Runaway Mold - Noob Mistake!

I watched a few videos about mining runaway mold, and I found a "deposit" on a planet, built a base with a teleporter and spent some time bouncing between the site and my freighter. Soon I had 60k nanites and was able to upgrade my hauler to an S - awesome. Today I went back, did a harvest, thought "if there wasn't such a slope here, these balls would be easier to manage and wouldn't role away so fast" so I used my terrain manipulator to flatten the spot, then went back to my freighter and then warped back to the farm...you probably know where this is going - only 1 ball had returned! In flattening the terrain I had destroyed the place they were spawning. Ugh. Lesson learned, and in the future I'll used the terrain gun to dig a trench or build a wall to slow the role.