How to Deter Moles Without Harming Them

The Quick Answer

Put 3 tablespoons of castor oil in a bucket of water with a drop or two of detergent, mix it all up and water your lawn with it.

For a more detailed explanation and instructions on what worked for us, read on…

Lawn Wreckers

Moles live their subterranean lives largely out of view from us humans. The bit we do see are mole hills, the earth they excavate from their tunnels and push up to the surface.

These mole hills and the tunnels beneath can quickly make a mess of your lawn, so how can you deter moles from digging up your lawn?

Many people’s first thought is to call an exterminator, but the extermination process often involves toxic chemicals or cruel, inhumane traps. Here at Everything Not Human we try to live in harmony with our fellow creatures, so this is not an option.

…but we also don’t want our lawn to look like a building site, so we took to Google to find a solution.

After trying various suggestions, we found that watering the lawn with a castor oil solution drove away our unwelcome guests. This works because moles apparently hate castor oil and when your lawn smells of it they are likely to move on.

How to Mix and Deploy a Castor Oil Mole Repellent Solution?

1. Add 3 tablespoons of castor oil to a 2 Gallon (10 Litre) standard watering can.
2. To this add a drop or two of washing up liquid or a sprinkle of eco washing powder (the detergent is there to help disperse the castor oil into the water, ensuring you get a reasonably even spread when you water your lawn with the solution).
3. Fill the watering can up with water and give it a good stir.
4. Water your lawn. You don’t need to soak your lawn, just make sure you cover the areas where the mole is with 3 or 4 good sweeps of your watering can. You may need several watering cans worth to cover the area you need. If it rains soon after you water, this is good, it helps soak the castor oil into the soil.

It will probably take several applications to drive your mole away, a week interval between applications worked for us.

It’s also worth mentioning that the watering can you use will end up smelling of castor oil for some time. This will wear off as you use your watering can for normal duties. If you have an old watering can, then you could keep it just for this task.

If you read the many pest control business websites online, they will tell you that the above is all a load of codswallop…but then they would. We’ve tried this and for us, it worked well.