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Gardening Blog - thebroadroom.net: May 2005
Exam gloves for gardening
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
at 9:36 AM (Pacific)
I use these--those ubiquitous nitrile exam gloves--for transplanting stuff. You can slip a pair of leather gardening gloves over these if you're working with thorns...but the exam gloves alone are great for transplanting.
You don't have to throw them away right away; you can use them several times.
Oh yeah, I checked OSH. They didn't have codling moth traps at all...just a rather intriguing generic moth trap with two batteries and two cartridges. I checked their moth list but codling wasn't on it, so I passed.
As far as the pocket gophers...all they had were the usual traps and poisons, neither of which has worked for me consistently. They did however have a Grants castor oil spray, so I got that ($16).
The idea is to soak your yard with the spray (it attaches to your garden hose). The castor oil supposedly soaks into the ground and coats everything that the gophers eat. The gophers get indigestion and bugger off i.e. leave your yard.
shrugs It's definitely not as good as something that would kill the gophers, but I don't care. It's impossible to kill the number of gophers we have around here anyway. I'll be happy to get them out of here without poisoning the entire yard.Labels: pocket gophers
 
Pitchfork method doesn't work
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
Monday, May 30, 2005
at 10:22 AM (Pacific)
I tried out the pitchfork method on the pocket gophers yesterday. It doesn't work, if only because the gophers tend to dig under stationary objects, and their tunnels are never dug straight. If you ever dig up one of their tunnels, you'll see it's largely hairpin curves.
I have more ideas though...I'll be trying out some more things this season.
At least for the past couple of years, I haven't bothered planting anything in the ground. It's not worth it, unless it's something you know they won't eat (like roses) or unless you can dig a huge hole and put a double layer of chicken wire inside it--which is not guaranteed to work anyway.
Whatever I planted before that's still there, great. I'm just out of the phase of trying to figure out what they eat and what they don't.
They eat almost everything, particularly when you've just put it in the ground. i.e., if a plant can establish itself for a few years and get big, it's less tempting to the gophers.
Not that they won't ignore a plant for two years and then take it out. That has happened to me. In general though, size matters.
And, gophers tend to favor the edible...your herbs, vegetables, fruits, nasturtiums, alliums, etc. They don't seem to eat "stinky," tough herbs such as lavender, rosemary, or lemon verbena...I have huge versions of all of these, that have been dug around many times but left untouched.
They do eat chives, basil, parsley, mint and so forth, so you have to put these in containers or otherwise finagle a physical barrier.
Bulbs (except alliums) can go into the ground, so I have lots of irises, lilies and so forth. Roses and camellias...and jasmine, I think...can go into the ground, so I have plenty of these.
Our "nightshade" (one of those ubiquitous plants with purple flowers; it gets as big as a small tree if you let it) has also survived.
They don't seem to eat geraniums. Not 100% sure about it; I have some in the ground over the past few years that are still there.
Any kind of pretty flower...dahlias, snapdragons, petunias, pansies, alyssum, etc., they eat all that. Don't put any of those in the ground.
I've got a shade garden and a sun garden this year. The truly shady area has boxes of impatiens in it. I have an impatiens plant from last year; I'm doing some experimentation to see which plants come back every year, so I got a larger impatiens plant last year and it did come back.
I also mixed in some smaller impatiens, the 4" container size. I don't bother with the really small ones anymore. Since I can't plant them directly into the ground, they don't grow as well as they would have, so I start with larger plants.
In the part sun area, I have some perennials I'm trying out (in a pot of course): a carnation plant (which smells really good) and something called "bacopa" (a low, spreading plant with tiny purple flowers). I've got alliums in pots that have done well in part sun over the past few years.
In the sun garden, a few survivors of the gophers (jasmine, lavender, geraniums, "ruby slippers," a lone dianthus that somehow got missed, plus irises, calla lilies, chinese lilies, roses)--the rest in pots. So I've got lobelia, dahlias, zinnias, a mini petunia plant (perennial), a pink geranium, all in pots.
The time release fertilizers have worked well; I highly recommend these. Can't believe I used to hassle with liquid fertilizers.
I'm going to check out OSH soon. The codling moth traps were $10 a pop at Ace (and it says to replace them every 4 weeks). Too expensive.
I do have my Grants for Ants Stakes up in several places in the yard (these are highly effective in my experience), and I bought a new Victor non-toxic ant spray.
I had one of these last year and used it up; that one contained mint oil, this one has cedar oil. These are not effective in the "Raid" sense, in that they'll kill whatever ants you spray directly, but won't keep killing them. Since I use this spray outdoors, that's what I want anyway. I want to kill whatever ants are all over the place, but use the Grants stakes to control future infestations.Labels: pocket gophers
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
Old blog is here.
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
at 11:08 AM (Pacific)
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