Well, its happened again. There’s a gopher (pocket gopher) in the veggie garden.
We have raised beds (4’ x 8’ x 12" wood) precisely for this problem. We put chicken wire on the bottom of the beds so gophers can’t tunnel in. Which has usually worked. Except once 4 years ago when a gopher wised up and somehow jumped into all four of our beds, killing every tomato plant. We had no tomatoes that year (sob!).
Well, its happening again: we now have eight raised beds, still 4’ x 8’ x 12" with chicken wire at the bottom. And my spouse tells me there’s a gopher in the bean plants, munching away.
So: how do I kill this thing?
Last time, we tried just digging up and pounding things into the bed we thought the gopher was in. Several times. Then he’d show up in another bed. He was invincible.
This time, MrsSqueegee is poking shards of broken glass bottles into the roots of the plants, hoping he’ll get discouraged (or die of wounds, I can only hope).
My thought is to use chemical warfare: declare a given bed lost if the gopher is in it, and sprinkle a bunch of Diazanon insecticide in it and water the bed. Diazanon will reputedly kill anything. After which we’d need to dig out all the dirt and replace it next year, pffht.
Ideas? I do NOT want to lose all my tomatoes again, darnit!
Well, thanks, I didn’t see that thread. My problem seems a little more specialized, since the little rodent is demonstrably inside a 4’ x 8’ x 12" area. Also, I’m seeing a dearth of useful suggestions in that thread. Though maybe I’ll use Crafter_Man’s suggestion from that thread and machine gun the garden, then light it with gasoline. Nuke them from orbit, as it were.
Bye, veggies: the teeming millions were too stoopid.
If it’s getting in from the outside, put a hot wire aroud the top. You can turn it off when you want to work on the beds but the critter will get zapped if he touches it.
Huh. that’s actually an excellent suggestion. I’m not sure if its practical – the garden is about 50’ from any outlet, but maybe that could work. Hmmm.
More to the point, I hadn’t considered a simple barrier (which the electric fence is, essentially). Maybe I could go buy a few rolls of chicken wire, and put that loosely over the top of the beds. I’m going to think about that.
Hi, Mangetout. I’ve used gopher bait extensively in my lawn area for years, with pretty good success. The problem here is you need to find the tunnel and inject the bait into it. Unfortunately, the soil in the raised beds is fairly loose and the tunnels collapse repeatedly, so this is difficult at best. Also, at least in the past, the gopher seems to stay in a bed just long enough to eat all the roots on the veggies, and then moves on. This is why I’m thinking of pretty extreme measures: time is short, and if the last time is a guide, my veggies will be toast in a matter of days.
I guess I was unclear – I was proposing just declaring a bed with a gopher in it a total loss before poison-drenching that one bed, in the hope that the remaining beds (there are eight) would be spared once that gopher was dead.
That is not a problem. I have an electric fence for my hogs. The fencer is mounted high up on my shed, and the electric wire runs to a pole I have sticking up from the hog pen then down to the fence. That way it’s high enough to walk under. You only need one wire to the fence, as the ground makes the other connection. Most fencers have a rating in miles of fence. If gophers and smilar animals are your only problem, a small charger will work fine, and they’re cheap to run.
I was going to tell you that there is no fire danger if the fencer is installed correctly, but I did a quick google to be sure. Evidently there is a small chance of a fire - if lightning strikes the fence, it could cause electricity to flow through the building, possibly starting a fire somehow. I have no idea how this could happen, as the fencer has to be grounded to work properly. If you’re worried about it, run a heavy duty extension cord to a box up on something fire-proof 10’ away from the building and install the fencer there (according to manufacturer’s instructions).
squeegee - I’ve run a hotwire fence through weeds to fence in my horses and there’s no trouble. If you don’t have a good connection to your insulated wire (which is how I’d do it - box in the shed or house and an insulated wire to your beds, then a hotwire surrounding each bed) you might get some very minimal arcing, but not much, and if your connections are solid you don’t get that.
Well, I’m not particularly worried about lightning strikes, it doesn’t really rain here at all this time of year (hence the worries about fire in the first place); there’s a huge nearby oak that would be a better lightning magnet in any case.
In that case, be sure to ground the fencer as the manufacturer instructs. Mine said to use 3 ground rods, but I only used one. I can get away with it, as up here the ground is never dry more than a few inches deep. If you’re on ledge, you may have trouble getting the ground rods in.
You know, I think as a quick defensive measure, I may just find some 24" or 30" chicken wire, and staple it to the beds’ vertical sides, as a small perimeter fence. Gophers can only climb so high.
This has the additional bonus of possibly trapping the gopher in one of the beds, and starving him in*. Siege warfare has its pleasures.
*seriously, I’m not excited about being cruel to the little rat. Given a choice, I’d exterminate him humanely.