I wonder if you have a vole problem rather than gophers. Do you have mulch or ground cover? Voles eat below and you may find small entrance/exit holes. Moles mound tunnels that are easy to see, and gophers make obvious piles of dirt kicked out of their underground runways. Voles often do total damage before their presence is noticed. I have felt this pain and am sorry for your loss. Do you have cats?

I agree with bodica..i've had gophers and their holes are huge..sometimes 5 feet in diameter. gophers always have exit holes, not just one entrance. Voles, i've had, too..and alot of time you don't know until the plant is dead. they can start their tunnels many yards from your plant, so you may not see a hole, but if you walk on the ground in the area it will feel squishy compared to the areas without tunnels. they make mole/vole traps, but i haven't had luck with them. a cat will help..but that's all i know of that will truly eradicate the little buggers. if you don't have too many roses, you can dig them up and replant them with a wire cage arounf the roots. good luck...donna

We have made cages out of hardware cloth, thanks to Kaye and her beautiful garden. If you are interested in how to do it, let me know.
Sammy

Sammy, I am intrigued by the hardware cloth cage. How do you make one and does it last as long as a wire cage?

I also have a severe gopher problem here. They killed four roses in the summer of last year. I tried all the gopher repellents, but they do not work. The best thing that I've used that really controls them is a trap. I use the "Victor Blackbox" traps because they are very easy to set up; plus, the removal of the dead animal is also a cinch. I've tried other traps too, and they also work. My nursery lady suggests poisoning as the best method, although I have yet to try this.

Jeff

The hardware cloth cages as suggested or a good hungry cat and loud dog.

Traps are in my opinion a far better solution than poison. If you use poison you may get the gophers but you also risk killing any predators such as owls that are helping to keep the population from being even worse. If you think you have gophers now, imagine how many you would have if the animals that prey on them were wiped out!

Traps are an ongoing solution. You can get rid of the ones you have, but new ones will move in. You also need to protect plants. You can plant any future roses, shrubs and trees in gopher cages. Many nurseries sell them, at least in this area. For a less expensive option for lots of plants, you can try just buying rolls of gopher wire and lining generous sized planting holes. If you do this, be sure to get 3/4" inch holes, not inch sized holes that you find in chicken wire. Gophers can slip right in through inch openings, no trouble at all.

This came from Kaye in Arkansas, and has worked well for me for many years.

I buy a roll of hardware cloth that is 1/2" squares. We cut a section that is 12" tall and 4 feet long. Set it into the hole so that an inch or two are out of the ground. My big mistake has been to be careless putting in the soil. If you do not water it down first, after a year or so, your rose will sink. Digging out a foot of soil is a chore, and packing it in can tend to be a careless procedure. Kaye mentioned not too long ago that you should plant the rose a little high in anticipation of it sinking a little.

I don't like poison. We have a creek behind our house, and the critters have found my garden. We will always have them, and I don't mind trapping them or killing them outright, but poisons bother me.

My first venture with the hardware cloth was to try to put it around the entire bed. What a mistake! Critters can easily step over it, and go right back underground. The four feet length in a circle seems to work well

One warning is to watch your roses carefully to be sure they do not rub the top of the wires. If that happens, the wound can become a canker, and then you may have to cut a beautiful long branch.

Sammy

Thanks everybody for the ideas and commiseration. I have planted somethings in hardware cloth (1/2 inch), but what a pain. Nonetheless, I guess I will continue to do it. Does this interfere with the roots of trees tho'?

One of the reasons I like gopher wire better than hardware cloth for planting shrubs and trees is the size of the future roots. (We do use hardware cloth on the bottom of our raised beds for vegetables.) I asked about this over on the Fruit and Orchard forum earlier this year, and also on the Tree forum, but didn't get a lot of feedback. My suspicion is that as tree roots get really big, they will simply break through cage wires that are getting in their way. We recently had to take out one stem of a multi-stem tree because it was growing into a concrete retaining wall and pushing the wall over. I'm quite impressed with the power of growing trees.

What is the difference between gopher wire and hardware cloth? I think we have voles, not gophers, but almost anything could come up out of the creek.

Sammy

Cats and more cats. Nature's own solution. I had voles and chipmunks when I first moved into my house and nearly lost several roses the first year. But I have 14 cats and by the second year the problem was solved.

Gopher wire has a hexagon pattern (like chicken wire), while hardware cloth is a square grid. With the same thickness of wire, hardware cloth would be a bit stronger but gopher wire is more flexible. I tend to use hardware cloth were I don't need to do any bending.

Gopher wire is harder to find, too -- not so many places carry it. It may be a bit easier to find aviary wire locally. Aviary wire is intended building coops for smaller fowl than chickens. It has the same hole openings as gopher wire but is a lighter gauge wire. I believe gopher wire is also treated to resist rust since it will be buried in the ground. I recently dug up some roses that had been protected with aviary wire and found that the wire had deteriorated. It has also sunk deeper into the ground, so be aware that this can happen when you are planting.

Rosefolly

Here is a link that might be useful: Mail order source for gopher wire

where not were. sigh. I do know the difference. I seem to be typing worse and worse as time goes on, and we won't even discuss my handwriting.