How I DO NOT envy your gopher escapades! I battled the vermin for 18 years in my Newhall canyon garden. It was on the hill sides so there was a good elevation difference between the upper and lower sections of the garden. I was actually rather successful in flushing them from new tunnels using the water hose. Several were flushed in the middle of tunnels and I was (happily!) fortunate enough to be where they were trying to burrow out to escape. They succumb quite well to being stomped on (YES, I killed as many as I possibly could and then either buried their carcasses in the tunnels (their comrades avoid their decaying carcasses so that tunnel was off limits for a while until it decayed) or tossed them up the slope for any interested wild life to enjoy. Moles are as destructive as gophers as (like ants) they dislodge the soil from around the plant roots, interrupting the water and nutrient take-up by the roots. They will even gnaw through roots to get at their prey. I observed it many times in the terraces in the Encino garden. So, whatever you can do to rid your area of the moles will also benefit everything you plant.

Yes, "in the wild", gophers are beneficial. After the Mount St. Helens eruption, they discovered that gophers were insulated in their underground tunnels from the pyroclastic flow and, once they began coming up through the ash, their mixing the seed laden soil with the fertile ash resulted in reforestation of the mountain a full decade earlier than originally thought. One of a number of fascinating pieces of information I remember reading about the eruption. But, in your garden, they serve no such benefit, and were particularly undesirable in the Newhall garden as they are perfect SNAKE FOOD. Between the gophers and the legions of rabbits, snakes were a constant worry when I would be out weeding, watering or pollinating the roses. More than once my skin crawled all over me like a cheap suit because of a too-close encounter with the indigenous rattlers. I didn't care for the gopher or king snakes but they wouldn't poison me should I be stupid enough to be bitten. The rattlers would.

I originally succumbed to the lure of planting "gopher purge", "Naked Ladies" (Amaryllis belladonna) and Daffodils and Narcissis as they were "toxic" to gophers. "Toxic", perhaps, but NONE OF THEM repelled gophers. I planted hundreds of the bulbs in a dense border along the upper edge of the slope in hopes of preventing them from gaining entry and it was futile. Gophers WILL gnaw the roots of all of them to continue tunneling beneath them. I had an huge clump of Naked Ladies at the point of a part of the top slope and the buggers literally gnawed the roots off the bulbs to use them as the solid roof of their entry to a new tunnel. It was in that particular one I flushed a rather large gopher that required a good deal of effort to "dispatch". Gopher Purge will happily seed everywhere and it seemed as if three seedlings resulted from each seed. I finally had my fill of them and began purging them from the garden. Their seeds lasted in the soil for a full decade. It required a literal ten years for the remaining seed to finally stop germinating. They only grew in the garden, nowhere else where seed may have invaded. Nasty weed.

As for leaving a portion of the gopher basket above ground to prevent them from gaining entry into the basket...I witnessed a gopher pulling itself up into a five gallon nursery can and digging its way into the root ball of the plant. What I found most successful was using hardware cloth to make a balloon under, around and over the root balls of the canned plants I planted (I started everything in cans as they grew faster and developed into larger plants, more successful at battling the blamed rabbits (jacks and cottontails). The hardware cloth was drawn up close enough to the shanks or crowns of the plants to prevent them from squeezing into its interior. The hardware cloth lasted for many years in the soil.

I also wasted money on "gopher gassers" and followed the instructions to the letter in hopes of them being successful. I know you know the frustration of finding the burned out shells of the gassers pushed out of the restored tunnel.

Another apparently successful method of saving the roses from gophers I learned from a friend in San Diego who had a large garden, also with legions of gophers. Another friend had a resale license and she bought me 15 pounds of the water absorbent polymer. It seems as the roots grow through the hydrated crystals and the gophers eat the combined material, the polymer absorbs the moisture content of the gopher's digestive tract. I won't go into the gory details, but you can imagine. I planted the original areas of the Newhall garden using the crystals and NEVER had any gopher activity in those areas the entire 18 years of its existence. They were thick as fleas in the other areas, but not in the polymer beds. I didn't use it in the newer areas because the several pounds of dry crystals were in a plastic bag in my dining room when a fire broke out. With all the smoke and the fire department's water, they literally called out the Hazmat team for the black, gooey mass they found. My friend had let her resale license go and the stuff was outrageously expensive back in the 1990's so I was in no position to be willing to buy ten or more pounds of it to keep it on hand for more plantings.

So, plant all the "toxic" plants you wish. If they want in, if they want the plant sitting behind the "toxic" one, they WILL get it. No plantings will deter them. I do NOT envy your gopher battle and wish you all the best in your never-ending struggle. Thankfully, I now no longer have any "wild life" to deal with in my "retirement" garden. Just the blamed Toy Fox Terrors who claim the yard as THEIRS and who feel rose hips (including the ones I deliberately pollinate), plums, apples and peaches are TOMATOES, which I can't grow as they never allow them to ripen and then plant them EVERYWHERE. They help themselves to everything which appears it may be a "tomato", so if you feed your dogs tomatoes (most LOVE them), NEVER let them see where they come from or you'll NEVER get another from you garden.

Not quite half of the Newhall garden from the mid nineties. I couldn't capture it all in a single shot from anywhere I could access .

