Daffodils as a mole deterrent

We have tried so many things here to rid our place of moles. Most did nothing.

Photo borrowed from the Net.

 As stated in other post I do use wire bottomed raised beds, Cage some of my trees and bushes I plant. Another thing we use is Daffodils. Yep plain old daffodils. When doing research for the 900th time on how to get rid of moles I stumbled onto "daffodils" would send them packing..That they would turn moles away. I did some research to see if this seemed to be true or a old wives tale. 

Well I found a few blogs of people swearing this had in fact worked for them. They showed what they had done. Were very happy with the results....most said like me, they didn't think it would help but gave it a try. etc etc.. So I figured what can it hurt, the flowers will be pretty, nothing to loose but some of my time to plant them right... so I did a test, a pretty big one to start with...as luck would have it was the time of year bulbs were on clearance here..I started planting the bulbs in all the raised tunnels in my yard.  The moles got so mad.. whew they threw temper tantrums.. I had mole hills not just tunnels and not just one or two hills LOL... I had them alllllll over the place popping up like crazy for a couple days. Looked like a tick tac toe board of dirt hills alllll over the place. My first thought was oh no not only did it not work but they like them! Well no they didn't like them. They were tunneling to get away from the bulbs. They even pushed a few bulbs up onto the ground they were so mad LOL... Not a nibble on a daffodil bulb though. I promptly stuck those bulbs right back down in the hole they came out of! So I was thinking ok this may just work. They seemed to stay out of the areas and away from the shrubs where I had planted the bulbs. :O)

So soon as the the daffodils bulbs went on clearance that next season . I bought several 100 bulbs again. I planted them every where I could find a mole tunnel and around existing shrubs or things that I did not know to cage when I planted them etc... Low and behold the moles stopped eating the roots off those shrubs too. Then for almost a year the mole activity in our yard was hardly there at all.... so cool!

The bonus in the spring its quite the site around here... Since then I have planted more and more and we are up over 1200 bulbs now... I always manage to get them on clearance for not much money and I just buy several hundred when I do.  As they start to multiply and need dividing I will do so and plant them elsewhere on the property... Where we live I do not have to lift bulbs in the winter or this would not be a option obviously ... All of my bulbs stay in the ground year around. 

Is this fool proof, not 100% no. But it has worked well enough that I feel I can plant something and not cage it IF I put a bunch of daffodil bulbs around it. Its been working and I am tickled.

I just finished doing just that with my Fuyu persimmon trees I just planted. I am banking on the daffodils. I have seen them work. I know they will make the moles go the other way. So when I planted my bare root fuyu trees I did not put a wire cage in the ground. Daffodils don't fail me now!

Actually I used them around a fig tree as well that I did not cage and it worked! The moles love the roots on fig trees for some reason. I have lost a lot of fig trees trying to get one started here. I thought it was a water and heat issue but then figured out the moles was just as involved in the demise of all those fig trees!

Luckily this time of year bulbs are on clearance and this is also the time of year I would be planting trees and such. I found these 75% off ...The Allium are not for the moles. Those are just cuz I couldn't pass them up at $1.75 cents a pkg of 10.  All these bulbs were in great condition. The big bags of Daffodils are 50 count bags, I bought six bags. They were on clearance for $5.00 a bag. 

 So I sliced two rings around each Fuyu tree with the shovel and then got to work planting the bulbs. One thing about our dirt being sandy is its easy to dig in. That is one of the same reasons we have moles so bad. Its kinda a catch 22. But it does usually make digging in it easy, so that is nice.

Kinda hard to see them but there are the two rings.

Then in go the bulbs 

I can just scoop out the dirt with my hands since I made the slice into the ground with the shovel.  Push back the dirt onto the bulbs and done. It took one bag of 50 bulbs to do the two rings around each tree. So I used 200 of the 300 bulbs I bought on my four fuyu trees. Think how pretty this will be with daffodils coming up in rings under the fuyu trees! Come spring I will get photos of alllll the daffodils around here :O)

The bulbs in these big count bags are always so big! How cool are these! Two covered my hand from wrist to finger tip. ThoughI do have small hands, still they are huge bulbs.

One the size of my palm