Lawns, Gophers & Moles
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Article by: Thomas Leo Ogren Lawns, Gophers & Moles Thomas Ogren A few gophers can tear up a nice lawn , Spting Flower Gardening in short order. Even if you're a complete animal lover, you won't want the gophers in your yard. , Seven Ways to Emphasize a Decor Style After they destroy your lawn , A Look at Cheap Flower Deliveries they'll start eating the roots , Family Meal Planning and killing your roses, , How to Modify Your Landscaping to Protect Your House from Bu fruit trees, , How Long Will it Last? any attempt at a vegetable garden, , Building a folding screen the bulbs , Building a folding screen you plant , 5 Most Popular Flowers for Your Garden and so forth. Gophers and gardening , Enjoy Your Garden and Patio For Longer With a Patio Heater don't go together at all! The gophers got to go. I have had many run ins with gophers in my years of gardening , Plants We like for the Clay Soils of Horsham Pa. and I've always been successful in getting them out of the lawn , Staying in Tune with the Change of Season and garden. , How to Brighten Your Decor with Hand-Painted Ceramic Tile I don't like killing them or any animals for that matter, but with gophers, they usually don't 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 they'll die too. If the predators are killed off the rodent population, unchecked, will quickly explode in number. Barn Owls If you're 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 , How to Modify Your Landscaping to Protect Your from Bu but not too far from the lawns , Gardening Magazines At Their Finest and yards. , How to Brighten Your Decor with Hand-Painted Ceramic Tile A nesting family of barn owls will eat thousands of rodents each season, , Emerald Green Arborvitae for West Point Pa. and they are very good at catching gophers and moles. If you live in an area where palm trees , Gardening Magazines At Their Finest 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. , Family Meal Planning Take advantage of this and leave a palm tree , Family Meal Planning unsheared. The incredible number of rats, mice, moles, ground squirrels, and gophers they'll kill and eat is quite incredible. I now see in many orchards , Liles for the garden 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 , How to Change Your Car's Motor Oil are slanted so water , Teak Makes Patio Furniture Chic will run off. Sometimes the roofs , Landscaping Tips: Boost Energy Efficiency with Shading Trees are shingled too. A nesting box for barn owls should be a minimum of 12 x 12 inches for the floor , That Summer Feeling Doesn’t Have to End and at least 16 inches deep. The box should have small drain holes placed in the floor, , Rooftop deck makeover in the corners. Small holes should be drilled around the top of the box on each side for air , How to Modify Your Landscaping to Protect Your House from Bu 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 they'll 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 , The Beauty of a Contemporary Ceiling Fan to buy good owl boxes already made (they'll 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 , When And How To Prune Roses 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. , Hillside Landscaping - Properly Watering Hillside And Sloped Landscapes 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 snake's head down with a stick, pick it up firmly from behind the head, and stick him in an old pillow sack. They're not poisonous but will often bite and the bites don't feel good either. The best time to go looking for gopher snakes is in spring , 5 Most Popular Flowers for Your Garden and early summer, , Reduce your power bills with a solar pool heater and a solar just before and just after dark. Evenings that are cold , Starting Vegetable Garden Seeds & Plants Indoors and windy will produce no snakes and nights will full moons are likewise not productive. Gopher snakes are, like barn owls, designed by nature , Soil Basics - Creating Fertile, Healthy Soil 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 you've never done it before, so buy them at a farm , The Beauty of a Contemporary Ceiling Fan supply store and ask someone there to show you exactly how to , That Summer Feeling Doesn’t Have to End 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 , Family Meal Planning or wooden , Are you in search of the latest help regarding kiln. 