Anyone know if they are toxic to gophers? :)

One could only wish!!!!! I don't think anything is toxic to gophers,including the poison they sell for that reason.

Gophers,snails and slugs,3 of the things i hate in my gardens.Although snails and slugs i can control,but gophers,we have tried everything out there to get rid of them,nothing works!! Although some years are worse than others.
Kathi

Get a roll of chicken wire and some wire cutters and make little gopher baskets for all your plants (much cheaper doing it this way rather than buying the premade gopher baskets). It is kind of a pain but worth it to protect things that are either expensive or cherished. They aren't too difficult to make once you get the hang of it. Just like wrapping a present but with a material slightly more difficult to deal with than wrapping paper.

They may still nibble on roots that grow out of the wire but it protects the main stem from being yanked under ground and severed.

I had a gopher attack the other day. It destroyed an annual lupine that I didn't protect and then tunneled over to a large Nicotiana that had chicken wire protection. It tunneled right to the base of the plant and then stopped.

And poppies have fat juicy roots so I would imagine the gophers love them.

after years of experience fending off the @^* gophers, i no longer use chicken wire beneath my plants because it rusts away in a few years. hardware cloth is what i use now. yes it is very hard to work with but it seems to last forever.
when a plant suddenly declines because it's chicken wire has rusted out, IF it has survived the gopher attack, it means it has to be dug up and re-planted with new wire so why not use the tougher hardware cloth in the first place?
min

I just got a gopher hole right in the middle of the main part of my flagstone path a week before I am on the garden tour and after I just spent months leveling the flagstone. I am gophericidal right about now. He has already sprung two traps, so I will have to dig up all kinds of plants to get to his tunnel. If any plant poisoned gophers I would have it everywhere. They eat oleander, for crying out loud. I hate them.
Renee

They love regular Ca poppies, eschscholzia californica, that is often how I tell where a new gopher is, when I see a wilted poppy.

My theory with some suceptible plants from seeds is to plant extra, so there is enough if they get attacked. When I see damage, I set a trap, the cinch traps work the best for me. When I see a mound, I am usually in the middle of another garden task, but I drop everything and set the traps, because the longer you wait, the harder to find the freshest mound.

I have planted many fruit trees and my most prized plants in the bought cages, but it is so much more digging and effort to get those cages in deep and I have read that some people say they stunt plants. I think you have to be very careful to make sure the cage is filled with soil, especially the corners and around the rootball, and underneath.

On my to do list is raised beds lined with hardware cloth for veggies.

Thanks for the replies! I do use the chicken wire method, only because there are no affordable galvanized wire sheets around here. Chicken wire is only a few cents, so I don't mind digging it up every year. I have to turn the soil anyway since it's poor. :)

@elvie: California poppies are much less toxic than papaver somniferum (opium poppies), which is why I asked. I wanted to weave them in with my other flowers and garlic to keep the buggers away.

There are hundreds of pocket gophers in my yard, you have to be careful where you step or you could break your neck falling into a hole! lol!

If you really have a gopher problem planting more will just bring more of them to your property. I grow just about everything I plan to eat in raised beds with hardware cloth bottoms.

The last year I planted in-ground I planted 200 garlic and not one survived. Also, planted two 4' wide, 12' long beds of potatoes that year and got 5 spuds the size of egg yolks for my trouble.

I have had 6' tall rhododendrons killed by gophers eating their roots. There were very clear teeth marks at the base of their trunks. Of course, all the fruit trees I planted my first year were eaten to death, too.

In Del Norte and Humboldt Counties there are gophers which are called "Boomers." They are more like prairie dogs--as large as a large breed newborn puppy (think rotweiler. ) You can't win that battle without a lot of wire.

And, yes, they do love opium poppies.

Thanks still kris. The have no touched my garlic, but my 'lawn' is basically a big brown field of dead grass. It's why I plant my veggies in wire baskets.

We have tried everything to get rid of the gophers. Poison, gas, cats, flooding, smashing with a shovel.

The main problem is that the earth on our property is hard as a ROCK. It's impossible to probe, even after it's soaked with water, so we don't know where to put traps. We need a pick just to soften the dirt enough to plant things. I have no idea how the gophers are getting through! :)

Where I live in Encinitas, California, it seems we have "junkie gophers". Not only do they eat the root of papaver somniferum, they will devour the entire plant, flowers and seed capsules. They even come out into the open to chew on a plant that's fallen over. They'll chew through plastic and redwood to get to these plants. This year was the worst. The latex is raw opium, for cryin' out loud, and my gophers are addicted to the stuff. The only thing you can so is plant them in a raised garden which has been lined with hardcloth.

Where I used to live for 33 years was gopher heaven!

Thankfully, as I was starting to get into vege gardening, I went to a talk from "The gopher guy"

Apparently, rodents can get through any opening the size of their head! So chicken wire might work for a gopher (probably not), but not for a vole. Same goes for mice and rats!

I've been using sound emitters for years! It takes a couple of weeks for the critters to realize that annoying noise isn't going to go away, then only a visit every once in awhile.

I used to buy the ones from the big box stores, but they were expensive and you had to buy batteries!

Harbor Freight has solar ones for about $10 each, or you can find them online.

We moved into town where everyone is very into their yards and told a few neighbors about them and now the neighborhood is pretty much gopher free!