|
|
Gardening Blog (Archive): July 2004
A gardening blog, generally organic.
Profile
| Current Blog
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Okay...I waited a few days. Today there's a fresh gopher hole so I set the trap again.
I haven't gotten the Juicy Fruit gum yet but I did wash out the trap as the gentleman suggested.
I realize that trapping gophers requires something of a hunter's instinct. I've never hunted anything before (nor fished, I lead a dull life *g*) but it did cross my mind to wait until there was a truly fresh hole that had been plugged, but not backfilled yet.
Also, I think I was peeking at the trap too early before. When I did catch the gopher, I had not checked the trap in days (didn't bother, figured I wouldn't catch anything anyway). So this time I'll wait until tomorrow to inspect it.
--J.
posted by TheBroadroom.Net at 3:27 PM (Pacific)
Sunday, July 18, 2004
Anyhow we did do some flower boxes and pots, as I say. My daughter picked out the flowers.
Right now the yard is shaping up, gophers or no gophers. We do have a plum tree (knock wood). The gophers leave the pear and apple trees alone actually. Once the tree becomes big enough, they don't kill it.
Now I've read on the Net that gophers can take out mature apple trees and I don't doubt it. I think our gophers are just too spoiled to do all that work.
I would never, ever, put a fruit tree right into the ground again. Back then I was naive. I still thought there just might be something that gophers don't eat.
I will post here if baiting the traps with Juicy Fruit gum works, or works better than just putting the traps into the ground. I'm also considering buying more traps. I have only one.
--J.
posted by TheBroadroom.Net at 10:24 PM (Pacific)
Wa'...I'm tired.
We did some garden work this weekend. Since we can't plant flowers into the ground, we had to use large planters and boxes.
I'm still at square one with the pocket gophers. I just did a search to see if anyone's figured out anything new to get rid of them.
One guy said he used regular gopher traps, but baited them with Juicy Fruit gum (still in its foil wrapper). Now I have not tried that. I have tried the gum itself...yup, I read--like everyone else--that you can kill gophers with Juicy Fruit gum (it doesn't work). But baiting a trap with it, now there's a thought.
Another guy did the "water your lawn with castor oil" thing...I've read that elsewhere too. Hm. It just doesn't sound as if it would work.
Here's a link to these posts: You've got gohers? I've got my solution.
I always have to nod whenever I do these searches. People who've never had pocket gophers, have no conception what kind of destruction they cause and how difficult they are to get rid of. I read somewhere that the U.S. military pumps gas into their holes and ignites it, to get rid of them.
They're far worse than deer. Deer only eat flowers. If you make a fence high enough (it has to be quite high since deer jump), you can have all the flowers you please.
Plus, if you have fruit trees, deer are great at cleaning up all the small, malformed and worm-infested fruit. They're not picky and they eat up everything nice and clean.
Gophers on the other hand, destroy almost anything you plant into the ground. Try having a garden or yard without planting anything--including grass--into the ground.
There are at least three resident gophers out there; I know exactly where each one is. I'm going to try the Juicy Fruit bait in my Black Hole trap (I tried one of the McAbee traps, they're next to impossible for me to set).
--J.
posted by TheBroadroom.Net at 10:01 PM (Pacific)
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Hmmm...it's five o'clock here and I'm drinking coffee. :)
When we bought this house, the yard was a complete jungle...it had been a rental for the past twenty-odd years or so, no one took care of the yard.
I remember this enormous yucca plant...easily six feet in diameter...a Christmas tree (yup, a tree that looked exactly like a Christmas tree)...lots of odd, big, ugly bushes, etc.
So the first couple of years consisted of digging out and throwing away all of the stuff.
There were copious amounts of "surprise lilies." Or, I forget what they're called? The flowers themselves are quite pretty, they're pink lilies. But they look like crap the better part of the year...the foliage dies and you get lots of dried up foliage all over the place, before the "surprise lily" shows up for about a week and then fades.
Anyhow. After I had my second kid, I tried planting stuff...and most of it got destroyed by the pocket gophers.
It is rather more interesting, what they don't eat. I tried Googling it, wondering if others had shared their gopher experience, but most of what I found centered on the methods that people have tried to get rid of them (largely unsuccessful btw). Not so much on what they eat or don't eat.
They don't eat roses. Any kind of roses. They've dug and dug and dug all around my roses but never killed them.
They don't seem to eat lemon balm. :) They ate everything else in my herb bed, except the lemon balm, over the past two years. It's a good bet they don't eat it.
They don't eat lavender. They do dig around it, and they destroyed part of my lavender plant simply by digging, but they don't eat it.
They don't eat "ruby slippers." That's a big daisy plant, dark pink petals with a yellow eye.
They don't eat Chinese trumpet lilies or irises.
They don't eat camellias. I have two of them out there (gawd, do they grow slowly...I bought small ones and they're still small after a couple of years).
I think they would have eaten my plum tree, but they didn't discover it until it was already in the ground for a few years. Now they've dug all around it but I think the roots are too big to eat (knock wood).
They don't eat geraniums.
