HUGE gopher problem!!! Help!!!

We are living in a new house. I had no idea that we had a gopher problem until after the start of the planting season. This year I planted a beautiful vegetable garden. It has grown nice and healthy until now. Yesterday I was in the garden and noticed it looked different. The gophers sucked down a whole head of lettuce. That's all I had of that. The garden is VERY established and the tomato plants are three and a half feet tall. I can't dig up the entire garden and it's pretty large. Obviously I had known about the gopher problem then I would've done everything in cages but it's too late. I have a horrid problem with gophers in the yard. I've tried a ton of things: gum in the holes (the darn things just ate it and dug more holes), castor oil (the dogs drank it and had diahrrea. It caused a film on the yard and made it harder to water because the oil repelled the water and made it run off in areas. And the gophers weren't even bothered by it.), I tried plants ( didn't work or repel no matter how poisonous the plant was. They even ate some.), I even have tomato cages in and that doesn't seem to help. And mint, I planted extra after I saw them in the yard in hopes that they would avoid the garden. When I started digging to build a garden I came across tons of shards of glass. I had no idea what this was for but now know. If any of you are going to try this then please don't unless a. You own the house and aren't ever going to sell and b. no one else ever will dig in that portion of the yard. When I first came across it I almost sliced off my hand and my little ones have also come across it in the yard. I wouldn't recommend burying glass for this purpose. Sorry, of topic. Does anyone have any recommendations on what I can do to get rid of the gophers out of my garden after its already established. I'd love some help. Thanks.

Feral Cats? I am putting daffodil bulbs in all of my flower beds, and so far, it seems to deter them. I don't know where you would find daff. bulbs at this time of year though.

We live in very thick coyote country so any outdoor cats will be dead in no time. We had a big male cat that we let out only during the day and the coyotes got him one afternoon. We can't even let our kids run around during the day unsupervised. The gophers are eating all of the bulbs too. Thanks for your help. I do appreciate it. :)

One section at a time remove the vegies, build raised boxes and make sure the bottom is a very heavy gauge mesh. Not chicken wire, gophers can bite right through that. Through the course of a year, as you rotate the crops you will eventually have enough raised beds with mesh bottoms that the gophers cannot get through.

In the rest of the yard, whenever you want to plant something (shrub, tree, flowers), build a cage for the roots, about twice as wide as the container. When the roots grow outside that cage the gophers can get them, and the plant may be stunted, so make as big a hole, as big a cage, as you can for each plant.

I have only had one gopher here (I live in a development) and it was digging under my front steps.
I would fill the hole up--and in a couple of hours--it would be all dug up.
This went on for maybe a week.
Then someone suggested stuffing rags soaked in clear Ammonia into the hole.
I never saw it again--but still kept refreshing with the Ammonia. It was GONE!

Now--you know they have more than one hole--a lot of entrances and exits.
You need to find them all and stay with it...
Mothballs may work too--but they are toxic to pets and animals. You would have to dig them in a bit.

Another Dg member just posted that fresh urine works by keeping them away--
basically--you would be "marking your territory"....
Here we need the men to come to the aid. Forget using the bathroom...AHEM....

I attach a link with all kinds of ideas for "Critter Trouble"...
Hope something works for you. Moving your whole garden just seems like a humongous job.

Gita

http://www.ghorganics.com/page6.html#Rabbits

When you discover a gopher hole, take your garden hose and stick it down the hole. Turn the water on full blast and leave it for awhile. It will flush any gophers out that are in the burrow. Of course, they'll have several tunnels dug with other entrances and exits, so you may have to get a multi-gang valve for your spigot, hook up several hoses to it, and place them down multiple holes. Water full blast from all of them. Do this regularly and consistently, and the gophers will either drown or give up and go elsewhere . . . Here's hoping!

Along with that, perhaps some of those predators that got your cat might also get some of those gophers? Especially if they're out in the open because their burrows are flooded!

I've seen those ultrasonic battery-operated thingys in gardening catalogs that you stick into the ground and the sound (which we can't hear) is supposed to drive the critters crazy. I really don't think they work, but maybe they will for you.

Other than that, the raised bed suggestion with the heavy mesh underneath may be your best bet.

