It took them FIVE years to find me! I had gophers at my old place and my little 4′ x 8′ garden plots were completely hardware cloth lined and fenced. I didn’t think I’d get gophers here because the soil is so rocky, but here they are.
And once
they arrived about a month ago they destroyed our gardens as if they hadn’t had a good meal in 5 years. We lost almost all melon and cucumber plants in both gardens.
As soon as we discovered them we ordered a trap online. When they buried the trap and we caught nothing, we got gas. I didn’t like it and it didn’t work. We put the gas stuff in the holes leading out of the garden and it did nothing.
And finally today we caught the first gopher in the trap:
I didn’t realize until I took the picture that it was still alive and Jose then shot it. We definitely have the wrong trap!
Here is the trap we bought on Ebay: Cinch Regular Gopher Trap
So we looked at a Pest Guide and ended up ordering a couple of Gophinators. They’re a lot smaller and hopefully kill them quickly.
Several people also suggested getting one of those vibrating spikes or windmills because gophers don’t like the vibration. I tried one of those spikes at my old place and it did nothing. I think they work in areas where there’s plenty of food and they’ll move to a more quiet area with just as much food. We are surrounded by desert and probably have the best gopher food within a mile.
I hate to have to kill any animal, but I can’t imagine having to gopher proof all our garden areas and every tree we planted. In spring we did some yard cleanup at my old place and one of the trees I had planted at least 8 years earlier had “fallen over”. I had NO roots, the gophers had killed it.
Fortunately they haven’t found the greenhouse yet. We’ve been getting great Armenian cucumbers and the tomatoes are doing great too, have to post some pictures next.
I had a really hard freeze (20 degrees) about 5 weeks ago and a few days later a gopher had moved into the high tunnel! He thought he had found paradise! It only took a few hours to trap him but he sure made a mess meanwhile.
We just got the plastic on our new hoophouse yesterday and we’ll see how long it’ll take for them to find it.
MAYBE we’ll get around to wire an area about 3 times the size of the hoophouse so we can have a gopher free garden next to it eventually. We’ll see how it goes.
It’s great to see that you have a CSA. Eventually we might want to start one too.
I just read this story about a gopher rescue:
http://www.care2.com/causes/woman-helps-little-gopher-in-trouble-stunning-thank-you.html
And now I feel bad, wish we had live traps for them.