Gopher proofing a hugel beets.

I built to two new hugel beets this spring.  I was enjoying the most amazing garden ever,  when veggies started dieing, and even disappearing.  It didn't take long to figure out I had a gopher enjoying my garden.  I managed to chase it away, only to have it come back two more times this summer.
I needed to try to gopher proof my beds.  There's no way I'm going to remove all that wood, and wood chips.  I decided to remove the soil to ground level, and lay hard wire cloth.  I'm hoping this is a good compromise.  I hope I will still get the benefits of the hugel beet, but there will be a 15" gopher free zone for the veggie roots.  Wish me luck, because I really don't want to have to redo this again.  And I would like to be able to go back to enjoying my garden without the worry of what will die today.

looks nice, it might just work real well.
are your going to keep the hugel that is being attacked, maybe plant something in it that mr gopher and friends might not like. not sure what that is exactly, maybe onions?

Bruce I know it doesn't look like it, but the bed in the picture is a hugel beet.  The bed is actually 2' deeper than the wire.  There is a layer of old firewood on the bottom, then soil, small wood and branches, soil, and wood chips.  This is where the wire lays, then I filled the rest with organic compost, soil, and chicken manure.  Basically 1/2 the bed is under the wire, and 1/2 is above the wire. I just felt it would be to difficult to remove the wood layers.
I do have 3 beds that haven't been converted to hugel beets yet.  They have weed cloth on the bottom, and for some reason the gopher has never gotten into the beds that have a weed cloth down.
I also have a hugelkultur, but it isn't in use right now. I left the gate open, and my chickens demolished it yet again ( I have lost count of how many times this has happened, you think I would learn). It's on my to do list. The only thing on it is a poor neglected lavender.  I didn't have any gopher problem in it last year. So time will tell if it's a problem next year.

bruce Fine wrote:looks nice, it might just work real well.
are your going to keep the hugel that is being attacked, maybe plant something in it that mr gopher and friends might not like. not sure what that is exactly, maybe onions?

Gophers eat my walking onions all the timr. As far as I can tell they eat everything. If there is something the don't eat, I'm sure they'll chew it up just for fun. 🙄

I think that hardware cloth will do the trick. I'm contemplating a perpetual carrot bed constructed in a similar way.

Not to be discouraging, but the gophers seem right at home in my hugelcultures, so I doubt yours will be immune.

No way on earth I'm redoing my hugelkultur from scratch.  Having to put the top layer of soil back on is enough.

Jen Fulkerson wrote:No way on earth I'm redoing my hugelkultur from scratch.

Haha - nope, me neither! My hugelculture is 5-8' wide at the base and about 35' long. I made it in sections and layers over three years because I was hauling the dead trees out of the woods and digging soil for it by hand. No way am I redoing any of that 🤯

As more perennial stuff gets established on it, I find the gophers less of a problem. The first year of the hugel, everything got eaten. Seems like now they just nibble a bit here and there and don't completely destroy any one thing. Whenever I pull the mulch off my potatoes, there's always a gopher tunnel or two, but so far they've always left me enough.  I think having lots of different stuff growing all the time helps. Or maybe I've just been lucky the last couple years 😒

Yea they seem to nibble more than anything. I noticed they eat a good bit of the weeds in the garden that helps. But they do like some of what I'm growing too haha. I try bargain with them and I'll put out snacks for em sometimes. Everyone else says shoot em. I could but I rather try work with with them. They were here first I guess.