Lawns, Gophers & Moles
By Thomas Leo Ogren, Fri Dec 9th
Lawns, Gophers & Moles Thomas Ogren A few gophers can tear up anice lawn in short order. Even if you’re a complete animallover, you won’t want the gophers in your yard. After theydestroy your lawn they’ll start eating the roots and killingyour roses, fruit trees, any attempt at a vegetable garden, thebulbs you plant and so forth. Gophers and gardening don’t gotogether at all! The gophers got to go. I have had many run inswith gophers in my years of gardening and I’ve always beensuccessful in getting them out of the lawn and garden. I don’tlike killing them or any animals for that matter, but withgophers, they usually don’t give you much choice. Poisons Resistthe urge to use gopher or mole poisons. The poisons only workso-so, and the poisoned rodents may easily be eaten by an owl,snake, cat, or fox, and then they’ll die too. If the predatorsare killed off the rodent population, unchecked, will quicklyexplode in number. Barn Owls If you’re out in the country one ofthe best ways to get rid of both gophers and moles is to put upnesting boxes for barn owls. These big nesting boxes aregenerally perched on the top of 11 to 20-foot tall poles. Theboxes and their poles are placed away from the house but not toofar from the lawns and yards. A nesting family of barn owls willeat thousands of rodents each season, and they are very good atcatching gophers and moles. If you live in an area where palmtrees grow, and you do not trim off the dead branches thataccumulate below the crown, sooner or later a barn owl will movein and set up home. Take advantage of this and leave a palm treeunsheared. The incredible number of rats, mice, moles, groundsquirrels, and gophers they’ll kill and eat is quite incredible.I now see in many orchards and vineyards, where they have put upthese owl boxes. The owls are saving the farmers a lot of money.Nesting boxes for barn owls are usually made from plywood andthe roofs are slanted so water will run off. Sometimes the roofsare shingled too. A nesting box for barn owls should be aminimum of 12 x 12 inches for the floor and at least 16 inchesdeep. The box should have small drain holes placed in the floor,in the corners. Small holes should be drilled around the top ofthe box on each side for air circulation. It is best to buildthe box so that it can be cleaned out easily once a year whenthe owls are gone. The box should have only one opening and thismust be at least 3 ½ inches in diameter but not more than 5inches wide. Too large an entrance hole will let great hornedowls in and they’ll eat up the barn owls. Horned owls eatrodents too, but are not nearly as tough on rodents as thesmaller barn owls. *For a place to buy good owl boxes alreadymade (they’ll ship them to you) see the Owl Nestbox ResourcePage under the links section of this book. At this site you canalso find more detailed instructions on building your own owlboxes. The bottom line with barn owls is they are the mosteffective rodent killers in existence. The right family cat canalso be a pretty good rodent catcher. Gopher snakes! I also knowof quite a few people who have caught gopher snakes and thenreleased them on their own property. The best way to catch agopher snake or two is to drive very slowly in the country on apaved road that gets very little traffic. Pin the snake’s headdown with a stick, pick it up firmly from behind the head, andstick him in an old pillow sack. They’re not poisonous but willoften bite and the bites don’t feel good either. The best timeto go looking for gopher snakes is in spring and early summer,just before and just after dark. Evenings that are cold andwindy will produce no snakes and nights will full moons arelikewise not productive. Gopher snakes are, like barn owls,designed by nature to catch and eat gophers and moles. Gophertraps There are a number of gopher traps on the market but byfar the best is the old Maccabee gopher trap made of heavy wire.These are tricky to set if you’ve never done it before, so buythem at a farm supply store and ask someone there to show youexactly how to set one before you leave the store. Trappinggophers is very effective if done right. 1.Tie a wire about twofeet long on the end of the gopher trap and secure it to asturdy metal or wooden stake. 2.Find the newest, freshest gophermound. 