Grrrrrr....... Gophers!

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Pocket Gophers have been getting under my skin in a big way this spring!  They are gnawing their burrows through some of my vegetable garden beds, and escaping all our best attempts to dissuade or trap them.  They have been bold too, popping up out of their holes in broad daylight to look around for more crops to consume, and absolutely torturing our indoor cats who are now on constant “gopher watch”.  One by one over the past 2 weeks, my biggest chard plants have gone “down the hatch” as they cut and drag them into their burrows, sometimes right before our eyes (see video below).  My best watermelon starts are gone now too!  And I find sawed-off, wilted leaves and stems lying on the surface, with a gopher tunnel right under them.  Grrrrrrr!

 

 

"Gopher Watchcats" Eva and Tootsie

But as I always say, the best way to outsmart any kind of “varmit” is to get to know them, so here goes:  Botta’s Pocket Gophers are the species we have here in Arivaca.  They dig primarily with their teeth, which are large and with a thicker layer of enamel than claw-digging gophers, so they can cut through much tougher soils, They spend 90% of their time down inside their burrows, where they can have chambers as deep as 5 ft for nesting and food storage, multiple tunnels close to the surface for feeding on plant roots (and dragging whole plants down), and shorter side tunnels for disposal of excavated soil.  They also ingeniously disguise their tunnel entries by pushing the excavations up from beneath to make the hole flush with the surrounding soil.  A male Pocket Gopher can defend a network of tunnels of over 5,000 square feet, and a female can defend over 3,000 sq. ft.   With this kind of “highway system”, no wonder it’s so hard to find the right hole to even try putting a dissuader or trap in!

 

When we first moved into our place, the lawn was pretty lush, and that’s where all their tunneling seemed to be happening.  And at that time, I didn’t much care because they’re kind of a cute little animal, don’t you agree?  But since we’re not into using the shared Arivaca town water to have a green lawn, it’s pretty brown now all year except for when there’s good monsoon rains.  However, now I understand why the gophers abandoned the lawn and chose instead to invade our lush vegetable beds. They have invaded the Arivaca Dancehall flowerbeds also.  Double grrrrrr!

 

Bye bye chard

So far, we’ve tried putting solar-powered “sonic beepers” and Dawn dish soap in their entry holes as dissuaders, and both worked at first but not any more.  Lethal spring traps, which I’d rather not resort to, worked a couple times in past years at our home garden but not anymore. Thankfully, our raised veggie beds that are made from steel stock tanks have not been disturbed (knock on wood), so now I’m considering using that concept to adapt our concrete block-lined raised bed garden.  This will involve excavating all the soil and then installing a welded wire fence panel with a ¼” grid at the bottom of the bed, before re-filling the soil and planting new crops.  But holy mostacholey that’s gonna be a lot of work!  And still leaves the gophers at the dancehall gardens with a “free ride”.   

 Cute little varmits, but so very destructive!

 

So….if you have any tried and true solutions for gophers, please send me an email at ArivacaDancehall@gmail.com.  Thanks!

 

For more info on the biology and life of the Botta’s Pocket Gopher, visit https://www.desertmuseum.org or Wikipedia.

 

Photo credits:

  • Gopher closeup: Chuck Abbe, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license
  • Gopher Watchcats by Emily Bishton
  • Gopher videos by Emily Bishton


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