Clay soil, elephant garlic and mycelium fungi

Really impressed all over again with dry clay soil, elephant garlic and mycelium.  This is a dirt clod you could bounce a shovel off of, it's that dry.  It came from a garden row I don't use anymore, no rain for months, yet the soil around the buried garlic cloves was covered with mycelium (red arrows) and a new garlic shoot (yellow circle).   I just walked the clod over to a section of the raised bed and buried it whole.  

The elephant garlic waits in dry clay until it gets some moisture,  has many new little bulbils around the larger clove, and still comes up even with the little rain the West Coast has been getting.   I collect and transplant the elephant garlic as a companion plant, and as something to deter ants and gophers in raised beds.  

Under these worseningly dry conditions it is just amazing how well clay is performing.

When do the bulbils usually start growing? I've spread a bunch of mine around the gardens and never noticed any coming up.

I wish my gophers were repelled by garlic! Hmmm... Maybe that's why no bulbils are growing 🙄

Jan, I've tried LOTS of different kinds of garlic, and the best one is elephant garlic.   By the end of summer there are small bulbs, about the size of your pinkie fingernail all around the main bulb.  The stalk above ground has a flower that has seeds on it, and it's brown, dead.   Those tiny bulbs can be transplanted just about anywhere in the fall (as long as they don't freeze in the soil.)  

My soil doesn't freeze, so your experience will tell you when to plant bulbs. But they are quick and drought proof and very effective.  From the original bulb (that was expensive) I now have 100 places where they come up every year, after 8 years.

I have gophers that are unbelievable.  I am often impressed with their abilities.  So they are not easy to get around.

I also use asparagus to stop gophers (buy them bare root in the spring, Martha Washington and Jersey Giant,) day lillies (not lillies in general), and daffodils.

Also native "weeds" or plants that it's obvious that the gophers don't bother.  For me that's dock, and salvias (sages.)

The other thing I do about gophers is I soak several 2" thick branches in pee for a couple days, (in a half gallon milk carton) then find the tunnel that is going from plant to plant, and shove that branch in there.  They went after one of my apricot trees, and from the mound that showed up I very quickly found their tunnels, filled them up with the branches.   That is like hugelculture, and will break down and improve those zones while stopping the gophers from getting near the apricot roots.

Then planted elephant garlic and asparagus plants, sometimes daffodils if it's the right time of year, or daylillies.

I have to plant the bare root asparagus in 1-gallon pots to get a good root system on them, plant them in homemade chicken wire baskets, that last about a year, and by then the root mass on the asparagus is big enough to make it on its own.  I have some 20-year-old asparagus plants that haven't been touched.

Even the native plants, when small, won't have enough of a root system to make it with the "air tunnels" that the gophers make underneath them when they explore whether to eat them or not.  When they don't eat them, they just leave them hanging in the air, and all the watering doesn't help.  So I put in a gallon-sized root ball for all of the gopher stoppers

:-)

This is a very interesting discussion. We have a huge gopher problem here, and lots of clay soil that we have worked to improve.
The thing is, when it comes to digging and loosening the clay soil, no one is a good at it, as the gophers. They have been a big help in loosening the soil in our orchard. Now though, we want them to be a little better controlled.
Now I just want to know how to work with them. I just planted elephant garlic for the first time this year, so I was very happy to read that it works as gopher deterrent.
I was wondering though, about what predators to attract, help with our rat and gopher problem, and how to actually attract them?

Ulla, as great the predator solution might sound, I live on several acres where gophers rule.   There are lots of predators, hawks, owls, bobcats, foxes, etc., that spend their days/nights looking for food, and I have yet to see fewer gophers, ever, in 30+ years.

There are owl/hawk poles you can install that need to be 10+ feet above the ground, should have a cross-piece at the top so they can sit and watch.  Once they catch a gopher or mouse, they want to fly to a protected place to eat it, like big tree branches, so that combo will do something, but not nearly enough.  I have noticed that they get the rabbits that get past the fence on occasion, but the rabbits have fewer places to hide in my garden than in their brush-covered habitats.

Don't know how big your garden is, or how much the soil freezes in the winter (mine doesn't,)  I have started lines of asparagus/narcissis/dock weed going down the fenceline, just trying to wall them out.  I started at the most active places where they came under the fence, then spread along the fenceline from there.

Asparagus has a huge root system they avoid, can live for 20+ years, it a tough plant.  Clip off the spears as they appear so it will grow and produce more, making more roots.  If it is left on the plant, it turns into a fern right away and doesn't get as big as it could.  

If you notice a native weed in your area that the gophers leave alone, doesn't compete with your plants or isn't too invasive, it could help be a part of that underground barrier. Narcissis bulbs multiply faster than daffodils, those can be tucked into that line.

Elephant garlic is fabulous, and is a great companion plant to roses and a lot of other plants.