Vole damage in a yard or garden can be extensive.
Moles can also do an incredible amount of damage to your yard and gardens as well. Actually moles and skunks will often tag team your yard. The moles attack it from the underside and the skunks attack it from above. Digging it up like a rototiller! But that’s a different topic with a Different Course of Action and I Explain that in Great Detail Here.
Today in this article we’ll solve the vole problem once and for all!
Researching this topic lead me to a very interesting article and video by Richard Merritt from New Hampshire Hostas so I have to give Richard credit for what I am about to share with you.
Voles are actually in the mouse family and unbeknownst to many gardeners is that field mice can do an incredible amount of damage in a garden or a nursery. Mice are a huge problem for nurseries, especially in the winter months. This same process is effective at controlling field mice as well.
What is the “Magic Formula”?
The basic formula that I am going to share with you here is a combination of scented castor oil and common, everyday dish soap mixed with water which you use to thoroughly soak the soil where you have a vole or field mouse problem. It’s really, really important that you thoroughly soak the soil. Simply spraying the solution over the surface of the soil will not do the trick. You have to apply enough to really let it soak in.
What is the formula?
One teaspoon common everyday dish soap.
One teaspoon scented castor oil.
One gallon of water.
If you use one of those fancy schmancy hose end sprayers fill the jar half way up with dish soap then fill it the rest of the way with scented castor oil. Then turn the adjustment on the sprayer to the highest setting.
The castor oil has to be scented!
When is the best time to treat for voles and field mice?
These critters do most of their damage over the winter months. That’s when they are the most desperate to find additional sources of food. Therefore, it’s really important to apply this formula right before winter, before the ground freezes.
After a couple of hard frosts all of your perennials, hosta and so on will experience top die back. Rake up all of the leaves and any debris before you make the application. Y0u want the ground as clear and clean as possible.
Make the application in the late fall before the ground freezes. You want this solution to soak into the soil, at least 2″ deep and that can’t happen if the ground is frozen.
If you are having problems with voles or mice during the growing season you can apply this formula in the spring as well. You can spot treat areas by simply using a sprinkling can.
Does this really work?
Or is this another one of those “Smoke and Mirrors” gardening fairy tales?
So far I have not tested this myself, but Richard Merritt claims that they had 100% success using this and he’s not in the business of selling castor oil or dish soap, he’s in the Business of Selling and Protecting Hostas. Thousands and thousands of them! I have every reason to believe him because he decided to share his experience with this formula because it saved him thousands of dollars in damage to his plants.
Prior to this treatment the voles would destroy his Hosta gardens, his English Ivy gardens and his Sedum gardens. This formula worked so well at protecting his plants that the voles moved into his lawn and destroyed that because they didn’t feel welcome in the areas that were treated with this combination.
Will this work for moles too?
I understand that it will. I control moles in my lawn with a lawn insecticide by getting rid of the Japanese Beetle Grubs because the grubs do a great deal of damage to a lawn themselves. And if you have grubs then chances are skunks are going to figure that out and they will destroy your lawn trying to get to the Japanese Beetle Grubs.
Why does this formula work?
As close as I can figure without doing hours and hours of research this works because the voles, moles and mice don’t like the smell of the fragrance in the scented in the castor oil. I am guessing that because the castor oil is an oil, it holds the scent in the soil longer than if you were to just use something else.
Why dish soap?
It’s common knowledge that liquid dish soap will act as a wetting agent, breaking the surface tension of the soil allowing the product to seep into the ground. Growers often use dish soap when trying to wet peat moss because once dry peat moss can be difficult to wet or re-wet.
Where can I buy scented castor oil?
Good question. There are all kinds of options online and they do vary. Richard Merritt, the guy in the video, says that he buys his castor oil from Shay and Company. Just make sure what you are getting is scented. That’s really, really important, it’s not going to work if it’s not scented.
This Company, Baar Products, claims that moles are very much repulsed by their brand of Scented Castor Oil. That’s all I know, you have to choose who to buy from. Baar products is in Pennsyalvania and Shay and Company is in Oregon, so the price of shipping alone might sway your decision.
I hope you find this article helpful.
Questions or comments for me? Post them below and I’ll answer them for you.
