On Sunday, after posting about the carrots being ready I went to water the half barrel in bottom part of the yard and just as I was directing the stream of water into the bucket, I noticed a great big gopher mound covering an area where a lot of carrots used to be.
Even though gophers had chewed through our buckets in the past (now we put hardware cloth beneath them) I didn't think they'd get through this one so quickly since it had an extra layer of plywood beneath it (but no hardware cloth)
We couldn't get to it Sunday night but yesterday I went and picked up some of the gopher stakes that Sebastian told me about.I got two solar powered stake, one battery powered stake (for immediate deployment) and a 4 pack of C batteries for about $100 - ouch. I hope it keeps the gophers at bay for a while.
The instructions say you should allow the solar powered stake to charge before pushing them in the ground. You also have to use a broomstick or something to pre-poke your hole since the shafts of these are plastic. The battery powered version has a metal shaft.
Here it is in place, we'll see if it protects the other 2/3 of these carrots. Tonight or tomorrow, I'll move the stake out of the barrel and into the ground. nearby.
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steaks and stakes are two very different things, and methinks you might mean stakes...but gopher steaks would certainly be one way to take care of the little buggers!
ReplyDeleteLet us know how this turns out, please! We have gophers all over our property, and I'm trying to decide how to deal with them. I hate the idea of mass killings by gas, so I'm hoping the cats will drive them off.
ReplyDeleteHa! LTP, yes, I am a terrible speller. Thank you. What is confusing is that I got it right in the first instance and then.. ? I fixed it now though.
ReplyDeleteChris, I have found that killing them is only temporary anyway. I don't use poison anywhere on the property but did trap them for a while - it's endless. You can get a bunch and the population goes way down but next year they are back from the outlying areas.
I have already heard from a friend at work, after I told him about them, and from Sebastian at Solano Gardens, that they do indeed work as advertised.
Well, I gave in and got 4 solar ones, I hope it causes them to move far far away. They were moving in on the garden plot again, sneakily through the sandy area that collapses whenever we attempt to set a trap there.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that our second year fruit trees made it through the winter and are fruiting tells me that I lucked out but good. Now if I could only turn these upside down and get rid of the deer that ate half the plum tree.
I have now found that the battery version works better and more reliably. I'd be interested to hear how yours worked out Tarik.
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