I do not think those electronic sound things do anything, but here is a cheap alternative:

You know those whirling garden decorations on a stick?
Get some. Especially the ones with a long metal stick (2' long or so)
Dig a hole near the gopher problem.
Put a soda bottle (glass was the choice when I learned about this. Probably a metal can would work? maybe plastic?) in the hole so the mouth of the bottle is above grade, but not by much.
Put the whirly toy in the bottle.

Theory: The grating, clanking of the metal stake against the glass bottle as the wind blows the toy around is an irritant to the critters in the soil.

True or not, you now have several garden decorations that the gophers cannot destroy, so it was not a total waste of money and time.

Hi...we're almost neighbors (I'm in Topanga Canyon), same gophers, same coyotes. Too bad coyotes can't dig up the gophers. Here are some suggestions from someone who lives on top of a gopher hill and has been battling them (it!) for at least 6 years.

First, gophers are territorial except in their mating season, so you're probably dealing with one dude at a time. The easiest thing is to become aware of his presence (by watching for fresh dirt...when you see it dig it out and see if it gets filled in within a few days, then you know he's there) and going after him with gopher traps. When I dig out their holes, I wear gloves (to hid human smell) and dig as far as I can, trying to find a main tunnel. I attach a long string/cord to the gopher trap and tie it to a stake or piece of wood so I can pull it out. If the gopher buries the trap with fresh dirt, dig it out and try again, pushing it in further if you can. I use a pointed metal bar to dig into the holes as much as possible, my soil can be very hard. I also toss some juicy fruit gum in ahead of the trap, if the gopher ingests it it can make him sick and less able to notice the trap(s). The best place for traps is in the main tunnel, they're usually 6-12 inches down so if you can find some of those it should be easier to trap the gopher. I have three traps so if there's an active gopher I'll put all of them in different tunnels.

If you find the main tunnel(s), here are two more suggestions that I'm going to try this year. 1. put some plastic cups of human urine in the main tunnel, it will take a long time to evaporate if it's in a 2 inch deep container and will get smellier the older it gets. 2. a good place for broken glass would be inside the main tunnel, maybe just before the urine container. Spreading broken glass randomly in the ground is crazy and dangerous, but in the tunnel it's at least limited and I doubt that a gopher will be able to get past 12" of broken glass.

At my house when I catch a gopher, sometimes I'll get a month or two of no gopher before a new one moves in. It'll be obvious when this happens as the holes you dig out won't be filled in until there's a new one in town.

Second...chicken wire. If you must use chicken wire, don't use the standard chinese stuff you find at home depot. It rusts out in 2 or 3 years, and the mesh holes are about 1 1/2 " wide so a gopher might get through them. At the same Home Depot you can buy made in USA stucco wire (Davis Wire) that is the same gauge size but much better made and about 1/2 the price (150' roll for $46). I don't know how long the stucco wire would last underground, but it is made to construction industry standards so I'd think the galvanization is much better quality. Also, the mesh holes are uniform and 1" wide.

Third...if you don't want to dig up your garden and lay chicken wire or hardware cloth down underneath the entire area, an alternative would be to dig a 3 foot deep (12" wide) trench around the perimeter and install a vertical 36" deep underground fence made of hardware cloth. At the bottom of the hole you want to bend to hardware cloth at a right angle so to have 12" extending horizontally away from the fence. So you either buy 100ft rolls of 48" hardware cloth and bend the bottom 12" at 90degrees, or you use 36" rolls and do the same. This is based on the idea that gophers don't usually dig down more than 12" so a 36" deep fence would be pretty effective. I've read of people doing this to keep gophers out of fields. Once you catch the one(s) inside, you should be good. You need to extend the fence 6-12" above ground so they can't climb over it at night. I wish I could try this but most of my vegetable gardens are on the side of a hill in 4x8' boxes.

Also, for fruit trees I've started making 36" cages (with bottoms) out of hardware cloth. Unfortunately the hardware cloth usually available is 1/2" mesh which might be a bit small for some roots so I've been cutting out 1" holes in it...it's a pain to do but will surely last longer than the chinese chicken wire I used to use_until I lost a 4 year old apricot tree to a gopher that went right through the rusty stuff.

