Hi I'm Tricia, an organic gardener. I grow organically for a healthy and safe food
supply,
for a clean and sustainable environment,
for an enjoyable and rewarding experience.
Gophers can be a serious and frustrating pest and the first step is monitoring. To
make sure that you actually do have gophers and not moles, voles or ground
squirrels.
If you have gophers you'll see a distinctive crescent or horseshoe shaped
mound
with a plugged tunnel.
In rockier clay soil you may not see a distinctive mound but you will see the
hole that's been filled back in.
Once youve verified that you do have gophers
you can control with an integrated pest management system.
IPM starts with prevention
keep the borders of your garden weed free, gophers are a lot less likely to
travel in to your garden if there's no food on the way.
The next step is avoidance if you already have gophers in your yard
the way you can get them to not eat your plants
it's too lay down gopher wire at the bottom of your beds or
plant your plants within gopher baskets.
For trees
make sure that you only use the fifteen gallon tree basket
Unlike the gopher wire or the other baskets, this basket is designed
to break down and degrade
after just a couple years so that it doesn't girdle the tree roots.
Along with avoidance you want to suppress the population of gophers and the
easiest and most reliable way to do that is with trapping.
Trapping is most effective when you can find the main burrow
so get a stick or use a tool like this.
Starting at the freshest mound
you wanna probe eight to twelve inches from the side of the mound where the
plug is
the burrow will be located six to twelve inches deep
you'll notice a sudden drop about two inches when you hit the burrow.
So first you wanna open up the plug and I like doing that with this Hori Hori
weeder
and this is where you are going to put the trap.
This cinch trap is great for the opening insert the trap
six to eight inches into the tunnel
you can either plug the tunnel again or leave it open.
Where you're located the main borrow open a hole with the Hori Hori.
Where going to set two traps down in that burrow. I like these Victor easy set traps.
First I'm going to tie a string around the traps so that i can pull it out and check it.
The additional traps should be set facing opposite directions in the main burrow.
Check your traps in the morning and evening
if the traps have not been visited within forty-eight hours move the traps.
Make sure and attach these type of traps
to a stake
that way you can locate them and remove them easily.
In addition to trapping you can't put up barn owl nesting boxes.
Barn Owls can help reduce the population over time but they're not a quick fix
and will not a eradicate gophers from any one area.
If you have a large area and are willing to take the time, training a terrier to hunt
gophers is an effective control. If your gopher problem persists
IPM does take it to the next level but these control measures are usually not
organic so you have to make the decision how far you want to go to control the
gophers.
This gopher tool can be used
to apply natural poisons
deep inside the burrows.
Never apply natural or any other poisons to the surface of the soil
even the teeny tiniest little grain can kill a song bird.
Be aware that there's a good chance of secondary poisoning of an animal that
would
eat a poisoned gopher such as pets or birds of prey.
You can also fumigate with these gopher gases but university research shows that
they're not quite as effective
because the gophers will close up their tunnel to avoid the gas
but there's no secondary poisoning worries there.
Well i've told you what you can do to control your gophers.
and now I want to tell you what doesn't work according to UC davis ineffective controls
include: chewing gum,
laxatives, repellents of all kinds, plants like "gopher purge" and scare devices.
Once you've solved your gopher problems cleanup all the mounds and come back and
monitor to make sure that they haven't returned.
So get your gophers and grow organic for life!