OK, this probably belongs on “Fine Gardening” but I’ve noticed a lot of gardening threads here lately.
I’ve built 6 raised beds, 2’x6′. Bought the plants today and hope to plant in the next 2 days. There is a resident Gopher (groundhog) that has a burrow in my railroad tie retaining wall. He/she or its ancestors has been in my yard since I bought the place in ’91. Do I need to fence these beds, never had a problem with pumpkins and tomatoes in back gardens from this critter before.
Thanks
Kevin
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Replies
If you're going to live with them critters, there is one way to keep 'em out of your veg.
There's a toned down version of an electric fence that you can find at pet/feed stores. It's got a little 110 transformer, a ground rod, and about 10 fiberglass stakes to run the wire around--you can make your own little perimeter.
The job I had this summer at the beach--we camped on site and the critters, coons, were getting into our stuff (and waking me up!)
We laughed when our other carp buddy said he had al ittle electric fence to bring out next time. But I'll be damned if that thing didn't do the trick.
I woke up once to hear a 'NICK!" and some scurrying around in the gravel. They didn't get in there again. Got them bastards.
For God's sake just get rid of the critter. There are enough of them elsewhere that you won't be threatening the species. Oh, sorry, I'm now going to be victimized by PETA. I take it back.
I'm not sure he'll do damage. I'm a "wait and see" guy.
try C4, I saw it in a movie, the gopher lived !"Hey Whitey, Where's your hat? "what SG wrote.
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You can wait and see, or you can be pro-active; that's pretty much it. If you haven't fenced the bottom side of your beds, they can get in from underneath, too. I like the electric fence idea, though. A good *zap* can cure some problems very quickly, or so i've found with dogs and cats.
If you kill the animal per BARMIL's advice, it's most likely that another will move in to assume that territory.
The reason I'd wait and see is that he has not bothered my garden in the past. I'll be planting a much more extensive garden this year, and the vegetable buffett may be to much for him to resist. I may try to trap him and relocate.
When I built my shed, I put wire all around perimeter like a bed ruffle, with it flaring out at bottom. No animals burrowing under since built 5-6 years ago. Maybe I'll do that with the beds also, or just flip them, install chicken wire ( or hardware cloth) and start over.
Planting them this weekend.
You can relocate him, but it may not solve the issue of another one moving into that territory. Nature abhors a vacuum. We're facing a potential feral rabbit population at the Community Garden i'm cheerleading this year. I'm agitating to bury rabbit wire a foot deep around the base of the chain link, which will be for the two-legged marauders.I remember reading that Scott and Helen Nearing built a stone wall, buried some ungodly depth, to be sure of keeping critters out. Sulfur is another trick. We had one in our raised beds grab a couple squash plants, tunneling up from below so the mutts couldn't get him, the wisearse. We set off a sulfur bomb of some sort to make the burrow smell bad - it was my mate's project so i forget the particulars - and our visitor decided to stick to sagebrush.
Edited 5/6/2009 7:42 pm by splintergroupie
There is a gopher killing tool out there that works great and is safe for your pets and birds.
What is is a a 1/2"Tee shaped rod/pipe that has a hollow tube in which the poison goes through. Just probe the area untill you find the tunnel. You will know because theere will be resistance in the soil until you fins the hole and it will easily fall though. Just back it up an inch and rotate the lever on the top and the door will open on the end at the bottom of the hole. It deposts the poison inside the hole. close the lever and pull it out. No spills in the gareden or flowere bed.
Use the round seed poison, like milo , not long grain. They tend to clog
here the tool.
http://www.drpower.com/prdSell.aspx?p1Name=PestControls&Name=GopherTool
Poison is a poor option. If another animal gets hold of the gopher, it can also be poisoned. Placing poison in an animal means you've made mobile poison. Not to mention that causing an animal an agonizing death is reprehensible.
trapped a racoon , drove the little darlin all over Michigan and Indiana trying to find a spot with lots of woods with no homes nearby,, took me two hours of driving, got home all happy and high up the food chain 3 days later..........another racoon showed up, but this one had an attitude and tore the trap up so bad I needed cutters to let it out.
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Then there's always the joy of catching a skunk instead of the target animal, or the crochety next-door-lady's "Miss Kitty". Trapped a few "feral" cats that turned out to belong to somewhere that didn't put out Friskies Buffet like we did. <G>
we got skunk too just never see 'em but they are no problem here, maybe it's the dogs ??.