Any critter that is in the rodent family will eat mice and rat poison and it will kill them. when I moved into my house here NC I had the biggest squire problem I have ever see. Hundreds and hundreds of them.. I was wondering what to do as they dug up everything planted. and like rats were trying to eat into my house!! Then I met a “little old lady” and I was telling her my problem and she laughed at me. She told me go to any store and buy your self some mice and rat poison, set it out for the little bas—-s to eat and it will kill everyone of them AND Your Dogs and Cats will NOT eat it They don’t like it, and they don’t like the smell of it and it only kills rodents and NOT cats or Dogs. I did what the “nice little old lady” told me to do and I have not seen a Squire around my house in years!! Also no mice or rats ever. I had a mole come around, poured some down it’s hole and never seen the mole again .. leave two trays on both sides of my garage door(where there are two small holes) where mice can get into your garage. I see where some eat it and then nothing. NO MICE EVER IN MY GARAGE!!
Bill,
I don’t believe the part about dogs and cats not liking rat bait. I’ve heard horror stories of dogs that have been accidentally poisoned this way. They died slow, painful deaths.
Activated charcoal would have saved them
Sorry -I have seen dogs eat rat poison
Good day Mike!
Not sure about a lot of this but I found a way to keep them out of my raised beds. I put half inch hardware cloth (for those that don’t know it is basically a metal mesh) that I bought at my local Lowe’s on the ground before I put the beds in. Allows worms and plant roots access but not them wiley little critters! It should last for at least several years at which point I will probably be moving the beds to a new home anyway. Hope that helps somebody.
Michelle,
The problem with hardware cloth is that you have to make sure plants and stuff don’t grow through it or you’ll never get it out of the bed.
Deep in the forest of SE Oklahoma adjacent to Eufaula Lake, sandy soil with centuries of decomposed leaf matter, and about every critter you can imagine in the area. Having had a major mole problem for the past 7 years, I’ve been trying various methods of getting rid of them. I first tried flushing them out by running water down their holes until it filled. That had some success, flushed them out to where I could kill them. My dog succeeded in getting some, as did my cats. But the problem persisted, and over time increased.
I tried nematodes, but was not sure if the package was viable, as it arrived late on a hot summer night and remained out in the heat until I found it the next morning. I didn’t see any difference in the number of tunnels and mounds after applying it that year, however the next year it didn’t seem to be quite as many but, as I was digging to remove all of the prolific ‘spider wart’ plants, I found quite a few grubs in the gardens.
This year I decided after reading several articles about mole eradication to try the scented castor oil and in checking out retailers purchased a quart from Baar.com. Their instructions call for saturating the ground with water first, then do the application followed with water saturation again. I did one thing different though, adding Cayenne pepper to the mix, as was described in one of their customer reviews. Applied it with a hose sprayer. Luckily, we had a drenching rain the day before, so the ground was already very wet. As the forecast was calling for more heavy rain latter in that day, I did the application that morning.
If it works as all of those reviews claimed, I’ll let you know. In the meantime, I’m hoping it chases them out of my greenhouse asparagus and strawberry gardens inside my greenhouse, as well as my recently expanded vegetable garden.
According to the details on the Baar castor oil, it is completely harmless to pets and gardens. They also send an info page with recipe quantities to use for various types of applicators. The suggestion is to do a second application about two weeks after the first, then about every two months after, until you don’t see any more activity, following that up with annual applications around the perimeter of your yard to keep them out.
One reviewer used the Cayenne Pepper mix and found that it also kept his squirrel problem at bay! Hope that works for me as I have a major problem with the messes the squirrels make all over my deck railings, not to mention that they were getting into my outside strawberry and blackberry gardens eating the berries as they ripened.
I bought Milky Spore and did a single application about 2 years ago. Haven’t seen a vols since!
Depending on how the castor oil was processed (with chemical solvents?) and what the added fragrence was made of (natural essential oils – or synthetic chemcial scents?) – this method may NOT be organic.
If voles are after lawn grubs which are the larvae of Japanese beetles or the larvae of other pests, truly organic control can be acheived useing beneficial nematodes. These special soil organisms control **many** pests that have soil-dwelling life stages: fleas, ticks, fire ants, carpenter ants, termites – in addition to Japanese beetles. These beneficial microscopic nematodes Do NOT harm humans, pets, or plants! They do control a longlist of garden pest – completely naturally.
Arbico Organics has a website with more information. There are also other sources. (I do not have any relationship to Arbico Organics (except as a satisfied customer) or any other supplier of beneficial nematodes.
RM,
I appreciate your input and will also mention that the Gardens Alive website is also a great source of organic control products.
