Tag: gophers

Posted on by Josh

A few days ago, I decided to get serious and learn about gophers. I read up on their habits. I even dug up about 30 feet of one gopher tunnel just to get familiar with it.

We discovered that if you unplug a gopher hole, the gopher will come back along to plug it back up, sometimes even within a half hour after you opened it. After they plug it back up, you can dig out the plug, which is usually 4-6 inches thick, and they will come back and plug it again. You can play this game over and over several times a day on the same hole. Using that game, we were able to nab a gopher with the pellet gun today while it was trying to replug an opening. Heather also bought a Gopher Hawk trap this afternoon, and by this evening it had caught a gopher. That’s two gophers in one day! We have reset the Gopher Hawk in another gopher tunnel system.  Now that I know how their tunnel systems are laid out and that I can keep reopening their holes and wait for them to replug them as a way of verifying that we’re dealing with an actively occupied tunnel system, I think we will get good at trapping gophers. If we can trap them while they’re in our lawn, then they should never be able to get all the way to the garden.

We’re feeling confident. We’ll see if it lasts.

Posted on by Josh

Alden managed to harvest some potatoes that were growing over by the shed he was taking down. 🙂

It looks like a deer busted through the garden netting a couple nights ago. Thankfully, the only plant damage was a small amount of beans and kale. Heather and I stitched the netting back together and reattached it to the T-posts.

The impact of the gopher on our garden has been horrible this year. A tomato plant was taken out this week, and the dry beans have been about 50% devoured. It looks like the gopher is also feeding on the roots of the plum and pear trees.

I bought Heather a bunch of garlic for her birthday. I picked a ten-foot-long spot in the middle of row 4 in the garden, dug out a few inches of soil, and lined it with some chicken wire we had lying around and hardware cloth we got from ReStore. We planted about 120 garlic cloves there. Heather also planted a similar amount in the mushroom area. Both of those spots are Siberian hard neck garlic. I also bought her four heads of Music hard neck garlic that she will plan in front of the house, inside the French drain perimeter. We’ll see what happens. We feel like the threats against our garden are so serious that we’re not sure what the future will hold.

On the bright side, I guess: while digging the row in the garden to prepare for garlic planting, I came across an underground pile of potatoes that had been cached by the gopher. They came spilling out when I hit the spot with my shovel. I’m glad we were able to stumble across those potatoes, but it’s maddening what the gopher has done.

Posted on by Josh

We have a gopher that just can’t resist bok choy. It took out the last of the bok choy from below yesterday and today. Luckily, the plants were left, and they crisped up in the fridge. We’re having Chinese food again tonight. I seeded some more bok choy in the place of the “harvested” ones.

Some Chinese brocolli sprouted. I reseeded the rest.

I reseeded some green beans once again. Tough going on green beans this year.

I transplanted an evil olive tomato.

Posted on by Heather

Gophers ate my garlic. A lot of it. Maybe it was one lone gopher, maybe it was an underground army of gophers. I don’t know, but I do know that I was planning on a massive garlic harvest this year, and that dream is now writhing on the ground like a half-dead burrito.

Over the past few months I have watched gophers systematically take down bulb after bulb in my precious garlic patch, taking out half of my elephant garlic, half of my hard neck garlic and half of my soft neck garlic.

Gophers are extremely hard to exterminate with a pellet gun–I’ve tried. They only pop up for a few seconds before heading back down. It’s really a game of crazy luck to be able to see a gopher and have time to open the window, load and aim before the furry garlic theif goes back down. I’ve done it once in my lifetime, and I earned the respect of everyone that my husband told the story to. “The day Heather shot a gopher from the kitchen window.” I faked modesty whenever he told the story, but I was dang proud and still am.

This morning I looked out the window and noticed two more stalks of my elephant garlic were sideways. I went out to survey the damage, when I noticed a burrito-sized animal writhing a few inches away from a freshly dug hole near the elephant garlic.

It was a partially-alive gopher–with an aching belly full of my garlic, no doubt. I poked it with the fallen green stems left over from its elephant garlic bulb feast. It continued to squirm. It was awful. I felt bad for its suffering, but still had time to deliver this powerful, embarrassingly loud speach, that hopefully struck fear and dread into the hearts of nearby sub-earth dwellers (and unfortunately, a few people walking by):

“YOU SHOULD NOT EAT MY GARLIC. THAT IS NOT A NICE THING TO DO. THIS IS MY GARLIC AND I DON’T WANT TO SHARE IT. YOU ATE SO MUCH, AND THAT IS PROBABLY WHY THIS TERRIBLE THING IS HAPPENING TO YOU. DO NOT EAT MY GARLIC.”

And so, I publicly issue this warning to all sub-earth dwellers: Let the words of my impassioned, bold speech echo in your ears, and share these words with your fellow ground dwellers, your children and your children’s friends, since you probably won’t live long enough to meet your grandchildren.

Respectfully,

The Owner of the Garlic