Using castor oil to get rid of moles

If you turn to the internet to help you get rid of moles in the back garden, you may have come across a recipe that suggests using half a cup of dish soap, along with half a cup of castor oil. Essentially, you want a fifty/fifty split of both ingredients. When you're ready to repel moles, use a gallon of warm (ish) water and around three to four tablespoons of your new castor oil and dish soap mixture, mixed together in a spray bottle, ready to repel.


Why use castor oil?

Nobody really seems to know why castor oil has been used for generations to repel moles, although it is believed that mixture will douse the tunnels and prevent insects, such as earthworms, from entering that area. When there are no worms, the moles can't find food. That tunnel will then become a pointless tunnel for the animal, encouraging it to find another tunnel to find food and hang out.


The reality is...

Of course, you would need to use a serious amount of the mixture to make sure you penetrate down into the ground far enough to cover a mole tunnel in castor oil. Temporary tunnels are built near the surface, but permanent ones are built further down into the ground, sometimes over thirty centimetres deep or more. A quick spray of castor oil on the surface isn't going to affect a deep tunnel or the mole within it very much.

Castor oil for moles may have worked once upon a time, but it certainly doesn't show effectiveness now. All it encourages the mole to do, if it even affects them at all, is abandon that one tunnel and find somewhere else to hangout. That somewhere else could be just a few inches to the left or right of where you're trying to repel it from, which still provides you with a problem.



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