Help! A mole breached my mesh barricade under my raised beds

When we built our raised bed boxes (4'x8'x30"), we laid down rigid mesh at the bottom to keep out diggers. So far so good, until a mole moved into the raised bed area and breached the barricade. I just found a molehill on the surface. Any idea how to easily fix this problem? Even if/when we remove the mole, the tunnel is still there. Will we need to dig down to the breach and reinforce it? Is there another easier way? The moles will just keep coming back, right?

I think you should do the same thing to his garden bed l. See how he likes it

I haven't dealt with moles personally, I've got gopher problems myself but I remember reading that moles don't eat plants or plant roots. I think they're insectivorous and also help aerate soil 🤔

Moles are carnivorous. They won't harm your plants, they will keep your soil aerated and loose. They are a good thing for your garden. Take the time to learn about these things before you react to them. A little knowledge goes a long way.

@dirtydog I'm not here to get into an argument about the value of moles. I understand that moles are meat eaters so they won't eat my plants. Please don't make assumptions.

I am looking specifically for any tips for fixing the breach in the barricade. The problem is not so much the moles, but the fact that we also have voles.

Voles use mole highways and tunnels and will destroy my raised beds where my vegetables grow. I cannot afford for voles to feast on my gardens.

I will remove the mole from my raised beds because it will disrupt a square-foot-gardening setup that people (my family, my neighbors, the food bank) count on. That is not the question. I know how to do this.

My question is ... can anyone recommend an easier way to fix the access point without having to dig out an entire 4'x8'x30" raised bed?
(and before I get further grief, I'm disabled and built mine high so I can access them from a wheelchair or walker, so please... NO LECTURES).

I will need to pay someone to do this if that is what it takes.

Aw dang, that seems like a tough one!

If the tunnel runs straight down, I wonder if you could push some PVC through it all the way down to where it meets the mesh. That would make an unclimbable pipe interior the first thing that voles would meet if they came through the same way 🤔

If it's a network of tunnels, though, that wouldn't work.

One thought I had is you might be able to dig under the raised bed from the outside, especially if the breach is near an outer edge. that would probably be less soil to dig through, and wouldn't interfere with your plant roots or soil structure in the raised bed.

Thanks for the idea. Not sure the pipe would work as it would also get in the way of the growing space. I grow some big tomato and cruciferous plants in there, and space is at a premium.

The area around the raised beds is compacted gravel (newly laid over old compacted gravel) so it would probably be more labor to go from the outside in than it would be just digging down in the soil. To our advantage, we have the whole (mostly mild) winter to do that work (maritime Seattle 8b).

It's all a bit frustrating because I cleared out all the beds (which I normally grown in year-round) and planted with living mulch to till in during the late winter, so that bed might be a lost cause for that improvement.

We did find the one spot in the mesh, which is at the outer edge, and have been inspecting around the rest of the perimeter and it still seems secure, so I think we're going to just have to dig down and repair the single breach from the inside. Fingers crossed there's only one molehill for now, though there could be a whole system underneath it all.

Hope it's just one!

That sounds frustrating to lose a cover crop season, though I'm sure it'll feel good to get the breach taken care of.

I'll be spending some of this winter replacing critter barrier at my local community garden too, so hopefully we both have a better spring after putting in the repair efforts now.

You'll have to tell us how it goes!

Good luck with the barrier replacement, so important! I also put down more seed for my living mulch (the birds ate so much) and this time I put down bird netting but those little troublemakers snuck in through a gap in the netting and were chowing down again (!) so I had to go an reinforce it. Always something LOL

I'll keep you posted on the mole situation!