Any gopher solutions?

I feel your pain, zuzu. I used to live in Sebastopol, and now I've moved to the unincorporated county south of Santa Rosa. There are so may gophers here! Even though my three cats each kill at least one a day, there is no end in sight. Mine must have diamond teeth, because if they want something on the other side of the hardware cloth, they just chew through.

The only things they don't seem to eat are daffodils and garlic. This week I have 1800 daffodil bulbs arriving. I'm going to ring the next area I'm landscaping with them, and hopefully ward off the critters. Even the delicious tulips I had mixed with daffodils survived last year. The tulips that were by themselves were muched - my barrier was only the bottom and sides, I forgot them could scurry around the surface and dig down to the bulbs.

I planted garlic and daffodils all around my vegetable garden (which is also behind a 10 foot fencr to keep the deer out), and it kept all but one gopher out of the garden this year.

What a great solution, and a beautiful one too. I love daffodils. The gophers have moved my daffodils in the past. I see lots of gopher activity and then the daffodils come up far from the place I planted them. I can only wonder how many they've planted upside down. I guess it's time to buy one of those huge bags of 1,000 daffodil bulbs. This is a solution I really, really like.

One of the growers here said that he had lots of gopher problems until he planted lots of tulbaghia/ society garlic all around. I can't attest to this, but if garlic works, perhaps the society garlic will also (and prettier!)
Sherry

Great! I'll buy some of that too. It's also pretty and it'll stay in bloom when the daffodils are finished.

I have also heard daffodils are good, and our resident gopher(s) certainly never touch the few daffs we have.

Otherwise, although I hate to advocate killing anything, I've done it so I stand in no place to judge! Spring traps do work, although when I used one it took me three tries to get it positioned right. I left it in place for a month, and at the end a perfectly clean gopher skull was all that was left. It's on my mantle now; he shouldn't have gone after the tomato plant.

I was struck by the post that says "The traps are a boon, but only if you don't have thousands of gophers. There's no way to set enough traps for that." While I'm sure that's literally true, gophers are solitary, they do not live in colonies; I'm on 1/3 acre and after I killed the first gopher, we didn't have another one for over a year, so I think their territories must be over 1/3 acre. So I'm not sure if this refers to an enormous tract of land, or if it just sometimes *seems* like you have thousands of gopher because of their awesome destructive power.

Anyway, if you are lucky enough to live in a particular mid-peninsula part of the San Francisco Bay Area, I cannot recommoned Steve Albano's company, Peninsula Animal Trapping, enough for gopher control. His prices were a fraction of the price of larger places, and he solved our gopher problem right away, for over a year. The "larger place" in question sent out a guy to do an estimate, and he *literally* threw up his hands and said they couldn't help me. So Steve is the king of gopher control, in my book.

Though it would be nice if we could all just get along, gophers, tomatoes, people and all.

I've heard that they're solitary creatures, but they must have very confined territorial limits in my garden. My cats catch literally dozens each week, but the damage continues, and I only have half an acre of land. Two years ago I lost 29 roses to gophers in a period of just three days. That couldn't possibly have been a solitary creature.

On a more positive note, I bought tons of daffodil bulbs and society garlic plants today and I'll start planting them around the roses soon in the hope that they'll have a deterring effect.

Well here is a topic I started and participatedin often and I am sad to say that I too live in an area where there is a lot of undeveloped land so tunneling is extensive. I heard on the SW forum that planting castor beans wrks, a lady said she`d send me some but they have not touched hers in a year or two since. We`l see? The hair I heard just makes them crazy but kills no. I am despirate. I put that horrid carburator cleaner down the hole,that is horrid, Never tried amonia but bleach yes. I lost 6 or 7 established roses this year and each winter I lost 3 trees to what,I did not know till I saw the tunnel? I kept ammending the soil. I am about to lose a weeping mulberry but there are some roots left so for now I put poison all over and under the roots. Here are some ideas to toss over. Have you ever had a bedspread that had those nylon threads in them and you moved your foot on top of it and almost got your toes severed? I bought fishing line spools and I am going to wrap all my root balls with it to see if they don`t get all tangled and severed in it. Too Cruel? I love animals and it kills me. I tried the gass exhaust thing but you have to have an idea where all the uncovered hole are to seal them off and it works better with an old old vehicle with out a cadalytic converter or an old tractor. I am going to try a bunch of pain in the but stuff in new beds but old ones forget it, It`s a nightmare.

