The Secret to Controlling Gophers and more

I have been in business since 1970. I was asked for help with their gopher problem in my first year of business. In those days, I had just started and hadn’t developed the experience I have now. So I was eager to help and tried various ways to “Control” them. At that time, I was creating my own ways of doing things. The idea of a living soil was brewing in my head. How could the soil not be alive? I would ask myself.

I realize that the living soil controls not just ants but diseases, pests, and even gophers. In past articles, I explained how soil biology controls ants. In future articles, I will cover pests and diseases and how soil biology controls them.

Today, I will go over gophers. It should be stated right from the start that I do not recommend you use any poisons and killing only as a last resort. I have learned that the safest way to control gophers long-term is to provide for strong biology in the soil.

The first thing you can do is to protect your plants when planting. There are gopher baskets that you can put into the ground and then plant in, which will keep the gophers from eating the main part of the plant, which kills the plants.

Raised beds are an excellent way to protect your garden from gophers. You simply have to dig down 3 feet or so, then plane a 1/4 inch gopher wire along the bottom and both ends, coming up with the wire right up into the raised bed. You stable the gopher wire to the inside of the raised bed. You then fill in the soil with compost soil and some potting soil mix.

Learn to plant what gophers don’t like to eat. Many herbs and flowers are like this. You can plant white narcissus. This does kill them if they eat too much. You can plant medicinal plants. Here in CA, we can plant Kuripia, which is a native CA hybrid. The older it gets, the more toxin it gets to gophers. It uses very little water as it gets old, and you can plant in it.

You can use their sense of smell against them. While I don’t recommend using essential oils straight, you can buy many gopher, rabbits and many other type of animal or pest repellents that are made from them.

An easy one to use is Castor oil. You can buy organic castor oil from the gal. Then what you do is whenever you see a gopher mount, you know there is a gopher hole below it, what you do is clear the top off, then dig down a little bit to the tunnel opening, pour about 1/2 cup into the tunnel, and leave it open. The gopher will come along and get it all over him, and he won’t like it. You just have to keep doing it, and you will have fewer and fewer gophers over time.

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Thanks!
Andy Lopez, the Invisible Gardener