Several years ago, lots of stray cats appeared at my house.. Several times, that year, I saw small rodents on top of the snow. There were little ditches in the lawn. In the spring, there were no hostas, no peonies, and few bulbs. So, I figured out why so many cats came and what had happened to the plants. I didn’t know about voles and described my problem to several people. Then, went on line to learn more about them.
Yesterday, I saw a small ditch in the lawn and two holes at the end of the “ditch”. I filled the holes with soil. I think the voles are back. They seem to come every few years.
I need to know about a non-poisonous prevention.
Carol,
This article is about an organic control.
I have caught some in a black hole trap, but am usually unlucky at destroying them. They are even in my gravel driveway, along the cement wall. One of them even goes under a large plant of tansy, which you know is very strong menthol smelling, so I don’t know about that scent thing with the peppermint and lavender. They specially like to be on the cement walkway under my portico, and seem to dwell there and consume all the tulips and lilies, daffodils crocuses and hyacinth..
there are remnants of the bulbs left and so each year the plants get smaller and smaller. In some cases I have seen romaine lettuce plants pulled right through the hole until only the tips are showing.
My inlaws lived on muck and black dirt and suffered with moles and voles all the years they were there. I used to brag that our ground was too hard for moles and voles to get through since we had clay. Well, I guess it backfired on me, because we now have a huge problem with them. I looked at both websites and was wondering why the huge difference in the prices? I read a lot of reviews on Baar’s site but didn’t see any on Shay’s. Also wondering what the scent is. I have essential oils that I could add, so thinking of ordering from Shay’s and adding some peppermint essential oil and try that. It may not work but willing to give it a try. Also, someone commented on the castor oil being poisonous. Is this true? I know that Castor beans are poisonous but not sure about the oil.
Natalie,
I honestly don’t know the answers to these questions. People used to drink a lot of castor oil for all kinds of ailments I know that. Shay’s is the site that the nurseryman in the video purchased his castor oil from, but they sure could put more info on that page. The other site? They are selling the product specifically for this purpose, claim that there’s has a proprietary additives. That’s really all I know.
Most mole poisons are deadly to pets. My dear cat became ill with a horribly painful illness, causing internal bleeding and eventual excruciating death. Only after I had spent over $2,000 trying to save her life did I learn that my next door neighbor had her yard main put out mole bait. If they had just left things alone, my cat would have solved their mole problem in short order.
Wish I knew what attracted them ! After 5 years here, now they appear. We have been having our lawn treated so it has become beautiful They were not to be seen until now. Maybe if we had left it to the weeds the problem wouldnt have arisen. The Rozanna Rozannadanna syndrom strikes again! Always something!
I have been advised that you are supposed to use Industrial Castor Oil that has a horrid odor as it has not been refined. Most of the pellets sold as bait in comprised of an inert material and Castor Oil. They work but are extremely hard to get in proper spots in the lawn.
Smoke and mirrors, Mike. Smoke and mirrors. I have tried them all. Only bait for voles and traps for moles work, and that is according to several university studies. The whole castor oil myth was based on ONE university trial that was unable to ever be duplicated — but people are so desperate for a miracle cure they latched onto it and won’t let go —- and many companies are happy to take their money.
Norm,
I can’t argue with you. What impressed me was that a nurseryman claimed it work. Now I wonder, years later is it still working for him?
Mike,
I did send them an email and asked if they were still using the application and still getting good results and they were quick to respond and tell me they are and it is still working for them.
Thanks Natalie, that’s good to know.
Who did you contact? You only sat”them” in relation to “nurserymen”.
I have shrews in my yard. I didn’t know what they are until I goole it. They are look like mouse navy color and have no eyes. Most of my hostas disappearing, I think they eat the roots. I catch few in mouse trap but I wish I know how to chase them out from my yard.
Can this recipe and application be used on beds where edibles are grown?
The voles are even in my raised bed where I grow veggies!
How about gophers? We have millions of them here in Northern California? I haven’t had luck with traps.
I know a guy that owns a hotel and what he uses in the rooms is mint oil which deters mice from this hotel, i think that will work for voles also, either mixed in with the castor oil or just the soap…..also one guy was telling me that ammonia is good for repelling moles, applied as spray on the soil surface and/or tunnels, apparently golf courses use that to send the moles to the neighbors 🙂 lol
For voles/moles/gophers: no cost, but possibly more unpleasant to apply: Dog Poo. Carefully scrape away the rodent’s mound of dirt, locate their hole with stick or trowel, drop in some dog doo. I don’t know if watering it in or re-covering with soil matters. I’ve not bothered with that and my lawn is now wonderfully mole/vole free. No charge, basically organic.