This message was edited Oct 20, 2006 1:41 PM

I recently talked to a guy that smashed quart glass jars and placed the broken glass in the tunnels and filled the holes back in with dirt. He says when they come back and dig, it kills them. Definitely sounds cruel and painful. He says it completely eliminated his gopher problems. He says to put the jars in a sack and smash them with a hammer, enough so there are sharp slivers of glass.

Nataraj

I certainly hope I never live on land he's been on before...I think I'd rather have gophers than slice my hands open every time I dug into the dirt. It took years on one property to get rid of the broken glass left from people who seemed to think that glass would burn in their burn pile.
Sherry

http://members.tripod.com/~Tommy51/aboutbarnowls.html

I'm new to this thread and feel like there are other gopher warriors out there now! The gophers have eaten the roots of my favorite bamboos (the new culms are eaten by the rabbits) and there are now so many in the back yard that it's like a housing development! I hired a tree trimmer to try and save my diseased Olive tree, and his chipper fell almost three feet down in the back yard while he was pulling it up to the tree. Took the guys all day to try and dig it out! I saw a product at Home Depot made from dried blood in powder form. Anyone try that? It's called Uncle Ian's Mole and Gopher (something). We have about an acre in Ventura County in a semi rural area and after being here 13 years this is the very worse I've seen, as well as a major population of cottontail rabbits. I'm thinking of an owl house or five, but worried of the danger to my neighbor's chickens. Any thoughts?

Palinka

Thanks for reminding me to get some owl boxes together. I definitely want to try them. None of my neighbors have chickens but I can understand why you would worry. Maybe you should just ask them what they think. If you have gopher problems then they surely do too. Haven't heard of Uncle Ian's formula but I'll do a bit of research. We had a nice long day of rain yesterday and this morning have the property is sunken a foot from gopher holes. They're such a pain.

Palinka,
We have neighbors with an owl box and I keep intending to get at least one upon our property, but well, good intentions.I knew that owls are really, really hard on cats, but you have to watch them with small dogs around, also. One neighbor's miniature pinscher got out and the owls got him. :o(
Sherry

Sherry, I read up on the barn owl on the above site. I wouldn't worry about barn owls with the cats. Horned owls definitely. But the boxes are for barn owls. I'd be more concerned about the birds in my trees but if rodents are their preferred diet, I sure have enough gophers to keep them busy for a good long while.

"Rodents are their preferred food, but small birds roosting in trees or bushes frequently become victims of the barn owl. Cats are not threatened, and ground squirrels, not being nocturnal, are unfortunately not controlled."

stella,
We must have other owls around here also..I've heard from neighbors of small cats being carried off by the hawks even. Whichever owls are nesting in the owl boxes carried the small dog away. Looked as though they had perhaps tried to carry it to the box and dropped it from that height right under the owl box. Fenced property that the dog could not have gotten into without being carried over fences. I didn't find it and didn't really want to ask whether or not they had then started eating it from that spot on the ground. Our one cat who was going outside in the daytime didn't always come in by dark and we don't know if it was an owl or hawk, but something had definitely tried to *lift* him. He had parallel claw wounds on each haunch. He's an unhappy but safe all the time inside cat now. Our other 5 have always been inside, but Pippa had a lot of *attitude* about this whole *inside* thing.
Sherry

When I was moving here I was worried about the hawks and owls getting Lionel. My niece Megan's remark was "it would take a pterydactyl to pick Lionel up!" He's a pretty big dude (three times the size of a min pin), over 20 lbs, and the hawks sit right up there and watch for gophers and ignore him completely. Course, these are the red shouldered hawks; something bigger might be scarier. Lionel is only outside when I am. Night time around here would be very scary for cats. There are mountain lions (seriously, one reported in someones yard just last week), and plenty of other big and scary things that would eat a cat.

