permaculture solution to gophers

I live in Northern California (Sonoma County) in an area with excessive gopher and mole populations. The soil is sandy loam. My little terrier is a pretty good hunter, but I think I would need 25 of her living on the property at all times. One challenge is that the orchards and vineyards next-door tend to rototill, which sends more gophers my way; I also fear if someone starts poisoning the gophers, and if my terrier happens upon on of them.
Being that the problem is the solution...anyone have ideas?
Thanks!

The problem can be delicious, apparently:  http://uncle-charlie.thoughts.com/posts/fried-gopher

I realize this thread is ancient but I also live in sonoma county with more holes that solid land surrounding my house. did you find anything that works? thanks!

I've experienced gophers not crossing a bed of daffodils to get into the garden....

Hey Shirley,

My grandfather had 25 acres of sandy loam on the hunter river,
He used owls, foxes, Bone sauce, smelling flowers and herbs tree guards, His rifles, nets traps, to eliminate the rabbits,

I Remember looking at him as a little kid with the bones sauce thinking is this him being ivan the terrible of rabbits?

I understand these are totally different animals.
However I googled bone sauce and it has evidence of working for Gophers.

Evidence for Daffodils,  which has been mentioned and so does sages and thyme. which maybe good for having plant guilds below the Orchard.

"welsh spellings, am I right?"

A link to a bone sauce recipe,
https://www.permaculturenews.org/2014/06/05/bone-sauce-a-tool-for-deterring-browsing/

I would also like to mention one of the people who inspires me, Perma pastures farm,
Who sell bone sauce and comfrey,
But are also just great people to watch and listen to who have a great sense of building community!
I think if you look them up online you will find them to be a wealth of great information, and they also have alot of time for other people! So maybe great in looking them up!


Your persistence is great!

I would bet gopher bone sauce would work best.

Can bone sauce be purchased?

John C Daley wrote:Can bone sauce be purchased?

The group that sells it,
I mentioned is in America.

I do not know about Australia,
And I need to learn more about where I can buy and source many different things, I am still working on networking for this!

Alex Moffitt wrote:Hey Shirley,
My grandfather had 25 acres of sandy loam on the hunter river,
He used owls, foxes, Bone sauce, smelling flowers and herbs tree guards, His rifles, nets traps, to eliminate the rabbits,

Cheers Alex - I love that he used nature to help with owls and foxes.

I have groundhogs and discovered one under my BBQ . . . Now that’s asking for trouble!

I don’t know where this solution lands at on the Permie scale, but one option I have used is ground up castor beans.  They are available at garden stores or online by brand name “mole go” or “mole be gone”.  I put them in a fertilizer spreader and covered my highly dug up/tunneled yard.  The moles & gophers HATE the smell, but I can’t smell anything bad.  If anything, I thought I smelled freshly cut hay for 2-3 days even though there was no hay anywhere near.

The moles made a straight line out of the yard.  After the first application, I would occasionally add more if I saw mole activity, but I only spread near the edge of the yard.  This kept moles out of the yard though I could see their tunnels circling the yard.  That was fine with me as long as they stayed outside my lawn.

Castor bean oil is also available via a hose applicator and I think it works faster smells a bit stronger (but certainly not offensive) but does not last as long.

Eric

I found some, it seems easier for me to buy rather than make it
bone-sauce-deer-repellent

But it would not get through customs in Australia. We have very tight control of food products that may cause problems here.
It may be very hard to convince customs its safe to import.

"

Eric Hanson wrote:I don’t know where this solution lands at on the Permie scale, but one option I have used is ground up castor beans."

I don't know of any toxicity to other plants, but all parts of the  castor plant and especially the beans contain ricin, a deadly poison. So pets, other wildlife, chickens/other livestock, perhaps even beneficial soil organisms, all will be at risk.

What's worked pretty well for me is periodic flooding and Yolanda, a chihuahua terrier mix that is a holy terror on vermin. Still have some burrows along the road frontage where there is a mounded up area of drier, sandy soil that needs some kind of earthwork and plantings that 1) won't immediately be devoured by gophers, lol, and 2) won't interfere with overhead and underground utility lines.

I'm in Sonoma County CA too.  With drought conditions the gophers, that usually stay out in the field, did a number on my sheet mulched backyard growing area ( Toby Hemingway inspired). In a last ditch effort (before making formal wood and hardware clothl raised beds) I made 2 ft high and wide dirt beds and dug down a foot in the trough area and layed down flakes of rice straw in the trough area to see if it would stop the gophers.  Two weeks into it and seems to be working.  Has anyone else tried this?

Lisa Colorado (or anyone) I live in Monterey County with drought and gophers. Just learning permaculture and want to switch from raised beds to in ground for watering reasons. Hardware cloth is saving my veggies from gophers now but how do plants access ground water and not get eaten up if I plant in ground?

Daian, welcome to the forums!

This sounds like a very good suggestion to me:

Alex said, "My grandfather had 25 acres of sandy loam on the hunter river,

He used owls, foxes, Bone sauce, smelling flowers and herbs tree guards, His rifles, nets traps, to eliminate the rabbits,

I know his suggestion states rabbits though I bet it would work for gophers, too.

In case you never heard of "bone sauce" his post contains the recipe.

Anne Miller wrote:Daian, welcome to the forums!