For voles/moles/gophers: A much less expensive, but probably more unpleasant control method that my cousin recommended: dog-doo. Carefully scrape away the rodent dirt mound, locate the hole opening with a stick or trowel, deposit some dog poo in the hole. I don’t know if it matters if you water it in — I haven’t bothered with that, but the large moles have disappeared. Amazingly effective, basically organic.
While researching castor bean seeds I came across info that the plant was a mole deterrent so I planted some in my front yard. Now the plants are not scented so I’m curious what the connection is.
Castor oil is highly poisonous. I am concerned that my cats or dogs might eat the voles and die too!
Just grow castor bean plants in your yard. Plus they are a beautiful plant. I plant them and have never had trouble with anything damaged.
AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW OF MOLES BY A BRITISH SCIENTIST
as published in the Daily Mail — 15th March 2016
Don’t be beastly to moles! They’re magical creatures and mole hills are GOOD for your garden, says an expert who’s studied them for 30 years
There are thought to be 31 million moles living in mainland Britain
They contribute to the health of the soil, turning it, draining it and mixing it
The furry mammals can lift 2kg – 20 times their own body weight
It takes a mole four and a half hours of digging to make a one-metre tunnel
By DR ROB ATKINSON
PUBLISHED: 01:11, 15 March 2016 | UPDATED: 01:25, 15 March 2016
At my feet I see a small patch of the ground move. Red-pink earthworms erupt writhing from the soil, as if fleeing some underground terror.
Through a gap in the grass, I spot a tiny, pig-like snout, probing and sniffing, followed by a small, furry head.
The mole is just under the surface, ripping its way through the turf. It is focused entirely on finding food.
I know it is nearly blind, and that although it can detect light it does not hunt using its eyes, which are pinpoints hidden beneath its dense, black fur.
Instead, it relies on smell – hence that delicate snout – and on touching wriggling prey using sensory hairs on its face.
Moles contribute to the health of the soil, turning it, draining it and mixing its nutrients, while their molehills are nurseries for wild flowers
Moles contribute to the health of the soil, turning it, draining it and mixing its nutrients, while their molehills are nurseries for wild flowers
Moles need to eat at least half their body weight every day — about six big common earthworms. With fastidious care, a mole will squeeze the gritty gut contents out of a worm before eating it, holding the head in its sharp teeth and pulling the slimy body through its nails.
The mole I was watching retreated, leaving me alone at dusk in a damp winter field. I had just started a four-year field research project at the wildlife conservation research unit at Oxford University. Much of my study involved radio-tracking moles, which I’d fitted with tiny radio-transmitters on the rump, where they did not impede their movements.
But moles got under my skin as easily as they burrow into the earth, and, 28 years after I started working on them and although I have expanded my interests to other mammal species, I still research moles — and am one of the very few ecologists who has studied wild moles in Britain.
There is so much to learn — and value — about the extraordinary little animal that lives beneath those annoying piles of soil.
Moles share features with the earliest ancestors of mammals, the shrew-like animals that scurried from beneath the feet of dinosaurs, and they are tremendously successful.
In mainland Britain there are an estimated 31 million moles — a figure to give gardeners recurring nightmares. Our species, the European mole, Talpa europaea, is one of 39 in the northern hemisphere – absent from Ireland, but found as far afield as Russia.
Despite their abundance they remain one of our least-known wild animals. Small, at around 100g, and living underground, moles reluctantly give up their secrets.
I suspect that’s one reason why, unlike hedgehogs, the mole – save for that affectionate portrait in The Wind In The Willows – does not enjoy a secure place in the nation’s affections.
The doughty few who have studied moles have used radio-tracking, and in most cases our work has involved long days and nights of mud and rain. However, the results of persistence are worth it.
I know I’m biased, but I believe that moles are one of the most remarkable animals on earth. They have broad, spade-like hands armed with thick, earth-scraping nails and a fringe of stiff hairs to sweep soil. Their upright, sensitive tails help them to quickly reverse.
The strong, flexible spine allows the mole to instantly turn around in a tunnel only millimetres wider than its body. The shoulders are so powerful that they can exert a sideways pressure 24 times their body weight.
There is so much to learn — and value — about the extraordinary little animal that lives beneath those annoying piles of soil
A natural engineer, the mole’s life is largely one of hard-working solitude. The 19th-century English rural poet, John Clare, called it ‘the little hermit’.
