If you’re like most people, when you think of garden moles, they’re just pests. Sure, I’ve been there, too, when a mole has dug a hole in my lawn or garden and caused a nightmare mess – and sometimes even some minor anxiety.
But garden moles are actually beneficial in your garden. You’ll find everything you’ll need to know about garden moles here – including how to know you have moles, benefits from keeping them, and how to get rid of them!
What Are Garden Moles?
Moles are little fuzzy creatures that live underground. They are related to shrews and bats. Garden moles differ from the other types of moles, as they eat insects and worms rather than other rodents.
Garden moles have very sensitive noses, and are able to smell what they are looking for in the ground. They can dig tunnels in the earth with their strong front legs. These tunnels are not only for them to escape predators, but they also use them to find food.
Garden moles do not bother humans or pets, but they can tear up gardens and yards by digging up plants and soil.
They can move a great deal of earth in a short time, which is why they leave tend to leave behind uneven areas and holes where they have dug. They can do enough damage that they can destroy a lawn in a few as 3 days!
Moles do not tend to be very long-lived creatures. They will live for perhaps 2 to 4 years. They do not tend to live long due to the amount of stress they place on themselves by constantly digging their tunnels.
What Do Garden Moles Look Like
Garden moles are small mammals with a brown fur coat. They also have a long tail, and a small pair of eyes and ears.
Garden moles grow to a length of about 6 inches make an average of 2 ounces. Garden moles live underground and eat earthworms, grubs, insects, and other small animals.
Garden moles also have some additional defining features, with their noses and hands being the most notable.
Garden moles have a pointed and snoutlike nose with a bright pink tip. A garden mole’s hands are both hilarious and horrifying at the same time.
They look like how a child would draw a glove with five fingers, but the child with the glove didn’t really knew how to draw a thumb. All five fingers look exactly the same.
Upon closer inspection, a garden mole’s hand is fleshy with extremely long nails used to kind of aide in digging.
Do Garden Moles Have Eyes?
Garden moles have tiny, black eyes. They’re really, really small. They’re so small that if you were ever able to pick one up, you’d wonder if they even had eyes.
Garden moles can’t see very well, because they’re blind. They use their tactile and olfactory senses to move and feel their way through the tunnels they have dug underground.
Garden moles use their whiskers more than their eyes to feel their way around, and they can be easily startled by anything that comes too close to them.
Do Garden Moles Have Ears?
Moles gots pretty tiny ears that you can’t usually see. Although they can hear, they can’t hear as well as other mammals.
That means that moles are mostly deaf to high-pitched sounds. They HAVE to use their sense of touch and smell to get around their tunnels and find food!
How Do You Know You Have Moles?
If you’ve got something burrowing in your yard, you’ll probably recognize it as moles, but there could be other types of burrowing animals at play.
There are three common indicators that will tell you if you have garden moles living on your site.
Molehills
Molehills are little piles of dirt at tunnel entrances. They are usually cone-shaped or dome shaped, and may be two feet wide, and as tall as 9 inches.
Garden moles are like little excavators that take out the dirt from their tunnels and place it in one single pile. This is where the little critters get enough dirt to create a molehill that size.
Dead Grass
If you see dead grass in odd patterns throughout your yard, that’s a good indication that you have garden moles tunneling in your yard.
As a garden mole tunnels through your yard, it damages the root systems of your lawn, and you can see the layout of the tunnel where the grass died.
Chunks of Dirt
Moles have specialized nails and fingers for digging. Their claws allow them to break chunks of dirt versus scraping a little at a time. The piece of dirt will be transported to the mole hills.
Moles, Voles, Or Gophers
Yup! There are many burrowing pests that can inhabit your garden. Understanding what pest you’re dealing with will enable you to understand whether you want to leave it be, or have it removed.
Garden moles are sometimes mistaken for voles or even gophers. Which one is in your yard:
Voles
Voles are a lot smaller than those garden moles we see. They are a lighter color too and look more like a mouse.
Unlike moles, voles live in colonies, which means that if one is found, many more will likely be on your property. If this is the case, you can eliminate moles as the culprits.
Gophers
Gophers and moles are two different animals – gophers are rodents and spend time underground in burrows, partially because they pile up mounds of dirt as they dig around.
Gophers make mounds of dirt that are closer together, and the dirt in the piles is also finer and not clumpy like the dirt a mole piles up.
If the mounds are greater than six feet apart – you have a mole not a gopher.
Here is a video that shows you what these animals look like and understand their mounds and how to identify each of them.
Do Garden Moles Play Dead?
There’s a fair amount of argument about whether or not garden moles play dead. Some say that they have witnessed moles roll over and play dead when they are frightened, while others claim that this is merely a myth.
The fact is, no one really knows for sure if moles do this when they face danger. Now, they do spend most of their time underground and tend to be quite sporadic with their movements above ground, meaning they don’t tend to stop and rest while they are aboveground.
This shows that if a mole faces a predator, it is likely trying to reach a burrow quickly.
This would mean that moles are more likely to flee when facing danger than they would play dead, but it is safe to say there is no concrete answer to this question.
Are Garden Moles Dangerous?
Moles often raise concern for many garden enthusiasts, but are they really a danger? In most respects, moles are not a danger to people.