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 , 5 Steps to Protecting Your Hardwood Floor From Disaster 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 don't lose the trap. A trapped gopher may easily draw the attention of a cat, dog, hawk, owl, skunk or fox, and they'll 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 , Reduce your power bills with a solar pool heater and a solar 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 you've 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 , Going to the Chapel and They’re Going to Buy a Mattress hose down a few holes and give this a try. Usually though, flooding them doesn't 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 , A Look at International Flower Delivery the road flare by twisting off the cap and then striking the tip , Spting Flower Gardening of the flare with the end of the cap. Point it away from yourself , Starting Vegetable Garden Seeds & Plants Indoors so you don't 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. You'll see some of the smoke escaping up through the dirt. If you spot smoke coming up from another hole in the lawn, , Rock Gardens … A Different Kind of Garden 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 , Family Meal Planning and flower , 5 Steps to Protecting Your Hardwood Floor From Disaster beds and you may need to smoke them several times and in several different tunnels to get rid of them. If the smoking doesn't 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. , The Beauty of a Contemporary Ceiling Fan Often you can just look at the lawn , Looking After Your Rose Garden and see exactly where these mole tunnels are because they are pushed up just under the surface of the lawn. , Enjoy Your Garden and Patio For Longer With a Patio Heater Gophers come into an area to eat the plants , Balcony, Patio, and Courtyard Gardening but moles are insect eaters and they don't actually eat any of your lawn , Staying in Tune with the Change of Season at all. Moles seem to be much more common in high rainfall areas and are uncommon in drier, irrigated lawn , Protection Against People With Evil Intentions Towards You 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 , How to Change Your Car's Motor Oil for a reason. If you have moles in the lawn, , When And How To Prune Roses you can be assured that you also have a lot of grubs in the lawn , Building a folding screen too. The moles are eating these grubs. The grubs can be up to about an inch long and they are usually white , Stop annoying email NOW or gray and often have brown heads. Areas where grub infestations are especially thick will often show patches of lawn , Liles for the garden dying from the grubs. Grubs or Dogs? If you have a dead patch of lawn , So You Decided To Remodel Your Bathroom where the center of the patch is totally dead but the edges of the patch are extra green, , Building a folding screen this damage isn't from grubs, it's from dog urine. The nitrogen in the urine fertilizes the lawn , Stop annoying email NOW that it doesn't outright overdose and kill. This is why the edges of the patch will be greener than the rest of the lawn. , Artificial Trees Advantages Skunks? Sometimes a grub-infested lawn , How to Change Your Car's Motor Oil will attract nighttime raids by skunks. The skunks (and occasionally raccoons too) will tear up pieces of your lawn , Liles for the garden 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 , When And How To Prune Roses they'll move on to a new grub-filled area. Of course, in the process they'll tear up your lawn. , How to Brighten Your Decor with Hand-Painted Ceramic Tile So, what to do? The most obvious answer is to kill off the grubs in the lawn. , How to Brighten Your Decor with Hand-Painted Ceramic Tile These grubs are larvae from any number of insect pests, , Coleus, The Most Beautiful Houseplant. and in the lawn , How to Change Your Car's Motor Oil they are also important pests , Protection Against People With Evil Intentions Towards You of the lawn. , Rock Gardens … A Different Kind of Garden Left unchecked, the grubs may well destroy most of your lawn , Staying in Tune with the Change of Season by themselves. There are a number of organic , Are you in search of the latest help regarding kiln. or inorganic methods of killing off lawn , Radon Gas In Homes And Lung Cancer grubs. Flooding the lawn , A Look at International Flower Delivery seems to help to bring the grubs up closer to the surface, where they'll 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 , Creating a Mood with Scents management and it is often very effective and safe. , Starting Vegetable Garden Seeds & Plants Indoors Most of the soil , Radon Gas In Homes And Lung Cancer 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 , Liles for the garden product that only attacks Japanese Beetles. There are bio-controls, safe , Staying in Tune with the Change of Season biological agents that kill soil , How to Brighten Your Decor with Hand-Painted Ceramic Tile grubs. Heterorhabditis bacteriophora nematodes have shown good results for white , Enjoy Your Garden and Patio For Longer With a Patio Heater grub control. Nematodes are tiny soil , How To Do: CONTAINER GARDENING wireworms. This particular species will find the white , Going to the Chapel and They’re Going to Buy a Mattress 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 , Hillside Landscaping - Properly Watering Hillside And Sloped Landscapes late in the day and then watered in immediately. These nematodes will not damage the lawn , The Beauty of a Contemporary Ceiling Fan or other garden , How Long Will it Last? plants. Nematodes work fastest in sandy soils , Energy