Both male and female moles are solitary and strongly territorial – and are very difficult to tell apart. Uniquely among mammals, the females have ‘ovotestes’: a combination of ovary, which produces eggs and testicular tissue. The latter generates the hormone testosterone, which is likely to be responsible for the female mole’s aggressive defence of her territory.
The females’ testosterone recedes temporarily in spring, when they briefly let down their guard and mate. At this time of the year, males are lustily charging across the landscape in shallow surface tunnels hundreds of metres long in the hope of finding females.
The sexes stay together for only an hour or so, and soon afterwards females resume their solitary lives. In mid-April in southern England to late June in Scotland, three or four babies are born in warm, underground nests of dry grass, and spend their first four weeks sleeping, and drinking their mother’s milk.
The female mole is a devoted parent. She naturally has a high metabolism and is always looking for food, but to meet the demands of milk production she has to work harder still. Consequently, her babies gain weight so fast that, if they were human, they would weigh 8 st three weeks after birth.
They start to eat solid food, possibly learning by grabbing hold of a worm their mum is eating.
Both male and female moles are solitary and strongly territorial — and are very difficult to tell apart. Uniquely among mammals, the females have ‘ovotestes’: a combination of ovary, which produces eggs and testicular tissue
Both male and female moles are solitary and strongly territorial — and are very difficult to tell apart. Uniquely among mammals, the females have ‘ovotestes’: a combination of ovary, which produces eggs and testicular tissue
By early summer, the mother’s territory has to support four or five animals rather than one, and dryer, leaner times are coming.
The young moles leave home and set off to find their own territories, risking starvation, traffic and prowling foxes. Sixty-four per cent of youngsters never live to see their first birthday. Only a lucky few reach the maximum age of seven.
The mole is, as many of us know to our cost, an accomplished digger.
Each mole lives at depths of up to 150cm (5ft) in a network of tunnels more than a kilometre long, all packed like spaghetti into a territory only 30-40 metres across.
A few of its peripheral tunnels are shared with adjacent moles – offering vital information about the neighbours. Moles, being highly territorial, scent-mark the shared tunnels in warning.
If a mole dies, its neighbours detect the absence of fresh scent, and move into the empty tunnels within 24 hours, mopping up the new abundance of food in the vacated tunnels.
For moles rely on their tunnels to act as traps for their prey: worms accidentally break into them when burrowing, and then, once in, take a while to get out, making them vulnerable to the patrolling mole.
The cursed molehills are just a by-product of their industrious digging. In one extreme case 7,380 molehills, weighing six and a half tonnes, were found in one hectare of pasture.
Try to admire for a moment the small animals that produced it. Moles work for four and half hours a day in winter, when the soil is harder, and take about an hour to dig one metre.
Having dug the soil, moles have to get it out of their tunnels, and the only way is to push it onto the surface via sloping shafts.
Each mole lives at depths of up to 150cm in a network of tunnels more than a kilometre long, all packed like spaghetti into a territory only 30-40 metres across
Each mole lives at depths of up to 150cm in a network of tunnels more than a kilometre long, all packed like spaghetti into a territory only 30-40 metres across
They can lift around 2kg – 20 times their own body weight.
Puny by comparison, Olympic powerlifters can only manage twice their own body weight.
To match a mole’s accomplishment in pushing soil onto the surface, one of those powerlifters would have to push an elephant out of a tightly fitting, sloping tunnel — with one hand, bracing himself with the other.
Painful though the thought is of molehills for devoted gardeners, moles contribute to the health of the soil, turning it, draining it and mixing its nutrients, while their molehills are nurseries for wild flowers.
Even on farmland, moles have a role, aerating soil and eating crop-damaging larvae, and they were once deliberately introduced to control cockchafer beetles.
Of course, locally they can be destructive. Crime number one is reducing the availability of grazing for livestock by covering pasture with molehills. Next is polluting silage; molehills gathered up when grass is cut and stored for silage can ruin the fermentation and preservation process. And then comes disfiguring parks and racecourses, and, of course, our gardens.
Consequently, moles remain a target in Britain even though on a national scale moles are really more of an annoyance than a pest.
In a survey I conducted, farmers ranked moles only eighth in the hierarchy of troublesome wildlife.
Over the latter half of the last millennium, millions were slain, putting them at the very top of our country’s hit-list of wildlife.
