Lawns, Gophers & Moles Thomas Ogren A few gophers can
tear up a
nice lawn in short order. Even if youre a complete animal lover, you
wont want the gophers in your yard. After they destroy your lawn theyll
start eating the roots and killing your roses, fruit trees, any attempt
at a vegetable garden, the bulbs you plant and so forth. Gophers and
gardening dont go together at all! The gophers got to go. I have had
many run ins with gophers in my years of gardening and Ive always been
successful in getting them out of the lawn and garden. I dont like
killing them or any animals for that matter, but with gophers, they
usually dont give you much choice. Poisons Resist the urge to use
gopher or mole poisons. The poisons only work so-so, and the poisoned
rodents may easily be eaten by an owl, snake, cat, or fox, and then
theyll die too. If the predators are killed off the rodent population,
unchecked, will quickly explode in number. Barn Owls If youre out in
the country one of the best ways to get rid of both gophers and moles
is to put up nesting boxes for barn owls. These big nesting boxes are
generally perched on the top of 11 to 20-foot tall poles. The boxes and
their poles are placed away from the house but not too far from the
lawns and yards. A nesting family of barn owls will eat thousands of
rodents each season, and they are very good at catching gophers and
moles. If you live in an area where palm trees grow, and you do not
trim off the dead branches that accumulate below the crown, sooner or
later a barn owl will move in and set up home. Take advantage of this
and leave a palm tree unsheared. The incredible number of rats, mice,
moles, ground squirrels, and gophers theyll kill and eat is quite
incredible. I now see in many orchards and vineyards, where they have
put up these owl boxes. The owls are saving the farmers a lot of money.
Nesting boxes for barn owls are usually made from plywood and the roofs
are slanted so water will run off. Sometimes the roofs are shingled
too. A nesting box for barn owls should be a minimum of 12 x 12 inches
for the floor and at least 16 inches deep. The box should have small
drain holes placed in the floor, in the corners. Small holes should be
drilled around the top of the box on each side for air circulation. It
is best to build the box so that it can be cleaned out easily once a
year when the owls are gone. The box should have only one opening and
this must be at least 3 ½ inches in diameter but not more
than 5
inches wide. Too large an entrance hole will let great horned owls in
and theyll eat up the barn owls. Horned owls eat rodents too, but are
not nearly as tough on rodents as the smaller barn owls. *For a place
to buy good owl boxes already made (theyll ship them to you) see the
Owl Nestbox Resource Page under the links section of this book. At this
site you can also find more detailed instructions on building your own
owl boxes. The bottom line with barn owls is they are the most
effective rodent killers in existence. The right family cat can also be
a pretty good rodent catcher. Gopher snakes! I also know of quite a few
people who have caught gopher snakes and then released them on their
own property. The best way to catch a gopher snake or two is to drive
very slowly in the country on a paved road that gets very little
traffic. Pin the snakes head down with a stick, pick it up firmly from
behind the head, and stick him in an old pillow sack. Theyre not
poisonous but will often bite and the bites dont feel good either. The
best time to go looking for gopher snakes is in spring and early
summer, just before and just after dark. Evenings that are cold and
windy will produce no snakes and nights will full moons are likewise
not productive. Gopher snakes are, like barn owls, designed by nature
to catch and eat gophers and moles. Gopher traps There are a number of
gopher traps on the market but by far the best is the old Maccabee
gopher trap made of heavy wire. These are tricky to set if youve never
done it before, so buy them at a farm supply store and ask someone
there to show you exactly how to set one before you leave the store.
Trapping gophers is very effective if done right. 1.Tie a wire about
two feet long on the end of the gopher trap and secure it to a sturdy
metal or wooden stake. 2.Find the newest, freshest gopher mound. 3.Dig
out the opening of the mound with a shovel, open up the tunnel and
place the trap as far into the hole as possible. 4.Pound the stake down
near the hole but not into the tunnel itself. The stake and wire will
insure that you dont lose the trap. A trapped gopher may easily draw
the attention of a cat, dog, hawk, owl, skunk or fox, and theyll run
off with your gopher and your trap. The wire and stake keep that from
happening. 5.Leave the opening of the hole open. The light coming into
the hole will serve as bait, since the gophers intended for that hole
to be closed. 6.Set several traps in different holes if possible.