I have to say that those things you put in the ground, with batteries DO work. They beep every so many seconds, and I see piles of moles and gophers all around in my neighbours yard, but not mine anymore...


This is my mandarin tree, with delicious roots! It got eaten, and since I have that green thing in the ground; nothing anymore!

Christie

I knew an old guy that had an old junker car he used for this.. He hooked up the dryer vent pipe and poured diesel in the carb... sure did smoke like crazy! Soon you could see it coming out all over.. he'd run and throw a shovel full of dirt on the "leaks" and then the pastures and alfalfa were gopher free for another 6months to a year. Just a thought..

I have had great luck with Black Hole Traps. The cheapest place to find them is The Snare Shop on line. They are about $11 shipping included. You get 2 and place one facing each way in a tunnel. They get both gophers and moles. They are very easy to set, you don't have to touch the dead body to get it out and they really work. I told my nieghbor who has never trapped anything in her life about them. Told her to buy 3 as you have to have 2 and if one happens to break, you will have the replacement. She was nervous but frustrated as she had her entire 1 acre lawn torn up. She said, but there are so many! I told her to stomp down the mounds and as soon as one came up to put the trap in. She got 2 moles the first day. And that was all she had was 2. She is a happy camper. Nothing else has worked for me, I have 2.5 acres and for the last 2 months I do not have one gopher or mole. As soon as I see any small mound, 2 traps go in and I always catch them, usually within a day, except when its cold, then they don't come up as much so I leave the traps in for at least a week. These traps are safe around pets and kids, they would have to put their nose or hand deep in the trap to activate the snare. Can you tell I am very happy????
Rebecca

Rebecca,

Can you come set mine for me? lol I have only had one success with the darn things and had to switch to poison, which I don't like to do (we don't have dogs at least). I search and search to find a good sized tunnel, but either they get covered up or the darn critters go around the trap. Do you put anything as bait inside? How do you cover them? I'm sure it's my technique - I need training!

Kathleen

First are you using the black hole traps? They are the only ones that work for me. This is how I set them. I take a very long screwdriver and start poking near the mound until I find the tunnel, where the screw driver goes in very easily. Then I poke to find the direction of the tunnel. I find a length of tunnel of a foot or more by poking. Then I use a hand trowel and dig the area out, using the screwdriver to find the direction of the tunnel. Sometimes they will make turns. Once I find the area and a nice tunnel exposed with walls that you can feel with your hand, then I set the traps. I widen the hole to the tunnel until the trap is inserted about an inch or so in the tunnel. I do the same on the other side, so you have 2 traps, end to end. I do not bait them and only cover with a bit of loose dirt right where the trap is inserted in the hole. I put a grass clump between the traps to darken, but let the air in. Make sure the entrance of the trap lines up with the tunnel floor so he just comes trotting out and is in the trap before he knows it.

To find the tunnel, do not dig in the mound. Poke around the outside of the mound till you find the tunnel with your screwdriver or bamboo stick or whatever you use. If they are moles, they will not eat the poisen, gophers will, moles will not. I don't mean to gross people out but I take the dead body and shove it in the tunnel and close the tunnel with a dirt clod. I think it deters new ones from coming when the critter starts to smell. I have not had a single mole or gopher for 2 weeks, my nieghbor has caught 2 more, she is still finding mounds.