Efficiency Will Save You Money On Light Bulbs and slower in heavy, clay soils. , Staying in Tune with the Change of Season Organic insecticides can also be used as a drench on your lawns , Stop annoying email NOW and sometimes they're quite effective. A mix of water, , Radon Gas In Homes And Lung Cancer soap, pyrethrum and rotenone will often kill most of the grubs. Even organic , Balcony, Patio, and Courtyard Gardening insecticides though will also kill off earthworms and other beneficial soil , Drinking tea from fine china the way to go 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 , How to Change Your Car's Motor Oil diazinon. The pesticide must be watered into the soil , Coleus, The Most Beautiful Houseplant. well after use, or it won't 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 , Gardening Magazines At Their Finest experts will recommend use of the chemicals trichlorfon (Dylox), imidacloprid (Merit), or halofenozide (GrubEx) in mid-summer as a preventative measure against lawn , Spting Flower Gardening grubs. Other preventative measures ·Keeping a lawn healthy , Rooftop deck makeover won't keep grubs and moles out of it, but a healthy , So You Decided To Remodel Your Bathroom lawn can recuperate much faster after attack. · Mowing the lawn , Are you in search of the latest help regarding kiln. too short will weaken a lawn , How Long Will it Last? and make it more easily damaged by grubs. Mowing higher promotes a stronger root , Drinking tea from fine china the way to go system. There is evidence too that grubs, as with most insect pests, , Balcony, Patio, and Courtyard Gardening will attack an unhealthy lawn , Family Meal Planning before they do a healthy , Spting Flower Gardening one. ·Keeping the nitrogen levels up and maintaining a good amount of humus in the soil , Hillside Landscaping - Properly Watering Hillside And Sloped Landscapes sometimes helps to lessen the chance of grub damage. Grubs will attack any species of lawn, , How to Modify Your Landscaping to Protect Your House from Bu although the worst damage is usually seen on bluegrass lawns. , Family Meal Planning ·Aerating the lawn , Staying in Tune with the Change of Season makes for stronger roots , The History Of The Vacuum Cleaner: Perfection Has Taken A B and it also gives birds , Hillside Landscaping - Properly Watering Hillside And Sloped Landscapes a better shot at picking out these grubs. Many birds , Are you in search of the latest help regarding kiln. 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 , 5 Most Popular Flowers for Your Garden in your yard. , Starting Vegetable Garden Seeds & Plants Indoors ·When you water, , How to Modify Your Landscaping to Protect Your House from Bu water , How to Brighten Your Decor with Hand-Painted Ceramic Tile deeply. This will also help develop a stronger root , The History Of The Vacuum Cleaner: Perfection Has Taken A B system. ·Over-seed bluegrass lawns , That Summer Feeling Doesn’t Have to End each spring , How to Make Money at Home Growing Small Landscape Plants on 1/20 Acre or Less with a mix of fescue or perennial , Protection Against People With Evil Intentions Towards You ryegrass seed. , Staying in Tune with the Change of Season If the grubs ruin the bluegrass, you'll still have a lawn. , Coleus, The Most Beautiful Houseplant. ·In heavily grub-damaged lawns, , Stair Railings For Home Decorating take a rake and rake the exposed soil , Artificial Trees Advantages up; this will expose the grubs to the birds. , Teak Makes Patio Furniture Chic ·Soak grub infected areas with soapy water. , Protection Against People With Evil Intentions Towards You Use a quart of liquid dish soap to several gallons of water , 5 Most Popular Flowers for Your Garden and soak the lawn , When And How To Prune Roses with this mix. It will kill grubs. ·Sometimes grubs can be held in check by dusting the lawn , Balcony, Patio, and Courtyard Gardening several times with diatomaceous earth. , Spting Flower Gardening This safe product , The Beauty of a Contemporary Ceiling Fan kills grubs that come to the surface and eat the grass , Emerald Green Arborvitae for West Point Pa. leaves. ·Lastly, some people put on those spiked strap on sandals and walk around on their lawn, , How to Grow Japanese Red Maples from Seed spearing grubs as they walk. Of course they're also aerating the lawn , 5 Steps to Protecting Your Hardwood Floor From Disaster at the same time. I have no idea how effective this method is, but hey, it can't hurt. About the Author Thomas Ogren is the author of Allergy-Free Gardening, , How Long Will it Last? 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 , Balcony, Patio, and Courtyard Gardening Sex in the Garden, , The Beauty of a Contemporary Ceiling Fan was published 2003. In 2004 Time Warner Books published his latest: What the Experts May NOT Tell You About: Growing , Landscaping Tips: Boost Energy Efficiency with Shading Trees the Perfect Lawn. , Liles for the garden His website: www.allergyfree-gardening.com |
  
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