7.Check the traps at least once a day and re-set them if youve killed a
gopher or if the gopher has set off the trap and gotten away.
Water, smoke bombs, and road flares Sometimes you can get the gophers,
and moles too, to move out of your territory just by flooding their
holes. By all means go ahead and stick the garden hose down a few holes
and give this a try. Usually though, flooding them doesnt work very
well, if at all. Smoking them out works much better than flooding them.
There are special gopher smoker bombs made and sold in all good
nurseries and these work pretty well. What works even better than the
gopher bombs are regular red road flares. You can buy road flares very
cheaply too, at an auto parts store. They will usually come in several
lengths and the longer ones burn longer and are more effective. At any
rate road flares of any length work pretty well. Dig out the gopher
mound and open up the tunnel. Light the road flare by twisting off the
cap and then striking the tip of the flare with the end of the cap.
Point it away from yourself so you dont get burned. Shove the lit end
of the road flare into the gopher tunnel and then shovel some dirt back
over the top of the opening. Stamp it all shut tight with the sole of
your shoe. Youll see some of the smoke escaping up through the dirt. If
you spot smoke coming up from another hole in the lawn, quickly go over
there and plug up that hole. The smoke from road flares is sulfur smoke
and it will stink out the entire tunnel. On occasion the gophers will
be asphyxiated from the smoke and will die in the tunnels. More often
though, they will take off for an area not anywhere near that stinky
sulfur smoke. The smoke and its smell will persist in the tunnel for
some time and the gophers will often simply abandon the tunnel. The
gophers may well make several more attacks on your lawn and flower beds
and you may need to smoke them several times and in several different
tunnels to get rid of them. If the smoking doesnt work for you, buy
some gopher traps…. or get a gopher snake. Moles Gophers are
much larger than moles and they dig much larger holes and tunnels too.
Gopher tunnels are often fairly deep into the ground but mole tunnels
often run just under the surface of the lawn. Often you can just look
at the lawn and see exactly where these mole tunnels are because they
are pushed up just under the surface of the lawn. Gophers come into an
area to eat the plants but moles are insect eaters and they dont
actually eat any of your lawn at all. Moles seem to be much more common
in high rainfall areas and are uncommon in drier, irrigated lawn areas.
Moles and grubs There are many different traps made for killing moles
but resist the urge to buy and use these. Poison baits for moles are
not a good idea either. The moles are tunneling through your lawn for a
reason. If you have moles in the lawn, you can be assured that you also
have a lot of grubs in the lawn too. The moles are eating these grubs.
The grubs can be up to about an inch long and they are usually white or
gray and often have brown heads. Areas where grub infestations are
especially thick will often show patches of lawn dying from the grubs.
Grubs or Dogs? If you have a dead patch of lawn where the center of the
patch is totally dead but the edges of the patch are extra green, this
damage isnt from grubs, its from dog urine. The nitrogen in the urine
fertilizes the lawn that it doesnt outright overdose and kill. This is
why the edges of the patch will be greener than the rest of the lawn.
Skunks? Sometimes a grub-infested lawn will attract nighttime raids by
skunks. The skunks (and occasionally raccoons too) will tear up pieces
of your lawn as they dig up the grubs to eat. The solution here is much
the same as it is for getting rid of the moles. If the moles eat up all
the grubs in your lawn theyll move on to a new grub-filled area. Of
course, in the process theyll tear up your lawn. So, what to do? The
most obvious answer is to kill off the grubs in the lawn. These grubs
are larvae from any number of insect pests, and in the lawn they are
also important pests of the lawn. Left unchecked, the grubs may well
destroy most of your lawn by themselves. There are a number of organic
or inorganic methods of killing off lawn grubs. Flooding the lawn seems
to help to bring the grubs up closer to the surface, where theyll be
easier to kill. Look for sources of these bio-controls in the Links
section of this book, under IPM. IPM is short for integrated pest
management and it is often very effective and safe. Most of the soil
grubs are larvae of some kind or other of beetle. If the grubs are
larvae of Japanese Beetles they can be attacked with Milky spore, which
is an organic product that only attacks Japanese Beetles. There are
bio-controls, safe biological agents that kill soil grubs.
