PEST MANAGEMENT: Here's How I Deal With Gophers On Our Farm
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- Опубликовано: 17 июл 2024
- We're continuing our Pest Management series with a video about gophers. They can be pretty pesky, and we've dealt with our fair share of them over the years. We're going to talk about what you can do, including trap options like the Macabee.
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0:30 Intro
2:32 Options
If you've ever walked out into the garden only to see a plant missing or find a mound of dirt, you know the pain of dealing with gophers. I've even watched plants get pulled down into holes! Unlike birds or insects, gophers come with their own set of issues since they can hide underground.
Let's get started here in my lettuce patch. Although it's May, I've kept this area going for seed production. After months and months of growing & waiting, I've had a few plants turned into soil mounds. These are the first plants that I've grown here, so the plant life and pliable dirt have attracted some "friends" into the area. Gophers aren't all bad, though. They act as natural tillers, and they also aerate the soil. For that reason, we like to have some gophers in our area.
We accept and even welcome that some of our abundance of produce will support the local ecosystem. We love to see happy insects, birds, and other critters enjoy our work. Sometimes, though, it's a hair too much especially since this is our business. So when push comes to shove, we'll need to incorporate some management control.
If you garden in raised beds, you're in good shape to deal with gophers. Before filling your bed, simply lay down some wire to keep them out.
We do almost everything in-ground, though. We use a spring-loaded trap called the Macabee Old Reliable, and it lives up to its name. It's been around since 1900 by farmers, landscapers, etc. Unfortunately, we are not allowed to catch and release gophers so this system does kill them. It's something we take very seriously and do not choose to do lightly. That said, this system does take some work, but it's far superior to using poison. We don't want to needlessly introduce those chemicals into our ecosystem and the food-producing area.
Once you have loaded the trap, you carefully place it inside the tunnel. Just finding the tunnel, though, can be a little tricky. Start out at the mound, and you might even see gophers early in the morning or in the evening. From there, probe the area to find the void before you dig down to the tunnel.
You usually only need to go several inches down. Stick your hand down in there to ensure it keeps going and isn't a dead-end. Then you just load your trap and stick it in! This does not need any bait to work, but you want to do a few things as you set it. First, set it in the direction that the gopher will approach from. Second, tie off your trap. Third, I lay some soil back in the hole.
After a day or so, I check back on the trap. If nothing has happened in that timeframe, you'll probably want to move to another tunnel.
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I appreciate the way you explained balancing farming and trapping gophers.
My dad used those traps with success, but it was a never-ending battle. After watching a hilarious video of GrowJack and his little brother celebrating their success using one, I have recently purchased a GopherHawk. A friend swears by his BlackHole gopher trap. I would never use poison as I too have hawks, and owls, and feral cats, who all regularly patrol my hillside and keep it from becoming gopherville. It really is like a cartoon when you go out and find a whole zucchini plant sucked down a gopher hole, and nothing but the top leaves twirled in a rosette stuck at the top of the gopher hole. A local flower farmer told me they trenched a two foot ditch around their entire property before ever starting their farm, and filled it with broken glass to keep out gophers.
Thanks for keeping things poison-free! Isn't it so funny to watch a plant just get pulled under?
I will sit in my garden and watch birds eat fruits, seeds, plants, etc and I like to think of myself pretty chill I let them have their snacks but when I see a gopher mound I go Rambo on them
Everyone has their threshold.
For me, it's the squirrels eating my avocados and blueberries. I've managed to largely eliminate gophers inadvertently when I installed a snake fence around the property. The snake fence, 1/4" wire mesh, is buried about 18" below ground and 3' above ground and since it was installed I haven't seen a gopher on the property. I've even seen some gopher holes pop up right at the fence a couple of times.
Refreshing and encouraging information, thank you.
Thanks guys always appreciated 🤙🤙
Thank you for this video! I’ve been experiencing this.