3.Dig out the opening of the mound with a shovel, open upthe tunnel and place the trap as far into the hole as possible.4.Pound the stake down near the hole but not into the tunnelitself. The stake and wire will insure that you don’t lose thetrap. A trapped gopher may easily draw the attention of a cat,dog, hawk, owl, skunk or fox, and they’ll run off with yourgopher and your trap. The wire and stake keep that fromhappening. 5.Leave the opening of the hole open. The lightcoming into the hole will serve as bait, since the gophersintended for that hole to be closed. 6.Set several traps indifferent holes if possible. 7.Check the traps at least once aday and re-set them if you’ve killed a gopher or if the gopherhas set off the trap and gotten away. Water, smoke bombs, and road flares Sometimes you can get thegophers, and moles too, to move out of your territory just byflooding their holes. By all means go ahead and stick the gardenhose down a few holes and give this a try. Usually though,flooding them doesn’t work very well, if at all. Smoking themout works much better than flooding them. There are specialgopher smoker bombs made and sold in all good nurseries andthese work pretty well. What works even better than the gopherbombs are regular red road flares. You can buy road flares verycheaply too, at an auto parts store. They will usually come inseveral lengths and the longer ones burn longer and are moreeffective. At any rate road flares of any length work prettywell. Dig out the gopher mound and open up the tunnel. Light theroad flare by twisting off the cap and then striking the tip ofthe flare with the end of the cap. Point it away from yourselfso you don’t get burned. Shove the lit end of the road flareinto the gopher tunnel and then shovel some dirt back over thetop of the opening. Stamp it all shut tight with the sole ofyour shoe. You’ll see some of the smoke escaping up through thedirt. If you spot smoke coming up from another hole in the lawn,quickly go over there and plug up that hole. The smoke from roadflares is sulfur smoke and it will stink out the entire tunnel.On occasion the gophers will be asphyxiated from the smoke andwill die in the tunnels. More often though, they will take offfor an area not anywhere near that stinky sulfur smoke. Thesmoke and its smell will persist in the tunnel for some time andthe gophers will often simply abandon the tunnel. The gophersmay well make several more attacks on your lawn and flower bedsand you may need to smoke them several times and in severaldifferent tunnels to get rid of them. If the smoking doesn’twork for you, buy some gopher traps…. or get a gopher snake.Moles Gophers are much larger than moles and they dig muchlarger holes and tunnels too. Gopher tunnels are often fairlydeep into the ground but mole tunnels often run just under thesurface of the lawn. Often you can just look at the lawn and seeexactly where these mole tunnels are because they are pushed upjust under the surface of the lawn. Gophers come into an area toeat the plants but moles are insect eaters and they don’tactually eat any of your lawn at all. Moles seem to be much morecommon in high rainfall areas and are uncommon in drier,irrigated lawn areas. Moles and grubs There are many differenttraps made for killing moles but resist the urge to buy and usethese. Poison baits for moles are not a good idea either. Themoles are tunneling through your lawn for a reason. If you
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havemoles in the lawn, you can be assured that you also have a lotof grubs in the lawn too. The moles are eating these grubs. Thegrubs can be up to about an inch long and they are usually whiteor gray and often have brown heads. Areas where grubinfestations are especially thick will often show patches oflawn dying from the grubs. Grubs or Dogs? If you have a deadpatch of lawn where the center of the patch is totally dead butthe edges of the patch are extra green, this damage isn’t fromgrubs, it’s from dog urine. The nitrogen in the urine fertilizesthe lawn that it doesn’t outright overdose and kill. This is whythe edges of the patch will be greener than the rest of the lawn. Skunks? Sometimes a grub-infested lawn will attract nighttimeraids by skunks. The skunks (and occasionally raccoons too) willtear up pieces of your lawn as they dig up the grubs to eat. Thesolution here is much the same as it is for getting rid of themoles. If the moles eat up all the grubs in your lawn they’llmove on to a new grub-filled area. Of course, in the processthey’ll tear