My Gopher Wars

I've lived with gophers before, but have never seen a property so completely riddled with them as this one.  You can't walk around the yard without sinking down every few steps.

I generally have a "live and let live" attitude toward wildlife, including snakes and spiders, but gardeners and gophers just cannot peacefully co-exist.  An entire row of carrots or a fruit tree's roots can get eaten overnight.  The gophers must go.

I'm not a fan of poisons, as it's easy to see how a hawk, owl, or other predator might eat a poisoned rodent.  Also, the prong-type tunnel traps seem rather gory.  I prefer the black plastic noose traps (Black hole, or Black Box). 

To use them successfully, you need to think like a gopher.  Fortunately, this is not all that hard for me.

A gopher's greatest fear is a snake entering its tunnel, so you will usually never see open gopher holes.  The plastic traps have a small hole at their back end which allows fresh air to enter.  To a gopher, fresh air signals danger so they will come into the trap to check out the opening.  Whap!

So far, I've nailed about 10 of the little diggers, which by my calculations only leaves 100 or so remaining.  Too bad there's no market for gopher pelts - I'd have it made.  I've been leaving the dearly-departed on top of boulders, and they always disappear overnight  (owls? coyotes?  bobcats?).  I see it as a new link in the food chain here.

A couple tips for anyone wanting to try these traps: Set them in the evening hours, as the gophers are leery about light; cover the set trap with loose dirt except for the little air hole; if you run into a reluctant gopher push a little piece of carrot through the air hole after you set it; and run a wire from the trap to a heavy board to prevent a coyote from trotting off with a trapped gopher - and your trap.

We're supposed to be getting a little more snow by the end of the week, I've just started my tomatos indoors under lights, the oaks are beginning to bud out, and I saw the first swallows of the season yesterday.  Welcome, spring!

Cheers,

Don

The Lineup Of Trees

I guess I should introduce the collection of fruit trees that I've planted, plus a comment or two about them.

I've got about a 250-foot curving driveway, with about a steep upslope to the left as you come in and about a six foot dropoff to the right.  Then there is a gradual downslope further off to the right.

I decided that there was about 175 feet of usable space along the right side and some quick math suggested that 12 trees could go in at 16-foot spacings.  This was tough deciding on just 12, as I tend to drool paging through nursery catalogs - filled with new hybrids (pluots, apriums, etc.), plus a long, long, list of old favorite apples, cherries, and plums.

But I got it down to a dozen, feeling rather pleased with myself for showing such mental discipline.

Beginning at the road, I set out a Moorpark apricot, O'Henry peach, Arctic Jay nectarine, Winterstein apple, Bing cherry, Earligold apple, Rainier cherry, Gravenstein apple, Brooks plum, Fantasia nectarine, Blenheim apricot, and Spice Zee nectaplum (just as it sounds - a new cross between a nectarine and a plum).

Each of these sit in a buried chicken wire cage, capped with a separate chicken wire cover and have a spiral trunk protector.  I figure that this arrangement will protect the new roots from gophers, both underground or digging in from above.  The spiral shields should keep the many cottontails and ground squirrels from chewing the bark.  Now, all I have to worry about are the herds of deer and hungry birds.  How hard could that be?

The Gravenstein apple is my all-time favorite - crisp, sweet-tart, and it ripens in August.  If you have never tasted a Gravenstein, a new company has a fantastic mail-order offer.  See www.fruitguys.com and get your order reserved early.  They only ship to selected areas during season, with next-day delivery and the nicest packaging you've ever seen.  I'm not sure what they will charge this year, but last year it was $20 for 5 lbs - including delivery!

The Winterstein is supposedly a late version of Gravenstein, ripening two months later and not as tart.  Couldn't resist an extra season of my favorite.

Earligold is similar to Yellow Delicious, but ripens in August.  I needed a pollinator for the 'steins, and this is it.  I've grown it before and like it a lot.

The two apricots are both great-flavored heirloom varieties that may bloom too early up here in the Sierra foothills.  They could be trees that are successful only every few years because of late frosts.  Let's call them experimental.

There might be the same frost problems for the nectarines, peach, plum, cherries, and nectaplum?  To be determined.

This area near Tehachapi is prime apple country, so I think my three little apple guys will be happy here.  If the others throw off fruit some years and not others, I can live with that.  This is not for serious food supply - it's for tasty fun!

Next, the new veggie garden.

Cheers,

Don

Digging in

Well, this will be a first for me. 

For a long time I've written monthly newsletters about soil biology and occasionally tossed in some comments about my gardens, but as I ease into retirement years (just turned 70) the BioOrganics' newsletters will be turned over to a new voice (Graham Phillips, whom you will enjoy) and I'm going to try blogging about my mountain-gardening adventures here in Bear Valley Springs, CA.

This blogging is going to be a learning process for a Luddite type who rarely even carries a cell phone (a dirt-simple Jitterbug, by the way), but I think it will be fun to document my new orchard and vegetable garden, and describing how I manage to deal with the abundant gophers, deer, raccoons, birds, and bunnies. 

I sort of got to know many of you through emails over the years, and hope to continue some of that dialog.

More later, including photos.

Cheers,

Don