This sounds like a very good suggestion to me:

Alex said, "My grandfather had 25 acres of sandy loam on the hunter river,

He used owls, foxes, Bone sauce, smelling flowers and herbs tree guards, His rifles, nets traps, to eliminate the rabbits,

I know his suggestion states rabbits though I bet it would work for gophers, too.

In case you never heard of "bone sauce" his post contains the recipe.

The thing about gophers, at least the pocket gophers I have, is that they almost never come above ground, so owls are of no use. Unless you want foxes or coyotes or even dogs digging up your garden, they're of little use either. One of my dogs is actually pretty good at catching gophers, but she completely destroyed some of my garden beds to do it. Once I put a stop to her digging in the gardens, she started digging in an adjacent area that's full of them. So they spent even more time in my garden, which is now safe from dogs 😡

Sage and thyme have no effect on my gophers. They happily eat garlic, so that's not a deterrent. I thought a hot sauce spray I was using was working for a bit, but I sprayed everything heavily one evening, and it was all pulled down their tunnels the next morning. I guess they were just taking a break from that bed for a while.

So far the only thing that really works for me is trapping, and that's pretty hit and miss. I'll have to try castor beans or oil. That's one I keep forgetting to try.

Lisa Colorado wrote:I'm in Sonoma County CA too.  With drought conditions the gophers, that usually stay out in the field, did a number on my sheet mulched backyard growing area ( Toby Hemingway inspired). In a last ditch effort (before making formal wood and hardware clothl raised beds) I made 2 ft high and wide dirt beds and dug down a foot in the trough area and layed down flakes of rice straw in the trough area to see if it would stop the gophers.  Two weeks into it and seems to be working.  Has anyone else tried this?

I've noticed they do avoid digging through things like straw or woodchips, but I've seen gopher tunnels four feet down in some spots, so I suspect they'll get into your garden eventually, unless there's much tastier stuff elsewhere.

Daian, Well if noting works then maybe continuing using the hardware cloth, is your only option.

If I had this problem I would plant lots of rosemary, sage, thyme, eucalyptus, geranium, and lavender.

Maybe find the gopher entrance tunnel and use a mixture of three parts castor oil and one part dish soap. Add four tablespoons of the mixture to a gallon of water. Soak the tunnels and entrances to evict the gophers. Or at least that is what Mr. Google suggested.

Let us know what works.

They can be a bummer, but with gophers, the problem is nature’s solution to compacted soil, greatly improving water and air capacity and infiltration like giant earthworms. I believe it was an Oregon State professor that dug up a big section of his garden to find that the most vigorous and healthy roots were growing into the gopher tunnels like a hydroponics tube.

Besides starting gardens on a rocky mountainside, my main solutions have revolved around learning to accept the old farmer’s “rule of 1/3s”. We can never expect to sustainably get more than 1/3 of any land’s harvest for ourselves. We either give away 1/3 to wildlife and 1/3 to neighbors, or they will eventually take it. That or the harvest gets diminished for all by biocidal approaches, akin to draining the public swimming pool when we are told everyone has to be allowed to swim in it. Fighting for more gets diminishing returns for our increased efforts.

It really stings to lose a few 50$ trees to gophers. Less so with 4$ root stock (plug for Burnt Ridge Nursery), and not much at all with freely abundant seedlings from apple mash after cider pressings. I have taken a STUN approach, going for massive numbers and biodiversity.  I have learned seed saving and to propagate and graft my own plants in large enough numbers to ensure I will have plenty make it past the gopher/deer prone stage with perennials and over-seeding with annuals. I have an acre fenced for my dog, and he keeps out most problematic animals from our zone 1-2. I also place or leave any raptor perches I can around the property, from dead manzanita trellises to large snags in the woods around our property. Brush and stone piles also benefit snakes and weasel family predators.

To me, gophers have been great teachers that have forced me to take a step back and take a larger and longer term approach to building and working with a healthier ecosystem, rather than attack symptoms.

My go-to is to plant lots of garlic, mint, daffodils and other rodent repelling plants tightly around the base of whatever tree I'm trying to protect, so that the roots of a young fruit tree are all intermingled with roots of garlic and mint. I had a gophers get into a nursery bed of seedling crabapples last year, and I had trees falling over up and down the row where the gophers had chewed the roots off. In the fall I planted thousands of cloves of garlic all around every tree in my nursery beds, and it seems like the gophers decided that was enough for them to leave because they moved their little gopher village to an area about 30 feet to the south. So far this year I haven't found any trees with chewed off roots, so I think it worked.

I agree with Ben Zumeta that they offer great benefits for soil health, and they aren't really much of a problem except when they are eating baby trees. They don't seem to do much damage to old trees, as far as I've observed.

If you're in a truly dire situation where it's either you or the gophers, a DIY gopher gasser machine that doesn't use synthetic poison can be made with an old barbecue, a 10 foot length of flexible aluminum duct, and a shop vac that has a blower outlet that accepts a hose attachment (a common feature on a lot of newer shop vacs). Basically you attach one end of the duct to the top vents on the bbq, the other end of the duct to the shop vac inlet.  Remove the vac filter and run the outlet hose down into the gopher hole. Start a smoky smouldering fire in the bbq (but not so hot that you melt your vacuum), and then turn on the vac to pump all the smoke down into their tunnel system. Later if your dog digs them up it's ok because smoked gopher is widely regarded by dogs as a delicacy.