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Gardening Blog - thebroadroom.net: June 2007
Pocket gophers, saga continues
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
Sunday, June 03, 2007
at 6:56 PM (Pacific)
So...did some gardening today. It's next to impossible to have a garden with the pocket gophers; yet, year by year, there are plants they don't eat. If the plants survive another year, they get bigger and better. Eventually you do have a garden, even if it can't be the garden you envisioned before you found out about the pocket gophers.
Here is a list of what's there, that the gophers have never eaten, in the past ten years or so:
- Roses...regular roses and carpet roses. The pocket gophers have never eaten a rose plant, even a small one. I planted a carpet rose sucker that was four inches tall, now it's about a yard high; no gophers.
- Irises...the regular kind, and something called "butterfly iris."
- Lilies...calla lilies and a plain white trumpet-shaped lily. We also have some of those "magic lilies," the kind that do nothing most of the year, then suddenly shoot up and flower, really nice pink trumpet-shaped lilies.
- Geraniums. I've had some scarlet ones in the ground for years.
- Jasmine. I have a jasmine vine they don't seem to eat. It's not growing vigorously though, so I don't know if they're gnawing at it.
- Lemon verbena.
- Lavender. They seem to really hate this. My lavender plant has created three new lavender plants and they haven't eaten any of them.
That's about it. I have some camellias, the gophers haven't killed them, but they hardly seem to grow at all. I don't know if that's gopher-related or the plants themselves aren't good.
I have a nightshade plant they don't seem to want to eat, it's leggy though.
As you can see, I haven't tried introducing anything new in a long time. It just got to be expensive, and frustrating, having "them" destroy seemingly everything you put into the ground.
I may think in terms of planting more lavender, more geraniums, maybe some rosemary? I can't see them liking rosemary. They do eat mint and sage though, and other herbs you don't think they would like.
Anyway--so there is life after gophers. Unless you're an intrepid trapper, you can't kill them. None of the other methods they sell you work...the gopher gasser, the poison pellets, the noise machines. All in my experience, a waste of money and time. You have to either trap them, or else find a way to physically block them.
As far as physically blocking them, the best and most obvious way is to get hold of a lot of large pots. The bigger the better, because you have to plant stuff in them that would normally go in the ground.
Another thought...expensive...would be to cover at least part of the ground with concrete. Preferably going several feet inside the perimeter of your property. Not sure if it is actually necessary to cover the entire garden with concrete (or some other barrier they can't dig through).
I'll post back here if I try the lavender and geraniums...might look at other "stinky perennials" and try some out as well.Labels: pocket gophers
 
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