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After being caught flat-footed one night, i keep both a skunk deodorizer spray and tomato juice on hand. The present dog is going to get a skunking, i can tell...i hear her tear out, barking...then a whiff of Pepe. So far, so good, but it's only a matter of time! I got my person sprayed one time, so the odor really makes me gag now.
So I've been letting nature take its course, no fencing. I lost the lettuce, which have since come back nicely. Today I noticed some of the broccoli eaten. Seems like the new mom, yes we've seen the younguns, is mixing it up. Time to fence it in or lose more.
This is getting a bit sidetracked by calling it a gopher. I'm completely with Splintie re: poison for gophers - doesn't kill 'em right away & if they happen to pop out of a hole after ingesting the poison, with their reflexes not as sharp, they are prime targets for raptors. And the raptor population is having a hard enough time here already with the windmills....
Two choices for gophers - cage the beds - below and above or trap (the pointy kind that kills 'em). I do both. The sensitive veggies (lettuce, carrots, etc.) go in the protected beds. Traps everywhere else.
Traps need to go in the deeper & larger main runs - probe till you find a tunnel, two traps, one in each direction, cover the hole with something heavy so no light can get in. Amazing what taking 7 gophers out of the back yard will do to the veggie productivity!
That said you said you have groundhogs - a totally different kind of rodent! I declared war on those when they waited until an entire bed of broccoli was days from harvest and then mowed it flat. I have no mercy for groundhogs!
Again, I took a two-prong'd approach. As others hav mentioned a couple of strands of electirc fence was the primary line of defense. IIRC one strand was ~ 6" and the second ~ 12", maybe a bit more (been years).
The primary line of offense was Jake the German Shepard. Borrowed him from a distant neighbor for two weeks; he was bringing in one every other day; liked to bury them to age for a few days before chowing down. No more problems with groundhogs for the several more years that we lived there. That approach worked well in the Appalachain foothills where everyone had lots of acres...
Yeah, they're groundhogs. I'll fence and see how that goes. Been wanting a dog, buried my dog over a year back. My son, 6 going on 7, just started asking for one.
groundhog update:He was a she, showed up a few weeks back with 3 little ones.Wiped out the lettuce and broccoli but left everything else. I put up a fence, 3' high with 1' bent out at the bottom and slate on top of that. Thought I was being pretty clever. Lettuce and broccoli come back nice, I was thinking of grabbing some of the lettuce for a hamburger and nothing left, again! Must have climbed the fence. Hoping they eat one of those jalapenos, maybe they'll stick to grass after that:)
My dog got ahold of a groundhog a couple of days ago, it wasn't a pretty sight. I had no idea how savage my gentle pet could be.
Maybe I could rent her out?
I was 1/2 afraid to open the pic. Didn't want to see a bloody corpse, glad it was just the dog.
Sorry about that chief, I didn't think of that. I did not get a photo of the "bloody corpse"
We actually used the dog kennel to grow vegetables in at my wifes insistence. She said it would keep the deer out and it works for the groundhogs too.
I had to build boxes for the raised beds, we put the kennel on an old slab so it has a concrete bottom and there is also a chain link roof as well so it is pretty well critter proof, plus we have the dog, so our lettuce is safe.
We never did keep the dog in the kennel anyway.
I'll wait till this growing season is over and tweak it a little for next year.
the benefit is that the gohers are killed while underground, keeps other wildlife safe.
the negative is the killing of rodents. Rodents are rodents.
when you loose hundreds or thousands of $$$ due to rodents(rabbits, gohers, squirrels) they are on the losing end.
sorry, difference of opinion...
What's the guarantee the gopher stays underground? It's interesting in the ad you linked that some states prohibit its use. I doubt it's bec they have a soft spot for gophers. How smart is it to use a rodenticide around a vegetable garden? Gophers aren't all bad; they aerate the soil and eat insects. If you're losing hundreds of thousands of dollars to rodents, you might consider that your poison regime is not that effective. They breed more if their numbers are reduced. I'd say YOU are on the losing end, by doing the same thing and expecting different results.It's funny how man decides he has to kill the coyote, which causes the rodent population to surge. Then he has to kill the rodents, so the insect population goes wild. Funny, funny, funny....and here's a bit on what non-target animals suffer when gophers are poisoned:http://smallfarms.oregonstate.edu/sfn/spring07controllinggophers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bv87T1CQF8E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rThXRVkXHjc&feature=related
Scott.