I think your problem is not preparing the tunnel well. It takes some time to properly prep the area, widening it so the trap actually tucks a bit inside. They should not go around or miss it as it is an extension of the tunnel if set properly. Soon you get good at locating tunnels. I wish you were closer so I could show you, I have never been so frustrated with gardening as when the whole area looks like a moonscape with the darn critters. But do not give up, once you get the technique down, its quite easy and fast. I can set the traps in about 10 minutes, used to work on it for at least 20. Good luck to you, less of these nasty guys any where makes me smile.
Rebecca

Rebecca, I had to quick look where you live to see if you could come show me, LOL! I need to do this so bad. They are taking over. I put any larger plants in containers and smaller plants and bulbs get wrapped in steel wool, which works remarkably well. They were after an apricot tree and I planted 2 dozen narcissi around it so they're leaving that alone. But I came out one morning to see an 8x5' Cestrum that I just loved looking like someone poisoned it. Cut it back and dug it up and potted it and it'll be ok but anything that was in the yard before I moved here is going, one-by-one. Only one rose left out of a dozen. They took several lavenders and, of all things, the lantanas! Two huge bananas, gone. I poke around out there to try to figure out if I can recognize the tunnels for a trap but the places where they are worst don't have mounds at all. I guess they tunnel under the rock walls and come up to the beds. Absolutely no sign that they're there until the plants are dead. I need to get serious about traps I guess, though it worries me because Lionel does poke his paw down into the tunnels, feeling around, hoping to get lucky I suppose. I'd be devastated if he caught a leg in one of those traps!

If you are using the black hole traps there is very little chance that anything can get in there. The baffle that causes the snare to activate is half way inside the trap. If there is a critter in the trap it is already sprung. If you are concerned, place a bucket or tray over the area where you have the trap.

If you are not seeing mounds, it is probably moles. Moles will not eat your plants, but gophers and voles do. Gophers and voles do eat bait, but I have never seen a gopher that will not make a mound, even in rocks. Moles on the other hand do long tunnels sometimes without mounds. I would say try and stomp down the tunnels if you see any, look for fresh ones, especially around your dead plants, use you very long screwdriver to locate tunnels and just keep trying. Believe me if you are determined, you will get them. Its so much easier than protecting each and every plant. One last caution, try and use gloves so they do not detect your scent on the trap or dirt.

When I first started I concentrated nearest the house, a smaller area where they were active. I ignored further away and worked to get the ones closest first. I have 2.5 acres so it took me a few months to get them cleared out. Keep trying, you will find your technique and then gardening can be fun again.
Rebecca

Thanks for the tips, Rebecca. Yes, I do have the black hole traps. The first time was so easy - guess if I keep trying I'll get it right again. Part of my problem is a steep slope.

BTW, to all - anyone watch Gardening by the Yard with Paul James? Some time ago he talked about a product to deter gophers - I think it is castor oil in granules. He said it really showed promise, but I haven't seen it anywhere. Haven't looked for a while, so I'll have another search. Apparently they hate the smell and will just move on. Wonder what happens when the whole neighborhood uses it? :-)

Kathleen

I've seen a liquid castor oil product in some of the catalogs, maybe Gardener's Supply or Charlie's Greenhouse?

Unfortunately, it doesn't work, Ecrane. I've even poured straight castor oil into some of the tunnels without any effect whatsoever. It has no deterring properties at all. Pine-Sol does work, but only temporarily. I occasionally pour it in a circle around a plant that seems to have attracted too much attention, but it wears off eventually.

Boo. :-(

Yes, Kathleen, boo indeed. Don't waste your money. Trackinsand used it in Florida and found that it actually must attract the moles there. She had never had them before she used the granulated stuff. As soon as she used it, her garden turned into a vast expanse of molehills.

Gardens Alive sells the granules. I have not tried them but did try the MoleMed, I think it was called. It is a spray with caster oil. It was on sale at the end of the season for 70% off. I got 3. Took the first one and sprayed it as directed in the area where the moles were active. Woke up the next day and it looked like a bomb went off. It really P.....them off and did not keep them away at all. I believe with all the gass, gum, pinesol, peppermint oil, gasoline, etc, it does work. They do not like the smell. So they make a u-turn and just make a new tunnel. Would anyone really expect them to leave the county?? I do have 2 full containers of the molemed left, but its a waste of time.