up your lawn. So, what to do? The most obviousanswer is to kill off the grubs in the lawn. These grubs arelarvae from any number of insect pests, and in the lawn they arealso important pests of the lawn. Left unchecked, the grubs maywell destroy most of your lawn by themselves. There are a numberof organic or inorganic methods of killing off lawn grubs.Flooding the lawn seems to help to bring the grubs up closer tothe surface, where they’ll be easier to kill. Look for sourcesof these bio-controls in the Links section of this book, underIPM. IPM is short for integrated pest management and it is oftenvery effective and safe. Most of the soil grubs are larvae ofsome kind or other of beetle. If the grubs are larvae ofJapanese Beetles they can be attacked with Milky spore, which isan organic product that only attacks Japanese Beetles. There arebio-controls, safe biological agents that kill soil grubs.Heterorhabditis bacteriophora nematodes have shown good resultsfor white grub control. Nematodes are tiny soil wireworms. Thisparticular 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 alreadythoroughly watered lawns late in the day and then watered inimmediately. These nematodes will not damage the lawn or othergarden plants. Nematodes work fastest in sandy soils and slowerin heavy, clay soils. Organic insecticides can also be used as adrench on your lawns and sometimes they’re quite effective. Amix of water, soap, pyrethrum and rotenone will often kill mostof the grubs. Even organic insecticides though will also killoff earthworms and other beneficial soil organisms. Chemicalcontrol For a chemical approach, a single treatment can be madebetween mid-July to mid-August. Commonly used chemicalinsecticides are chlorphyrifos (Dursban), carbaryl (Sevin), andsoil diazinon. The pesticide must be watered into the soil wellafter use, or it won’t be effective. Keep in mind that none ofthese chemical insecticides are healthful for the family dog,cat, the kids, or for the songbirds that might well eat some ofthe chemically poisoned earthworms or grubs. Some lawn expertswill recommend use of the chemicals trichlorfon (Dylox),imidacloprid (Merit), or halofenozide (GrubEx) in mid-summer asa preventative measure against lawn grubs. Other preventativemeasures ·Keeping a lawn healthy won’t keep grubs and moles outof it, but a healthy lawn can recuperate much faster afterattack. · Mowing the lawn too short will weaken a lawn and makeit more easily damaged by grubs. Mowing higher promotes astronger root system. There is evidence too that grubs, as withmost insect pests, will attack an unhealthy lawn before they doa healthy one. ·Keeping the nitrogen levels up and maintaining agood amount of humus in the soil sometimes helps to lessen thechance 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 givesbirds a better shot at picking out these grubs. Many birds thatare attracted to our birdfeeders and suet feeders also will eatboth the grubs and the beetles that the grubs come from.Encourage wild birds in your yard. ·When you water, waterdeeply. This will also help develop a stronger root system.·Over-seed bluegrass lawns each spring with a mix of fescue orperennial ryegrass seed. If the grubs ruin the bluegrass, you’llstill have a lawn. ·In heavily grub-damaged lawns, take a rakeand rake the exposed soil up; this will expose the grubs to thebirds. ·Soak grub infected areas with soapy water. Use a quartof liquid dish soap to several gallons of water and soak thelawn with this mix. It will kill grubs. ·Sometimes grubs can beheld in check by dusting the lawn several times withdiatomaceous earth. This safe product kills grubs that come tothe surface and eat the grass leaves. ·Lastly, some people puton those spiked strap on sandals and walk around on their lawn,spearing grubs as they walk. Of course they’re also aerating thelawn at the same time. I have no idea how effective this methodis, but hey, it can’t hurt.
About the author:Thomas Ogren is the author of Allergy-Free Gardening, Ten SpeedPress. Tom does consulting work on for the USDA, county asthmacoalitions, and the American Lung Associations. He has appearedon CBS, HGTV and The Discovery Channel. His book, Safe Sex inthe Garden, was published 2003. In 2004 Time Warner Bookspublished his latest: What the Experts May NOT Tell You About:Growing the Perfect Lawn. His website:www.allergyfree-gardening.com
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