I have gophers so bad here in my backyard that it seriously looks like swiss cheese! I grow everything in totes and planters except my sunflowers, i grow those in 5gall metal mesh pockets. Thanks for sharing 😊👍
I grow up here on the Central Coast, our entire property is literally beach sand. Gophers are INTENSE here. I struggle so much with them.I do have a few raised beds. But is so irritating to have 5 acres and only a few raised beds that I can actually farm! I am
also one who likes to work WITH nature. But here the gophers are out of control, we kill as many as possible and it’s still not making a dent. My boxer and our cat are such good hunters thankfully!
We just got five farm cats- hoping them help us. ❤️
I wonder if a Rat Terrier dog would help too. They're bred for this sort of thing.
You must live not far from me, my soil is beach sand as well and the gophers are wicked nuts intense here they will dig around a raised bed and sink it trying to get past the hardware cloth they are really really really devious and destructive. I have 10 acres of land and want to farm it as well, it really upsets me, wanted to grow some grain or some veggies to sell as I have the space.
We had gophers that ate the entirety of the root system of our fig tree tgat was like 7 feet tall and I remember my mom just pulled it out of the ground with one hand basically, we just kind lifted it out and fell over with no roots left. Also my grandpa was using those traps 30 years ago when I was a tiny kid, and I too can remember seeing little trees or plants start twitching and all of a sudden just phwoosh disappear down into the ground.
If you have multiple tunnels and cant get him after multiple trap sets, flooding one of the tunnels and forcing them to run out will often result in them running into one.
Thank you so much for this! I struggle with ground rodents. Voles are bad here too.
We get a lot of voles too DeAnne!!
It's a personal decision, and I agree that it's necesary to protect you harvest to feed a family or as a farmer. Well said.
Thanks for mentioning 'why' Gophers show up: softened soil. I've started out slow; moving raised beds, mini-greenhouse, etc. It's allowed me time to notice 'critter issues' without alot of plants being damaged and learn 'how to' techniques. Thanks again and please introduce the black, good kitty next time.
Those traps are junk but we’re fine before better traps came along. The gophinator trap from trapline products is the best. And is stainless steel and will not rust / lose sensitivity overtime. Also baiting is important and improves your catch rate. Iv owned my own trapping business going on 28 years what do I know though.
Yes, baiting is key! Great advice.
I got a battle going on right now, I put Carolina reaper pepper powder all over the place. I think it went to my neighbor yard the whole slowly moved towards the fence and under. My cat got one and I have another one. As long as they dont mess up my veggies or my lawn I have not had the need to kill them I just try and push them to neighbor's yard. LOL. My wife thinks I am going to end up like the caddie shack deal and come home to a giant crater in the back yard.
My gophers like dandelion roots, and I've had some success baiting the traps with them.
Great tip!
Thank you for this video. It's so frustrating when the gophers move in, and we have quite a hard time actually trapping them. We just ordered the GopherHawk. Have you tried it?
Ive had best success with the gopherhawk in our old raised beds (we struggle with voles). Overall I would say it's been moderately successful (probably more if I moved them around more)--I'd say I'm on par with my cats although the cats seem to mostly catch baby voles.
I really like the gopher hawk. It's super easy to use and is really effective... Poor gophers don't stand a chance.
I've got a baby bunny I need to figure out how to deal with :(
Just we carry them on our website. Love em! The only thing is they require a little more finesse but awesome 😎
I just started my garden and I already know it's gonna be a problem. I have a raised bed that I will be putting things into that has hardware cloth, but we have so much space that we can't do that for every place we want to grow so I might have to trap
Trapping is the only long term solution
I’ve had to bury buckets and switch to container gardening because I live across the street from a golf course and they have taken more than their share of vegetables, especially carrots one day I had carrots and next day all but 1 was gone!
It’s annoying I know! We fight them constantly
I forgot to mention. When it rains look for the newest mound and that will be their main tunnel
Ah nice. Great tip!
I prefer the flat plate cinch trap so you don't have to dig as much, just make sure to get the right size for your local species. Also you didn't cover disposal. I just put it back in the hole to give it back to the earth and soil life.