Heterorhabditis bacteriophora nematodes have shown good results for
white grub control. Nematodes are tiny soil wireworms. This particular
species will find the white grubs and kill them. These beneficial
nematodes are available in mail order catalogs, often sold as Hb
nematodes. They should be applied to already thoroughly watered lawns
late in the day and then watered in immediately. These nematodes will
not damage the lawn or other garden plants. Nematodes work fastest in
sandy soils and slower in heavy, clay soils. Organic insecticides can
also be used as a drench on your lawns and sometimes theyre quite
effective. A mix of water, soap, pyrethrum and rotenone will often kill
most of the grubs. Even organic insecticides though will also kill off
earthworms and other beneficial soil organisms. Chemical control For a
chemical approach, a single treatment can be made between mid-July to
mid-August. Commonly used chemical insecticides are chlorphyrifos
(Dursban), carbaryl (Sevin), and soil diazinon. The pesticide must be
watered into the soil well after use, or it wont be effective. Keep in
mind that none of these chemical insecticides are healthful for the
family dog, cat, the kids, or for the songbirds that might well eat
some of the chemically poisoned earthworms or grubs. Some lawn experts
will recommend use of the chemicals trichlorfon (Dylox), imidacloprid
(Merit), or halofenozide (GrubEx) in mid-summer as a preventative
measure against lawn grubs. Other preventative measures
·Keeping
a lawn healthy wont keep grubs and moles out of it, but a healthy lawn
can recuperate much faster after attack. · Mowing the lawn
too
short will weaken a lawn and make it more easily damaged by grubs.
Mowing higher promotes a stronger root system. There is evidence too
that grubs, as with most insect pests, will attack an unhealthy lawn
before they do a healthy one. ·Keeping the nitrogen levels
up
and maintaining a good amount of humus in the soil sometimes helps to
lessen the chance of grub damage. Grubs will attack any species of
lawn, although the worst damage is usually seen on bluegrass lawns.
·Aerating the lawn makes for stronger roots and it also
gives
birds a better shot at picking out these grubs. Many birds that are
attracted to our birdfeeders and suet feeders also will eat both the
grubs and the beetles that the grubs come from. Encourage wild birds in
your yard. ·When you water, water deeply. This will also
help
develop a stronger root system. ·Over-seed bluegrass lawns
each
spring with a mix of fescue or perennial ryegrass seed. If the grubs
ruin the bluegrass, youll still have a lawn. ·In heavily
grub-damaged lawns, take a rake and rake the exposed soil up; this will
expose the grubs to the birds. ·Soak grub infected areas
with
soapy water. Use a quart of liquid dish soap to several gallons of
water and soak the lawn with this mix. It will kill grubs.
·Sometimes grubs can be held in check by dusting the lawn
several times with diatomaceous earth. This safe product kills grubs
that come to the surface and eat the grass leaves. ·Lastly,
some
people put on those spiked strap on sandals and walk around on their
lawn, spearing grubs as they walk. Of course theyre also aerating the
lawn at the same time. I have no idea how effective this method is, but
hey, it cant hurt.
Thomas Ogren is the author of Allergy-Free Gardening, Ten Speed Press. Tom does consulting work on for the USDA, county asthma coalitions, and the American Lung Associations. He has appeared on CBS, HGTV and The Discovery Channel. His book, Safe Sex in the Garden, was published 2003. In 2004 Time Warner Books published his latest: What the Experts May NOT Tell You About: Growing the Perfect Lawn. His website: www.allergyfree-gardening.com
For more information on controlling moles and voles, click on the following link Moles and Voles