"Mole explosion brings headache for gardeners
Gardeners all over Britain are tearing their hair out because there's been an early autumn explosion of moles."


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/gardening/88 ... eners.html

We always have a fair few of the little fellows, but of late I have seen a lot less activity. How about you?

Far less activity here too. I think they must have given up struggling through the hard baked clay Can't say that I am missing them too much although mole hills are useful for mixing with the compost.

Hi Alan, I have tried to open the link but am unable to.

But we have just come back from holiday and have been to check out the allotment only to find it attacked by a very busy "family" of moles. We have grass paths and it/they have been backwards and forwards along all of them. But because we could not cut the grass before we went on holiday they don't seem to have come up through the surface.

They have uprooted our sprout plants.

It is very strange walking on the paths as they are extremely soft. It is still raining so we wont be able to cut the grass for a little while. We will see what the damage is when we can.

Sorry! Fixed it.

Hi Alan,
I have been plagued with the little fellows and the lawn immediately outside my back door has 18 mole holes and is full of runs just under the surface. I have set scissor traps but so far have had no luck. The lawn is ruined but until I can get rid of them there is not much to be done.
As previously mentioned in another thread they really reduced my runner beans to 25 plants from 160 seeds then 18 seeds came up in one small area and were transplanted and we have had a surprisingly good crop although I wasn't there to pick them and they were picked by people in the village. Everybody who picked gave me two packs of frozen beans and now have nearly 50 packets of beans in the freezer!
JB.

I had one in our "lawn" (I call it grass) and the neighbour tried trapping it, a farmer friend tried trapping it, both without luck. One day I raked it level ready for cutting and walking past later spotted a new hillock being developed so attacked with a garden fork. Raked again. An hour later new activity, attacked again - nothing since! I call it the four pronged attack. I have this design in my head for a square of spikes so I can attack about two feet square at a time and reduce the margin for error.

Geoff I dont think I could do that. Though I can let my OH put the traps down as long as I dont have to move them after. We put two traps down today as there has been new movement today in the paths. But we are having so much rain here at the moment that we cant walk on our paths too much. It is a swamp. I am suprised that the blessed things have not drowned.