about a year off from trapping them and they moved back up near the house again. It seems that after we get rains in the fall, the young ones move out and build their own homes.

Larry, I was worried about the gopher baits harming pets, and that's one reason I hesitated to even mention them. I don't even like putting rat poison in the garage for fear a dog or cat might find it. We have to put it in there in the winter though, or those big fat voles move into the garage and hide behind Tim's shelves of 'important stuff' he fills up the garage with.

Diane, Our cats are indoor/outdoor cats. I make them come inside before dark and don't let them go outside until after sunrise, and well after sunrise in winter. Any cat here that is an outside cat lives a very short life. Some friends of our tried having outside cats and lost 14 cats in less than a year. So, to me, it doesn't matter where they are...in the house, on the enclosed back porch, in the garden shed or garage, etc., as long as they are safely inside by dark. Every day when we let them out, they eagerly prowl around hoping to catch an unsuspecting small animal or reptile. Our big old fat cat, Moe (yes, as a matter of fact, he does have brothers named Larry and Curly) makes me mad by eating frogs, but he also kills mice and voles, so we have to tolerate his pursuit of frogs. (If I see him with a frog, I try to get it away from him and save it.) Everything wild here will kill and eat cats, and the raccoons are the worst of all. It is one reason I hate raccoons.

Scott, I've never had a gopher kill a tree (hooray for the cats). Do they chew around the trunk of small trees and girdle them or do they damage them by tunneling through the root zone or by eating the roots? I'm starting to think that thick, clay soil is good for something after all as it also helps keep down the mole and gopher population somewhat.

Dawn

Dawn, I will be out brush-hogging with the tractor in the fall and see young pecan trees 4 to 8 feet tall without any leaves and leaning over slightly. I reach over and, sure enough, I can pull them up with almost no effort since the entire taproot is gone and at most there are a few tiny side roots keeping it from tipping over altogether.

Until the diameter of the trunk at the ground is about 6 inches, they still can be and are killed here by gophers.

Scott, That's terrible. I didn't know they ate the roots. Apparently our cats kill any potentially invading gophers before they can do damage here because we have trees popping up everywhere, including in places where we don't want trees. That doesn't mean I want any gophers here though.

Dawn

Yup something ate the roots of one of my apple trees and killed it last year. After googling mounds etc, I now suspect gophers. I actually SAW a sweet potato plant being pulled into the ground one day. I could not believe my eyes.

I will try the traps first, but resort to poison if I must. My garden is fenced in, so I am not worried about my dogs getting to it. I am MAD at these things.

Jo

Alrighty, the battle is on! Our cats are now officially becoming inside/outside cats. LOL They were born outside and only became inside cats upon moving here so they like it. Best of both worlds, according to them! Right now, we leave a low window open just enough for them to get in and out but we'll be buying a dog/cat door thingy to put in soon.

Down with the garden-eating critters!

My neighbor gave me a pamphlet yesterday "Controlling the Eastern Mole", from the University of Arkansas. The pamphlet NO. is FSA9095. At the end of the pamphlet it also mentions sources of information. This can be seen online.

I hope it is helpful.

Larry

Thanks, Larry! I'll root up an online copy and have a look-see.

Diane

I've tried many different solutions for moles and only one has been effective for me - Victor's plunger style trap. I also tried their bear trap style unit but I never got a hit on it. If you follow a few simple steps on the plunger type it works very well.

Find an active tunnel by stepping on portions of their network. If they "rebuild" that section within 24 hours, it's active. remove a 8" section of the tunnel roof. place a hard "speed bump" in this section - I've used a section of a cedar shingle or other scraps of wood, hardpack clay or anything that would cause the mole to go over the bump rather than throu or under it. You then replace the removed roof section. Set the plunger trap directly over the speed bump - making sure that the trigger is in contact with the tunnel roof. You want the slightest upward movement of the roof to trigger the plunger spikes. Cover the entire trap with a sturdy box, bucket or trash can (so pets and kids don't get near it). Check the traps early in the morning. If one has been triggered, immediately step on it shoving the spikes into or through the speed bump. Then dig around the spikes to remove the trap without bending the spikes or freeing the mole. Below is a link to this trap. You can find them at TSC, Northern Tool and probably at any home improvement store.

My dogs had pretty severe medical issues that the vet suspects were a result of arsnic poisoning. The only source I could think of would be poisons related to the rodent/mole problems we had in my neighborhood (I seriously doubt someone intentionally poisoned them). No matter how bad your mole problem is, try to steer clear of the poisons as it just spreads it through the food chain.

Here is a link that might be useful: Victor plunger style trap