Re: gophers

I agree-inmy experience cats are best. When I first started gardening, it
was drought like we are having now, and gophers came for miles to get any
nicely watered fresh roots. I lined wholegarden beds with chicken wire. The
gophers (I have seen this) would hop over the barrier and tunnel down the
other side. The problem with planting large plants is that they will outgrow
the barrier-so if you want to use a wire barrier, make sure it is large
enought to accomodate quite a bit of root growth.

GOOD LUCK!
If it's any consolation, I do think that once the drought is over the
gophers won't be so voracious in the garden.


on 9/1/02 4:11 PM, sals at sals@rain.org wrote:

> I tried to plant trees in wire basket but the wire girdles the trees and
> it will kill  them just like gophers.  Also what's to stop the gopher
> from just climbing in the raised bed and digging down?  I think cats are
> the best I have found and barn owls.  Build them a nest site they may
> hang around.   A pair of barn owls need two gophers or two rats every
> night .  I can't trap that good that long.  And if they have young
> thatıs 5 or 6 mice every night for each baby owl.  .
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-medit-plants@ucdavis.edu
> [o*@ucdavis.edu] On Behalf Of p.k.peirce@att.net
> Sent: Sunday, September 01, 2002 3:49 PM
> To: medit-plants@ucdavis.edu
> Subject: Re: gophers
> 
> 
> I am glad to hear confirmation of what I thought was so,
> that wire barriers are the best way to avoid losing a
> garden to gophers. Just one comment, and that is that I
> think that regular chicken wire has openings too large
> to stop the smallest gophers, so you need to use what
> they call "aviary wire." It looks the same, but the
> openings are a bit smaller. Hardware cloth, which has
> even smaller openings, should be fine too, but probably
> more expensive. And for individual plants, you can buy
> large or smaller individual "baskets" that come
> collapsed flat, ready to open up and use to line a hole.
> 
> There is a photo of the aviary wire lining of a bed I
> built for my dad in the Sunset Western Garden Problem
> Solver, on page 44.(I think they cropped the photo a bit
> too tight for it to be clear that the lining is in a
> raised bed built with a wooden frame around it. The
> large metal brackets are to hold the frame together.)
> 
> What we get in our small San Francisco backyard from
> time to time are, I think, moles. They make volcano-
> shaped mounds and do not seem to eat plants, but I am
> puzzled because they don't seem to make ridges between
> the mounds, which I thought moles always did. Someone
> once told me that there are moles that do not leave
> raised ridges between mounds, but couldn't tell me a
> name. Anyone know about these guys?
> 
> Pam Peirce,
> San Francisco, CA
>
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