If you are convinced they are gophers, I found a Sunset Magazine article that discusses how to deal with them.....but no joy with gopher repelling plants :-( The same plants that are often suggested to repel moles are suggested to repel gophers (euphorbia, castor bean, etc.) but there is no scientific evidence to support their effectiveness.

You could always hire Bill Murray.........and TNT seemed to work well :-))

If you are convinced they are gophers, I found a Sunset Magazine article that discusses how to deal with them.....but no joy with gopher repelling plants :-( The same plants that are often suggested to repel moles are suggested to repel gophers (euphorbia, castor bean, etc.) but there is no scientific evidence to support their effectiveness.

You could always hire Bill Murray.........and TNT seemed to work well :-))

Maybe Osteospermums too? Or other daisy-like plants that smell weedy and such.

My cats are about the best defense.


Josh

It's not a matter of disrupting the roots: the above ground parts are left completely alone while the underground roots are eaten in their entirety and the bottom part of the trunk is sharpened like a pencil. I find young apple trees, maples, roses etc lying on their sides, the roots gone and a large underground tunnel. Planting in wire baskets is successful but a pain, expensive and unsightly when your garden is more than an acre.

Josh

My strategies are to plant as many poisonous plants around edible plants as possible- daffodil bulbs, iris plants, euphorbs, etc. I put lava rock in bottoms and sides of all my planting holes. These did actually make a big difference in daylily losses. I lost several apples to voles, but found if I ran the garden hose for a long time under a tree under attack it would stop. I may try this year finding a fertilizer wand, metal tube with a hole in the end, with a hose attachment at the top, and try to flood runs underground with it. I am also going to get a lot of gravel or lava rock and spread it over my vegetable planting beds this year. It will make it a pain to dig but maybe I can grow there again. Last year the voles nipped off stems of 5 mature squash plants and many beans.

For awhile my GR dog was good at hunting and catching them but at nearly 15 and now deaf she isn't doing the job for me anymore. The cat is 19 and has been retired since he was 9 so I am on my own.

But, yes, no such thing as gopher proof plants.

Here in the Puget Sound area gophers are an endangered species. These are true gophers. What Californians call gophers don't exist here. Moles are very common and most people can't tell a mole mound from a gopher mound to save their lives. It's not all that straightforward, sometimes I'll be absolutely sure a mound is clearly one or the other, and then check for the vertical tunnel of a mole mound and discover I was wrong. Moles do not eat plant roots. Voles do, and are also very common, but rarely make mounds, just burrows. Rats also burrow and eat roots.

I do not know what you would have in Oregon. You could have either the burrowing marmots, or true gophers, or even something else. The OSU flier linked above mentions 'pocket gopher' which would be a true gopher similar to what we have up here. In practice, they'd be just about impossible to get rid of since they're so solitary. As soon as you killed one, another one would take over its territory. And I've found Scotch broom chewed off at the roots by gophers so I don't know that there's anything they won't chew on. Not enough to control the broom of course, like one plant in hundreds but still!

If you've got large tunnels, and large woody roots chewed entirely off, then you probably have the burrowing marmots like in California. Pocket gophers are small critters. I doubt they'd be able to handle something as large as your (presumably nursery-bought?) apple and maple trees. If you can fit your hand in the tunnel then it's a marmot.

We're all on the same forum, but the wildlife varies greatly between Washington and Oregon. Oregon is much warmer and drier, and with very different soils, which makes all the difference when you're talking about burrowing animals.

I am new to the area and do not have a lot of experience with gopher resistance. There are about a billion of them in my yard and surroundings pastures though. My cat has killed many but not nearly all. There are a few old plantings around the house. Rosemary, nicotinia with yellow flowers, a beautiful purple-blue flowered Hydrangea - not the type with big billowy flowers but smaller umbels. There are several ornamental birch that look good. An apple and japanese maple that don't look great. esp the apple. An extremely large and healthy calif. oak and a curly willow.

I've tried tons of Gopher Poison. I even poked holes in Potatoes (the gophers love Potatoes and steal ALL of my Potatoes, leaving me with NONE), and put the Gopher Poison inside the Potatoes.

I tried flooding the gopher holes, which works sometimes, but usually the water NEVER comes to the surface.

I've bought many of the Gopher Sounding Devices, which are COMPLETELY USELESS ... !!! I've stood there and watched my plants right next to the Gopher Sounding Device shaking, then disappear under the ground.

I've used Smoke Sticks, Traps, and even tried shooting them. I might have gotten lucky one time and got one ....

Somebody gave me an idea to try something different .... I've been burying many plant containers all around my garden. Have 53 containers buried now, including two Earth Boxes. Have planted seeds in 46 of those containers. Still have over 50 containers left to bury.

I've also put Juicy Fruit Gum and Rat Poison into around 100 gopher holes, which seems to be helping control the gophers, but they are still busy ....