Great point! We do too or feed them to the owls
I give mine to magpies or ravens, which ever gets there first. They digest it and then give it back to the earth.
I use the yellow juicy fruit gum because of my dogs
I think the hardest part for me is disposing of the gophers. What do you do? We have ground squirrels in our yard so would you use the same method? Thanks for tackling this subject as many gardeners do not talk about it.
We compost them. Don’t want to lose that nutrition 😍
I've been using havahart traps to catch the ground squirrels that were eating my avocados and blueberries. A little peanut butter has worked well as a lure for me.
Do you have to deal with voles and rats in the garden? How do you take care of them?
We don't have voles. For other rodents, though, we have two farm cats.
Any thought on how to eliminate squirrel damage?
We don't really have them here, but I've heard of people using essential oils, ground peppers, lights, and even predator urine.
Out of curiosity can you eat the gophers? Know that I'm not casting judgement, but my personal ethics with regards to killing animals is that I try to only kill what I'll eat. Again, I want to be clear I'm not casting judgement, I'm just curious.
I'm curious too! It's not something we've done, but as some people have noted, burying the gopher can be an option to keep the nutrients in your soil. You want to make sure your hole is deep enough to not attract scavengers. Under a fruit tree is best, which may not always be an option.
@@SanDiegoSeedCompany my original comment disappeared. Anyway, I don't have issues with groundhogs but I have used carcasses from other animals to fertilize my garden. My pups find the weak animals.
I have dozens and dozens of gopher, and thousands in the field next to my house. No hope trapping them all. Isn't there anything they won't eat????
It’s not sad. It’s *just* a gopher. Can you imagine relocating gophers? 😆
I used a garden hose to flush a gopher out of his tunnels/hole and put a basket over him, slid a piece of metal underneath, and relocated him. I thanked him for aerating my hard soil and told him to go elsewhere now.
Wow! Nice work. Haven't had much luck with the hose, but it might be the hill that we're on?
That does not work. Please dont share false information. I have battled gopher issue using your techniques for 3 month before I had to finally resort to trap. Trap instantly took care of the gopher that ravaged my yard into Swiss cheese.
@@MartyMeyerdierks It does work. The gopher did not come back to my garden after I relocated it. It's the only gopher I've ever had in my garden.
Have you used rodent blasters?
I too try to give room for all of God's creatures in the garden, even wasps, but gophers and black widows are given no quarter. Gotta draw the line somewhere I suppose.
Black Widows have to be really sizable to bite you, most can't puncture the skin :)
@@amaturearcadia Mine are HUGE! Seriously big. Lol
You know I wondered that- I have stuck my hands in some “spidery” places during my decade of growing and have never gotten bit but we see them everywhere
@@SanDiegoSeedCompany Gloves. After seeing all the black widows and an occasional tarantula in my garden I don't go out without gloves even though they won't help much with the occasional rattlesnake I've had to catch and move.
I’m in granite hills and our yard gets taken over
If I was a farmer and my family needs to be fed, I'm not working with anything that's removing food from my family's mouths. Especially if I planted it.
💥
Have you a fisical store?
We sell online at sandiegoseedcompany.com/ and are at some retailers, mostly in the San Diego area
@@SanDiegoSeedCompany thank and ok say it I can find you at Jimbos I'll go there.
Glad you don't use poison.
Nope! We have garden kitties so we don't want to harm them
A gopher just wrecked two of my watermelon mounds and killed the plants. Just bought one of these. Little 🤬
They are terrible
Every wild animal needs to be kept in check otherwise they would over run everything weaker than themselves. It is natures way that every creatire has a predator that kills it.
....what...?, no gopher...?..!
I was pretty traumatized watching my farmer grandfather beat gophers to death with a shovel when I was 5 or 6. Been better if he would have trapped them or something
It seems like a very slow death
A dead gopher is not a sad thing
Rehome a gopher😂🤣🤣😜
Just gotta update his info with the post office 😜
Compost your enimies