These traps do work, I had given up on the moles and it was horrible here. Then they got into a special garden of mine and uprooted nearly everything, regardless of the wire netting, etc. It was war. I put the big cinch type traps in, they pushed them out of the ground. I put poisen, they tossed it back up to the surface. I found these traps and got 2 moles in one day. I have some set now, I leave them in a place until I get a mole or find a new mound. Then I move them. I have little flags I stick in, one for each trap so I can locate the traps. I only set 2 traps in one location at a time, but I am diligent if I see a new mound, the traps immediatly go in. I cannot tell you how pleased I am to see all my grass green and FLAT, and my gardens undisturbed. However I have a rat or something that is digging at stuff and eating some bulbs. I have been smelling skunk in the mornings so it may be a skunk.
rebecca

I seem to have had my best luck repelling the pests with daffodill bulbs. I planted some about 5 years ago with my roses and the little buggers leave them alone. If I'd know to plant them with my artichokes.....but never mind that. I have the bulbs scattered all through my beds, and it really does seem that they leave the stuff in those beds alone----and focus on the places where I DON'T have them. I'm dealing with a yard, not acreage like a lot of you, so this may not be practical solution for large areas, unless you can get a heck of a deal on bulbs. I planted tulips the same year I started the daffs, and there wasn't one tulip left by spring, but the daffs were there, and as they multiplied, they seem to have formed a barrier. I still have places where I haven't planted any daffs, and I always have gophers there.

I have 4 cats--you'd think one of them would be interested in a non-feathered meal, but sadly they seem to be afraid of the gophers, and prefer to attack my yard-birds. Most annoying.

Anyway, I really do think the daffs work year-round (I've tried everything else), and they sure are pretty when they bloom!

imapigeon, good to know. I got a boat load of daff bulbs and planted them around my yard this year. They're just now coming up. We'll see how the gophers react. Of course I still have many, many plants that don't have them around yet, but here's a tip: I got my bulbs through a co-op here on DG. I think that's the very best way to get lots of bulbs for a really good price.

I did that this fall. I planted daffodil bulbs around my favorite roses. Even if it doesn't work, I love daffodils, so it'll be good either way.

Stella, happy birthday. Did you know there's a happy birthday thread for you in the Pets Forum?

Wow, Zuzu, no I didn't catch that. I've done nothing but work all day and am just getting into the internet (while talking to friends on the phone). Thanks for the heads up.

Thanks for the info everyone - I will forget about the castor oil. Afraid the daffs won't work for me - I can't tolerate the smell. :-(

Then I guess I shouldn't suggest the Society Garlic that was also recommended to me as a gopher deterrent. I've planted that around some of my treasured plants too.

I can't stand the smell of the paperwhite narcissus, either. In fact, I have a couple of clumps I'm going to move to the farthest-away corner of the garden so I don't have to walk past them. But my experience is that the larger daffodills have a lighter and MUCH more pleasant fragrance.

I'm glad to know about the Society Garlic, too, as I just planted my first few last fall. It does fairly well here in the Garlic Capital of the World (LOL).
Has anyone noticed if the gophers care whether the variegated variety or the green is used? I want to be sure to plant lots of the one they dislike the most!!~

Oh, and Stella, I'm new to DG---would you mind pointing me to the coop area where you got the bulbs? There's so much info here.....it's like "OOOH--SHINY THING!, and off I go into a new forum....

This message was edited Feb 2, 2007 7:53 PM

imapigeon, here ya go. Notice there's a caladium co-op getting ready. You missed the calla lily one by a few days but just keep a close eye on this forum (I check it a couple of times a day) and you can get some great deals.

http://davesgarden.com/forums/f/groupbuy/all/

TOO COOL! I love caladiums, this is a perfect way for me to start. Thanks so much!

Zuzu, society garlic isn't bad as long as it's not a whole bed full! We visited the Getty museum in Los Angeles years ago and were sitting on a bench in their beautiful garden wondering what the odd smell was. There was a whole slope planted in the stuff! I'll give it a try, as it's a nice looking plant and won't look too odd in our native landscape. Thanks for the tip.

Kathleen

I agree, Kathleen. It does look good in a native landscape and it does smell better to me than castor oil or a clump of narcissus.