If you have a beautiful evergreen lawn, you should look out for gophers and moles. After all, wonderful lush yards built on perfectly laid soil that keeps rainwater on top are said to be a paradise for such creatures. However, when these animals make your backyard their home, they dig tunnels that can destroy your yard.
As a result, the roots of plants get weakened, and stubborn dirt hills are created, which make the yard look ugly. Since they live under the ground most of the time, it can be difficult to catch them. Below is a complete detail of various techniques that are effective in getting rid of these wild animals from your property.
1. Make your Lawn Unattractive for Animals
If you want to prevent moles and gopher removal from invading your lawn, the best practice is to make your lawns less appealing to them. Both of these tiny animals dislike the presence of flowers and plants with strong scents. Common examples of such plants are marigolds and daffodils.
When you plant these around the boundary of your backyard, it will contain a natural barrier to repel these animals. Along with that, it is also the safest and easy way to get rid of the animals with the addition of beauty to your lawn. However, planting and maintaining them is a time-consuming activity that also requires consistency.
2. Dig a Ditch around the Garden
Another way to get rid of gophers and moles is to create an artificial border around the lawn and yard. The best practice is to dig a ditch at least two feet deep and six feet wide. Once you have completed the digging, fill the trench with rocks or wire mesh. Although digging a ditch is a time-consuming method, it is highly effective. It provides a long-term solution against the animals and keeps them away from your lawn. However, some people worry that digging a ditch will affect the natural beauty of their lawn, so they are reluctant to go through with this method.
3. Keep the Lawn Clean
When gophers and moles are underground, they feel safest. Therefore, cleaning up the places of their shelter is a good practice. Hence, mow your lawn grass regularly to make it difficult for these little animals to hide. Thick layers of grass can also hide the entryways of tunnels; hence mowing can be effective. Make sure that excessive water is not provided to the lawn grass. The presence of water can bring insects that are also an ideal food source for gophers.
Having artificial grass solves the problem of gophers once and for all, as they can’t dig any further to make their tunnels. A nicely kept lawn looks beautiful. However, if the number of moles is high, you must adopt other methods to get rid of them.
4. Catch Moles and Gophers
If you want to use non-toxic techniques to control the population of moles and gophers in your garden, catching them live is the most used approach. Gopher traps can be installed all year round but are most effective in spring and autumn. It is the time when these animals show up in large numbers. If you want to get rid of them quickly, place these traps around or inside the tunnels made by these animals.
Place the ideal food sources preferred by them. As they are attracted to the food source, they will get trapped inside the placed trap. However, if it doesn’t result in success within hours, try relocating the trap to another opening of the tunnel. Trapping moles and gophers live is a very humane way to get rid of them. However, it might be time-consuming.
5. Toxic Bait for Killing the Animals
If all the above-mentioned techniques fail to provide you with solutions to get rid of wildlife in your backyard, you can place poisonous baits. The smell of these toxic substances attracts the animals as a food source, and as soon as they are consumed, the animals die. However, the bait should be placed with extensive care. These substances pose a serious threat to your children and pets if they visit the lawn continuously.
Hence, choosing the bait’s location is extremely important, and in most cases, it should be placed underground. Using rodenticides is highly effective and provides an immediate solution but has several disadvantages. Not only that it is the inhumane way and has health threats, but rodenticides are also costly. Moreover, once the animal dies, you will have to dispose of it far from your location.
Various methods can be used to get rid of gophers and moles from your property. But if there is a large number living beneath your yard, you can trap them by using either toxic or non-toxic baits. All of these methods guarantee success; however, precautions are needed in some of them.
