Imagine that you are sitting in your kitchen on a Sunday morning, looking out on your yard, and you see a few mini volcanoes scattered around your yard. You think that it is odd, but you continue with your day. A couple of days later, you start to see that your squash garden is struggling. The squash is dying, and it looks like some animal has been eating away at the roots. You put up a fence around your squash garden in the hopes of keeping small critters away. A couple of weeks later, you trip and fall when walking around your lawn. You look back at what you tripped over, and it seems that there are more of these mini volcanoes around! Frustrated, you call your local pest control company, TermiGuard, for assistance.
It seems that you have moles in your yard! Moles are small rodents that live underground. Moles prefer a warm and humid climate near shrubs, bushes, and trees. Moles tend to burrow into your landscaping and create tunnels underground. Risk factors for having moles in your landscaping are frequent watering and high humidity in the air. Moles are helpful and vital to the ecosystem, but they are also pests that can destroy your yard and create all kinds of problems. Mole damage is real, and it can wreak havoc on your landscaping.
Moles are recurrent creatures, so it is often challenging to eliminate them from your yard, but we can help you to manage the infestation and minimize the mole damage. Our mole control program, MoleGuard, has helped hundreds of New Jersey homeowners.
But what does mole damage look like?
Mole Damage Devastates Your Vegetables
By their nature, moles primarily live underground. When they first infest your yard, they are digging holes and creating a network of tunnels underneath your yard. These tunnels provide them with protection and also allow them access to their primary food sources underground. They create their tunnels aimed toward the roots of vegetables, where the moles find grubs and earthworms. This mole damage causes substantial damage to vegetables.
Mole Damage Causes Vole Infestation
Very similar to moles, voles are small rodents that also like to live underground. Voles eat most plants, vegetables, and fruits found in your yard. While moles dig holes and create tunnels in your yard, voles tend to follow those tunnels. Thus, moles start their destruction, and voles follow where moles lead. Voles specifically target vegetable gardens, and they typically eat from the root up. That means that you will first see your plants dying, as their source of nutrients is gone.
Mole Damage Causes a Safety Hazard
Mole damage can also cause a severe safety hazard to you and your family. As described previously, moles dig holes, creating mini volcanoes around your yard. These mounds of soil can cause people to trip over them. Furthermore, when the moles create these holes and dig their tunnels, there are holes in the yard that people can trip on and get their foot stuck in.
Mole Damage Make Landscapes Ugly
Most obviously, mole damage causes you to lose the beauty of your existing landscaping aesthetic. The mounds of soil created by mole damage do not add to the beauty of your lawn, so it is important, from an aesthetic point of view, to get the mole damage addressed. Furthermore, mole damage can cause grass death, creating splotches of dead grass scattered around your yard.
Mole Damage Causes Irrigation Problems
Because of the damage and destruction that moles cause by building tunnels, mole damage can cause irrigation problems. These tunnels disrupt the natural irrigation system of your yard, disrupting how the grass is watered and how the water drains. Water can begin to flow into the holes created by moles and can loosen the soil around your yard.
Mole Damage Disturbs Your Sprinkler System
Mole infestation can cause mole damage by disrupting an established sprinkler system in your yard. The moles can knock out the sprinklers or disrupt the wiring underneath the ground, which can further affect the growth of the grass and create dry patches of grass.
Mole Damage is Expensive
There are a lot of companies out there who suggest quick fixes for mole infestation and mole damage. For example, some companies use fertilizers and insecticides that aim to kill grubs, such as the Japanese beetle larvae, which are a source of food for moles. The idea is that by killing the grubs, the moles lose their food source and leave your yard. Unfortunately, that method is ineffective, as the moles’ primary food source is the earthworm, which is unaffected by insecticides designed to kill grubs. So, these companies will attempt to address the presence of earthworms, which will cause even more damage to your yard. Earthworms are extremely vital to the ecosystem of your landscaping. Earthworms are important for maintaining excellent condition of your soil, which should be aerated and fertile.
A second method that a lot of other companies may use is trapping. Trapping consists of putting traps around your yard to catch and kill the moles. These traps can pose a significant safety hazard to you and your family if someone gets injured in the traps. These traps are also labor intensive, so they are expensive to maintain.
Both of these methods fail to address the root of the problem – the existence of moles. Addressing food supply and attempting trapping are both ineffective means of eliminating mole infestation and stopping mole damage. These one-size-fits-all methods do not do justice to your unique lawn, which is why Termiguard will assess your lawn and assess the mole damage before suggesting a unique treatment for addressing the mole damage in your yard. We will direct you to the right way of minimizing mole damage in your lawn.
If you are seeing the effects of mole damage, call Termiguard today so we can help you address your mole infestation!
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