Re: gophers


I live in Sonoma county, CA, where the soil is sandy and the gophers are
ravenous and plentiful. I concur that wire baskets around the root zone are
the best deterrents. Gophers can tunnel under and around and chew off roots
outside the baskets, but the plants generally recover. At some of my
clients'  gardens everything gets planted in wire. Big pain in the butt, and
later when you want to move things around you're always running into wire
underground, but it's better than losing plants just when they get to good
size. I've tried trapping gophers, but you have to be really dedicated,
setting and checking traps every day, and it is unpleasant. There are always
more gophers, and you can't kill them all.
 I have a lot of gophers at my home garden also, and my vegetable beds are
raised and lined with wire, but I don't bother wiring most of my
ornamentals. There are just too many of them, so I reserve the wire for
things gophers especially love, like lilies  and roses, or rare plants that
are just too expensive or hard to find, that I don't want to gamble with.
But I have a secret weapon: killer cats. I have three Bengal cats, and they
are great hunters. They off one or two gophers a day, and eat them with
relish. It's  good natural food, and entertainment for the cats. I have a
huge garden, and generally lose only a few young plants a year to gophers.

Reeta
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