They haven't eaten my jasmine but then, I suspect they didn't find it until it was too mature to eat easily.
Well that's about the extent of my garden at present. I still have some things in pots--lemon and orange trees, fig and persimmon trees, and all of our alliums. They do eat alliums.
You can sort of grow alliums in pots btw but they tend to expand. I had to transplant one of them today...it's several plants stuck together. It expanded out so much it broke the plastic pot so I put it (the root ball was heavy) into a bigger pot today.
Also I'm trying out a time-release fertilizer called Once. Yep--Once. You are to sprinkle this (it's dry, tiny beads) around your roses and flowering plants, every six months.
I did all the roses--we have ten of them--plus the camellias, this purple flowering plant I bought that's growing even slower than the camellias, the lavender and the ruby slippers (you're not supposed to use it around anything edible).
The plums came out good, after all...I thought they were sour. It's not that--they just take forever to truly ripen. They're actually supposed to be purple plums but they either fall off the tree or else we eat them while they're still red...they get sweet while red.
I highly recommend growing plums in California. Nothing seems to want to eat them...they don't get worms. We've had this tree at most three years...trying to remember, I suppose I could go back and try to figure it out...and it's got 20 good plums on it now, more than half of them large.
I didn't get to order the coddling moth traps. :( It's too late now, the pears and apples are already eating-ripe. I am going to try it next year though, along with the fertilizer spikes for fruit trees.
I have it in mind to try out more lilies. It's right now--mid-July--that we'll need more flowers in the yard. One of the roses has just finished flowering profusely, the rest is just here and there (and the alliums).
It would be so nice to have the borders of the yard covered with lilies about this time. The lilies are supposed to grow to be 3 or 4 feet in height. They are expensive, but it is not likely that the gophers eat them, so it's well worth trying.
That, and I do want some spring bulbs. There are some odd daffodils around the yard, and the irises, but little else.
Next year I will also try to finagle a way to grow tomatoes. We have one enormous planter, maybe I'll try using that.
--J.
posted by TheBroadroom.Net at 4:59 PM (Pacific)
Wednesday, July 14, 2004
Bleh...no more gophers as of yet.
Maybe all I got was the biggest, fattest, dumbest of the lot. I mean there was a big gopher who used to blithely dig right in front of your face, and that's the one I think I got, because I don't see him around anymore.
I tried setting the trap again but it just got backfilled. And, there are gophers underneath the deck that are too close to the deck to trap...any large, stationary object in your yard will have gophers under it, if you have gophers.
It is probably a matter of waiting for them to emerge...which they will. The gopher habit (I read this on the Net) is to dig long, long tunnels...usually cutting across several yards. They dig several tunnels and connect them all together in this enormous gopher tunnel system.
That means they still have to dig more across the yard, so I'll set the trap then.
I feel very patient. Getting a single gopher has already dented their ongoing destruction of the yard.
--J.
posted by TheBroadroom.Net at 5:43 PM (Pacific)
Sunday, July 11, 2004
Yes! yes! yes! yes! Pour me a drink, for I return triumphant.
I finally trapped my first pocket gopher.
I used a trap called The Black Hole.
Actually I've had it for years...I tried it a few times when I first got it (it's about ten bucks at Home Depot), nothing happened, I put it aside and lost track of it for a while.
Then recently, for the hell of it, I decided to try it again.
The pocket gophers here are...astoundingly arrogant. They'll pop right out of their holes, see you standing right there, and then proceed to go about their business.
Which is digging. That's all they do. They dig and they eat. They ate all of my flowers and all of my herbs and all of my vegetables. I can't plant any of these in the ground. They killed a fig tree I had in the ground for two years.
The digging, means you can't have a lawn. The grass dies wherever they dig...which is all over the yard. Plus you get a yard full of holes, and mounds of dirt that turn into mud whenever it rains.
Anyhow...you have to wear gloves when setting the trap. Wipe some dirt over the gloves to get rid of any human smell...make sure you haven't touched the trap with your bare hands (you can "clean" the outside of the trap with dirt also).
The gopher was digging the same hole I put the trap in. Like I say, they're not even scared. I stuck the trap in the hole...use a trowel to widen the hole slightly, the trap is pretty wide. Once it's in, cover it with a bucket to keep out the light.
I must have trapped it right away because there were a bunch of ants on the outside of the trap...I figured there must have been something on the trap, I couldn't believe that I'd actually gotten any of these destructive creatures.
But sure enough--seeing is believing.
I looked around for other fresh holes but, there weren't any as fresh as that...I'm going to try it again tomorrow.
--J.
posted by TheBroadroom.Net at 5:55 PM (Pacific)
Friday, July 09, 2004
One thing I've noticed...you have to fertilize certain kinds of fruit trees, otherwise the fruit comes out sour.
I didn't do that this year...didn't think it made a difference...but it does.
It doesn't seem to matter with pear trees, but our apples and plums are noticeably sourer this year.
Last year I used those fertilizer spikes...I forget the brand...you drive the spikes into the ground, around the tree. For bigger trees, use more spikes.
--J.
posted by TheBroadroom.Net at 1:09 PM (Pacific)
|