In one extreme case 7,380 molehills, weighing six and a half tonnes, were found in one hectare of pasture
In one extreme case 7,380 molehills, weighing six and a half tonnes, were found in one hectare of pasture
And they weren’t just killed as pests. Moles were widely used in folk remedies. They were ‘held’ until they died, to give the hand that gripped them healing power.
The blood from the nose of a living mole was swallowed to control fits, moles were skinned alive and bound to the necks of those suffering from goitre, and epileptics attempted cure by biting off a live mole’s head and sucking their blood.
Moles’ hands were cut off and kept to alleviate various diseases, their maimed owners left to crawl away to die, in the belief that they took the illness with them.
Such practices have thankfully died out in Britain. But moles are still persecuted with scant protection from the law. At least moles no longer suffer an appalling death from strychnine, though Britain only banned the poison for use on moles in 2006, 50 years after it had stopped its use on all other animals.
These days, we seem disinclined to wage all-out war on moles, and try to deal with them only where we think there’s damage. Perhaps we should start to celebrate molehills as signs that the soil is in good shape. Or, at least, remove them but leave the moles that made them alone.
There is no doubt they can cause gardeners anguish, but surely moles – mighty, mysterious and resilient – deserve our respect and, as often as we can offer it, our tolerance.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3492468/Moles-good-garden-says-expert-s-studied-30-years.html#ixzz431DDJ600
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Hey, Mike…
I caught a half dozen of the little buggers in my basement over the winter. I guess they were attracted by the plants I overwinter down there, as well as the warmth. They’re actually pretty cute! OK, they’re not cute when they’re tearing up your yard, but they’re better looking than a regular field mouse. The ones I caught had a nice, gray pelt to them, a stubby nose, and short tail. But like any other rodent, they have to gnaw on stuff to keep their teeth worn down.
I’ve read that they love pine needles, so anyone with a pine tree in the yard should look for signs there. And, they gnaw on tree bark, so they could easily kill and saplings you were trying to start. I noticed from an upstairs window, after a light snow, that they had a MAZE of trails working out from under my pine tree. So this article is timed perfectly for me! I would think that a Spring application would deter them as well…unless rain would dilute the scent of the castor oil.
Jim,
The voles that I have here are huge, the size of a rat. They tear up the lawn around the house at the nursery but when I cleared out back I must have fun them off. At least for now.
Man. I didn’t know they got THAT big! You oughta trap ’em and make hats!!
Thanks Jim, that’s funny! I killed one while rototilling and I couldn’t believe the size of the thing.
Everything you ever wanted to know about voles:
http://icwdm.org/handbook/rodents/voles.asp
I guess I must be lucky…mine can’t be more than 4″ from nose to tail, and have a really pretty dark gray pelt. And they haven’t done any damage to much, that I can tell. But I’d still like ’em gone. Thanks for this article, Mike.
So I looked at both suppliers, and Shay’s price ($25) is so much lower that even with east coast dispatch they are actually lower cost than Barr’s ($52) This is in spite of Barr’s free dispatch over $100 (5 gallon)
Total from Shay is $50, Barr is $63.
Sean, thanks for doing that research for anybody else that is interested.
So what quantity does $50 or $63 get you? I haven’t seen that mentioned thus far.
I believe a drop or two of essential oil added to the castor oil will work. Ants don’t like lavender. Maybe peppermint and lavenser.
what is the castor oil scented with? can it be a peppermint essential oil? or something else?
Kathy,
I wish I knew. Neither of the sites that I looked at said what the fragrance was that they used.
What scent does he use?
Nancy,
I don’t know, they don’t give that away on the sites that sell the castor oil.
This might be off-topic a bit but, I had some voles (small ones the size of a mouse) tearing up my rose beds. I used a regular old mouse trap with some peanut butter on it. Place the trap close to one of the tunnel openings they use. Then covered the trap with a bucket. Later that day I had one. I ended up with 4 before the tunnels stopped appearing.
The author mentions that unscented castor oil will not work. I’m curious if there’s been any studies that prove this.
Rather than buying already scented castor oil, simply add it to the oil.
A 5 gallon pail of unscented castor oil costs a fraction of what the smaller quantities do (search the internet).
The article is about VOLES, not MOLES. Voles eat roots, moles eat mostly grubs. Milky Spore kills grubs, consequently keeping away the moles. Sometimes voles use mole tunnels to run through. Most of the time they dig their own.
Using poison to kill rodents in the yard can kill the prey animals that eat them.
Jo Ann thanks for making this clarification!! Right on!!!