There may be minor injuries from handling a mole performing pinching or twisting of fingers, but this would not present any life threat to the individual.
Moles may pose a danger to small pets that approach too closely, especially for younger pets still learning to defend themselves. This would be extremely rare.
It is probably advisable to discourage kids and pets from getting too close to mole tunnels and the hills they have created, but moles are not generally a danger.
However, moles can be a risk to plants. The tunnels can collapse any underground gardens, and block moisture systems. The hills can be very unsightly, and can also damage lawns.
In extreme cases, the tunnels have been known to undermine building foundations and roads. Having said that, while they themselves are not a danger, they certainly do create a lot of problems.
Are Garden Moles Good for Your Garden?
Garden moles can be helpful in your lawn and garden. They are a bit awkward, and their burrowing can definitely disrupt the roots of your plants.
It’s easy to think garden moles are bad, given the dying plants in your garden.
Try thinking of garden moles as free aeration for your lawn and garden. Anytime they are burrowing under ground, they are creating space for air, water, and nutrients to go deeper into the ground and thus let roots grow deeper and stronger.
Garden moles eat earthworms, insects, and grubs. Some of these could be harmful to your plants, thereby allowing garden moles to serve as your garden security.
How To Remove Garden Moles
While moles benefit your garden, it’s more than likely moles aren’t in your backyard aesthetic because of the tunnels and molehills they’ve made.
If you don’t want garden moles in your garden or lawn, there are options to remove them.
Remove Their Food Source
Garden moles are coming to your garden for one thing; food. If you have moles in your garden, you can eliminate them by eliminating their source of food.
By eliminating their food source, you force them to move on to another food source.
You can eliminate insect and grub by applying insecticide to your garden and lawn.
This is a simple and effective way to get rid of garden moles, however it may take some time until grub populations decrease enough to entice moles to relocate.
Use a Repellent
Look for a repellent that contains castor oil. Castor oil repellents work by irritating the mole’s skin causing him/her to vacate your property.
This is one of the easiest and safest ways to cause garden moles to vacate on their own.
Around the house, a simple home made repellent, using solely castor oil and dish soap can be created. To create a concentrated solution, combine 3 parts castor oil and 1 part dish soap.
From that concentrated mixture, mix about four tablespoons in a gallon of water and apply it over the tunnels of garden moles.
The downside of this method is it will require a lot of reapplication to be effective.
Use Fragrant Plants
Having a heightened sense of smell, moles really dislike scented plants. You may find some success planting daffodils, marigolds, mint, garlic or shallots because these will deter moles from considering entering your yard.
Use a Pest Trap
You can also get pest traps to capture moles in your garden and relocate them elsewhere. This is more work on your part, as you’ll have to visit the traps and release the moles if you catch any.
Hire a Professional
You could also hire a professional pest control service to help you out. They’re really good at removing common and not so common pests and I’m sure they can remove the garden moles that are living in your lawn and garden area without any issues.
Natural Predators
The last approach to rid garden moles is by using some natural predator . There are some animals that hunt and eat moles due snakes and owls.
You can bring these predators to your garden and let them deal with your mole problems.
Do Moles Dig Up Lawns?
One of the biggest and most popular myths is that moles make dig holes in lawns. This isn’t true! Moles tunnel underground just below the surface and create their own network of tunnels.
They don’t really come to the surface, except when they are looking for food or a new place to live.
When you find tunneling, you often also find destruction. Tunneling creates root damage to your grass which will sometimes die above a tunnel.
You can even let your grass dry out a little bit, and the grass above the tunnels will typically die first and you can see exactly where the tunnels are. From here you can mark the tunnels and cave them in and put a repellent down.
Moles do create molehills which is what most people think about when they think about moles. Molehills are generally small, cone-shaped mounds of dirt that you find in yards and gardens.
Molehills typically are about 2 inches high and 3 inches wide at the base. They dirt is typically loose, very crumbly, and dark looking from being churned up by the mole.
Do Moles Dig At Night?
Moles aren’t night time animals; they’re most active at dusk and dawn when things are calm and quiet. They dig and look for food at that time.
Moles are also quite active on cloudy days, or in the rain. Moles tend to rest by day, underground in their tunnels.
Fun Facts About Garden Moles
Still not sure that garden moles are cool? Here are some goofy and cool facts about them.
- Garden moles are not rodents, even though they look like one. They are insectivores, so they are even closer to hedgehogs and bats than mice.
- Garden moles live up to six years.
- Moles gestation period is 45 days.
- Moles are very independent animals and live alone. Only 2 to 3 moles will live on each acre.
- They’re fast diggers and can dig 18 feet in just one hour.
- Garden moles can breathe underground because they have double the amount of blood than other mammals. This blood has excess oxygen that the garden mole can use while it is underground.
- Garden moles will store excess food in chambers in their tunnels.
Final Thoughts
Garden moles can be a gardener’s best friend or worst enemy, depending on how you look at them. They are aerating and fertilizing the soil through their tunnels, but they can also do a lot of damage to your plants and garden if you let them stay.
Hopefully this post has given you some more information to help you decide if you want to keep these little pests or find them a home somewhere else.