Although roots and lights aren’t favorite foods of moles, the precious crops can grow to be the rodents’ sufferers as they tunnel after grubs and insects. To prevent garden damage, homeowners sometimes move after the tunnels by packing their entry holes using oyster shells and other sharp things. Yet moles live in a intricate underground system that’s hard to eliminate or even detect. A better strategy is to protect individual garden areas and plants from the burrowing animals.
Dig a trench around the backyard bed you’re protecting. Make the trench 2 feet deep and 6 inches wide.
Fill the trench to just below the surrounding ground’s surface using crushed oyster shells.
Tamp the trench down firmly with the back of your rake, or by walking over it.
Cover the trench with a thin layer of dirt and tamp the soil down firmly. This top layer allows family members and pets to walk above the sharp trench without hurting their toes.
Surround vulnerable plants or plant groupings using a “moat” of crushed oysters, created by digging a shallow trench and filling it with crushed oyster shells. Cover the trench with topsoil or mulch. The depth of the trenches is going to probably be dictated by how deep-rooted individual plants really are.
Toss a handful of crushed oyster shells at the base of your planting holes when placing seedlings into mole-ridden places.
Add a last layer of safety by sprinkling oyster shells to the soil surface enclosing vulnerable plants. This won’t deter already-burrowing moles, but can put any moles off — not to mention other mammals, together with slugs and snails — which are roaming above-ground.