Hope this helps. RIght now I don't have a resident gopher so I'm devoting my time to the battle against deer, squirrels, and rabbits...I wish they were territorial in the same way as a gopher.

John

Well, shoot. I was going to recommend a feral cat, but I see that someone has already mentioned that, and it's not feasible for you. 3yrs ago I felt sorry for and began feeding a feral cat and her kitten (after I cage trapped them and took them to the ASPCA for neutering/spaying, shots, etc.). The kitten was several months old and per the ASPCA already too old to ever be tamed. It didn't occur to me that these cats might actually perform useful work for me, but they have. They hung around my house (outside) and immediately started killing rats and ground moles and leaving the bodies at the front door and on the front walkway - I didn't appreciate the 'gifts' right away, not until I realized how many rats and ground moles they were killing.

Before the cats arrived, I had a serious ground mole problem. My entire front yard was a mass of trails. You couldn't take a step without walking on them, and they had all but killed the lawn. The back yard was only slightly better. Those cats began leaving 1 to 3 dead moles on my front walkway almost daily. I'm told moles don't taste that good (to cats, that is), so I figure they just did it for the fun of it, like play. After 4 to 6 months the dead moles began to drop in number. By the end of the 1st year, my lawn was ground mole free, and I never had to lift a finger beyond putting food out each evening for the cats. Last week I saw the 1st ground mole hill in my yard in years, and about 2 days later I saw the female, feral cat out there digging up the tunnel in search of the mole.

We don't have coyotes here, so I can't really speak to that. One thing to consider though. Feral cats are 'tougher' and more street wise than pet cats. They have to be to survive on there own, fend off wildlife and other feral cats, and find food. They have to learn a few extra tricks to make it on their own. On the downside, I don't know how one would go about trying to obtain a feral cat. I got mine by accident, most likely because someone tossed the mother cat out in my neighborhood.

I've also heard from a number of people that they have had success with burying (used) cat litter in the lawn/soil periodically to ward off moles. This apparently gives the moles the idea that a cat (predator) is lurking in the area and causes them to move on to safer territory. Of course, this would only be an option if you were willing to consider an indoor cat, not something I would recommend unless you actually like cats and want to share your home with one.

Before the feral cats adopted me, I tried a number of things w/o success. I treated the lawn with grub killer and put down several types of biologicals to keep the grubs under control, this to deprive the moles of their food source; but while others have reported success with this method, it didn't work for me, probably because I could not treat neighboring yards. Those vibrating things you stick in the ground did not work for me, nor did stomping on their tunnels - as if I could actually stomp on all of them, lol. I considered the poisons that you put in their tunnels, but decided against that option after reading on the label that you can't safely grow edible plants in treated areas (I didn't want to anyhow, but the idea of making my soil toxic gave me pause.). In desperation, I even purchased smoke bombs designed to smoke them out of their tunnels, but I didn't use those either, because the label warned against using them in any tunnel that goes near or under the house, as that might result in a fire.

Your story about the broken glass someone previously placed in your soil is frightening. That said, I have read that putting broken or crushed oyster shells in the soil works, and I'm guessing that would be somewhat less hazardous. The crushed shells are just supposed to annoy and frustrate the moles, and make digging painful - not actually cut them. I'm not sure where one gets a large qty of oyster shells though, unless you really, really like to eat oysters - or maybe you could throw a couple of large oyster parties for friends, colleagues, etc. You might also ask around at local seafood restaurants to see if they might be willing to save you some shells. That's about all I have to offer. Best of luck to you in your efforts to eradicate the nuisances. If all else fails, you might consider checking with pest and wildlife control companies to see if they do ground mole eradication.

In my previous post, I suggested sticking a garden hose down the hole and turning on the water full blast to flood them out.

That may work IF you can FIND the hole! I've just now noticed fresh mounds of dirt in my flower beds, and no matter where or how much I dig around in them, I CANNOT find the entrance holes. I know they're there, but WHERE are they?

There aren't any moles in my part of the country, but we do have voles, ground squirrels and gophers.

I'm still trying the ultrasonic stakes. One of them seemed successful at driving out resident ground squirrels -- or else one of my cats got them and I haven't seen their carcases.

So, when you see a gopher mound, how do you locate the actual hole?


This message was edited Aug 11, 2018 2:44 PM