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Gardening Blog - thebroadroom.net: Spring 2005 in the San Francisco Bay Area
Spring 2005 in the San Francisco Bay Area
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
at 5:49 PM (Pacific)
So...another year in the land of pocket gophers and deer.
I've yet to see a pocket gopher this year (I see plenty of their holes, of course). Before, you'd actually see them digging. grumble... I was so looking forward to trying out the pitchfork thing. Nothing else has worked more than once.
We planted some of our trees...inside a double layer of chicken wire. Knock wood. So far, so good. We have the persimmon, fig, and orange trees in, plus some regular trees that are supposed to drink an enormous amount of water (we live in a slide zone).
The plum tree is hanging in there. It's not producing a massive amount of plums yet but I figure, it's a relatively new tree. And even our established pear trees don't produce the same number of fruit each year.
The carpet roses are growing rapidly. If you want a rose-type bush that grows fast, by all means... I found a carpet rose shoot about four inches high a couple of years ago, and planted it in a corner of the yard. That same plant is now a yard high...while my camellias grew only a few inches during the same period.
All in all...I've rather accepted that we can't have a pretty front yard. Deer eat every flower, except daffodils. And once you plant anything, the gophers come and dig under it. People have rock gardens around here.
The back yard can be pretty. I am determined to cap at least one of the gophers this season...and a single gopher can destroy the entire yard. i.e. all that destruction you see is usually caused by only a few gophers. I did cap the big fat guy last year (using the Black Hole trap) and that's already put a noticeable dent in the digging.
Most of the flowers have to go in pots. A few plants, the gophers don't seem to like...I've listed them in previous posts. I haven't discovered anything new that they don't like (naturally enough since I've been putting new plants in pots around here).Labels: pocket gophers
 
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