Moles are pesky little critters than can ruin your well cared for lawn quickly. Holes start showing up in your well tended lawn and the little buggers just think your yard is their new home. There are some remedies you can try, but none of them are full proof. You might want to consider getting a small female cat. The best way to get rid of moles is to have them dead, which cats are particularly fond of handling for you.
Strategies such as bleach, camphor, red pepper or electronic devices really do not work for getting rid of moles. Save your money if you are considering trying any of these methods. The only remedy besides a cat that has a little better odds of working is castor oil granules. Castor oil granules are not guaranteed to work. They could possibly help. Being low cost in price, castor oil can be tried by spreading out the granules one pound for every thousand square feet of yard.
Forget about insecticides to eliminate the moles food source. Moles will simply move on digging more tunnels in your lawn to get to good food. Insecticides will actually cause more harm than good as some insects are beneficial to your yard and they are needed.
Poisons are not much use either since you do not know if the poisons are actually working or not. You'd have to dig up more of your yard to find out.
The best method of eliminating moles is trapping them. Traps can be difficult to set up, and you must use leather or cotton gloves to keep the human smell from the trap. Set the trap near a main active tunnel. If you're not sure if the tunnel is active or not, push down on the hole and see which ones are pushed back up in the morning. That's where the little buggers are active. Trapping is not a long term solution to a mole problem however. Your best defense is to make your yard very mole unfriendly.
You can erect a mole barrier around your whole yard, but it is not cost effective. Changing the yard and putting in landscaping barriers will prevent them from tunneling too much, but will not eliminate them from your yard. Modifying your yard can actually be a good thing for you as well as your yard. Many of the changes you can make will make your yard more aesthetically pleasing, as well as less attractive to moles. Breaking up your lawn with paths, patios areas, or gardens will disrupt the moles from making long tunnels which they adore. A place that is less mole friendly will attract less moles.
Another way to keep moles from surfacing as much is to water your lawn less. Food source of moles is earthworms and insects which move closer to the surface when there is water. Less water, the food source stays lower in the ground, and the moles should stay lower as well.
Summary:
Eliminating moles is a very tall order. Moles are very difficult to get rid of. Design your yard with the idea of making less of a playground for moles, and they will not come around as much. They could even move on if you make enough changes. If all else fails and you are at your wits end, get a cat.
