Kitchen Garden Forum

I am amazed that in these days of high technology and educated scientists that could put man on the moon we still have to be frustrated by the difficulty in controlling moles. Surely it would not be too difficult to bait them with earth worms that contain some sort of metal substance (like we used to do with strychnine) that built up in the mole so that we could then use metal detectors to find and exterminate them. Perhaps I'm in the realms of fantasy, but I wish there was a more easy method than scrabbling around with a probe, digging with a trowel, getting my fingers caught when fiddling with old dirty traps and hoping that some mole will oblige by crawling into it. I hate the time spent trapping them. I've tried many useless ways such as erecting electric fence wires all around their holes, driving tractors with spiked wheels over their runs, flooding them with water, driving flail toppers set very low over them etc. etc., all of course completely useless. Trapping seems to be the only method that can work. If anyone knows of or invents an easier way of mole control then they would get my vote.

Barney

Morning Barney, i know exactly where you are coming from, as i have a mole on one of my allotments at the moment that i just can't catch. I have sown double rows of beetroot, carrots and and mixed salad leaves, these are just germinating, but annoyingly the mole keeps going along the rows. I keep moving the trap, but it just back-fills it constantly. I have often managed to dig them out when i have seen them working, but this one manages to work inbetween my constant visits.

So the battle goes on....

Maybe mini firework-size land mines which are stuck down a tunnel which activate on movement would catch them but they probably wouldn't,t do much good to the rows of beetroot and peas above !

Or your feet!

There,s one variety of cheap £1 underarm aerosol deodorant available from Pound shops that would probably get them running if it were ever squirted down their tunnels !, Don,t suppose they'd much like dose of Jeyes fluid either.