When I first moved to these desert hills, there were gophers all over the gully out in back. The badgers which live in this area moved in and took care of the gophers fast. They even worked the slope down to the gully, and a badger and I had a stare down about 19 years ago. The badger backed down. Badgers never did any damage to my garden, and cleaned out the gophers and left. The gully and surroundings remain gopher-less, and there are no tunnels with their characteristic piles of frass near the tunnel entrances. Sadly, we do have voles on occasion. Diane

The gully in spring looking a little green which is temporary. Ye-haw, no gophers anywhere.

Thank you, Roseseek and Diane, for commiserating with me. I wish the badgers would come! Roseseek, your garden looks beautiful -- and Diane, I've seen so many of your garden photos, I kNOW yours is beautiful! My dog loved tomatoes, but all my tomatoes are in pots and raised beds, and he never bothered them. A couple of times I gave him a fresh cherry tomato while outdoors, and he would spit it out. So I'd bite into mine, and then he'd eat his. You'd think he was a medieval prince or something. I did flush out a gopher once -- in my first year or so here -- and made my husband kill it. I felt very guilty about that. And, yes, I have stomped a gopher or two. My first dog had a killer instinct and could dispatch a gopher. My sister's lab hunted them quite successfully. Neighbor used to have an orange kitty (Cheetoh) who would hunt the gophers and leave his prizes on their front door mat...

The company I last worked at happily allowed me to convert their landscaping to a vegetable plot. When gophers appeared my coworkers first tried trapping which didn't work. Then they blasted the hoses for hours into any new hole. Their 3 Labs were on standby. Finally after 3 days 2 critters ran out of the ground, 1 was caught, the other ran off. We never had a problem again. I've heard that gophers often move to new territory after a while so maybe we lucky. I hope to never see any here. I do hope you find a solution soon.

Gophers are such a plague here that it is impossible for any plant to survive in the ground.

We tried those gopher baskets, but in our alkaline soil and water, they only lasted a couple of years before deteriorating enough to let the gophers in, and we have had more than one plant eaten down to a smooth knob, so the plant fell over.

Finally, we admitted defeat. As a last resort, we began planting in 15-20-G "squat" pots with 3/4-1-inch holes drilled in the bottom, and lower sides.

And that works.

I have never heard of a squat pot! Sounds like a toilet! I'll have to look that one up. So far my cages are lasting a while -- but I do have 2 roses left uncaged from before. One is a huge climber on a slope, so I just pray the gophers leave it alone. Soozie -- how fun that you were able to make a veggie garden at work! I WISH the gophers would give up. But no. We are adjacent to the Los Padres National Forest, no fencing. So we will have a never-ending supply. My dad had a smaller place and would put dog poop in the gopher and mole tunnels until they gave up and went elsewhere. I've tried all the remedies you can find online -- juicy fruit gum, etc. Nope Nope Nope. Sheila -- I remember your photos. I, too, have found nubs at the bottom of a rose cane, not even a glimmer of a root. So sad. I try to stay vigilant, but it just takes a couple of bold ones to sneak in when I'm out of town or down with a cold or something. Argh! I wish you all strength and perseverance!

Omg my neighbor and I were joking on the weekend that we should try dynamite next LOL! They’re so bad in my neighborhood, nothing works. We trapped & killed seven over the course of 2 weeks and still they come. They took out my fig tree, grapefruit tree, a standard intrigue rose and fragrant cloud…the list goes on. I plant my tomatoes in grow bags on the second story balcony of my house they haven’t figured out yet how to scale the storm drain pipes. That’s also where I keep my potted rose ghetto, so they’re safe…for now. The coyote in my neighborhood are chonkers with all the wildlife here and barely make a dent.

What torture for a gardener. I guess what I would do is buy a dog bred for ratting...any kind of terrier would be good at this. But, you probably don't want a dog. :) I had a Bedlington Terrier many years ago and he would show me where the voles were...I'd lift the rock and he'd flip it up in the air catch it and eat it. He was very good at this. I sure hope you can get this solved. Or could you grow roses in pots, like I do? Anyway...good luck.

You have my hearfelt sympathy, all of you who combat critters. Diane , you were lucky with the badgers; thank Heaven there are no gophers here, but some years ago badgers invaded my garden and caused tremendous distruction. I think they were attracted by the fish emulsion that I had foolishly used on the roses. It took me at least two years of hard work re-inforcing my fence at the bottom to finally-I HOPE-discourage them.

I’m glad the closest I’ve come to a gopher is watching Caddyshack! That’s what I’ve learned from reading this thread, DD! 😮

Oh, and the Squatty Potty commericial is still a gas!

Is there a such thing as stainless steel hardware cloth? Im betting it would cost a fortune but it might last longer. I think squatty pots are just shorter black nursery pots. Sometimes they are also wider. If you got a larger tall one, you could probaly just cut it shorter.

All this talk about gophers and moles reminded me of one time my grandmother was having bad problems with gophers and wanted me to send her some Castor Bean seeds. I used to grow pretty red castor bean plants for a tropical-looking vibe and supposedly they repels moles & gophers. She must have heard about it and looked locally for seeds and couldn't find any. So I sent her some.

Well the stupid post Office didnt hand stamp the padded envelope (as marked) but instead ran it through the machine and it got caught, thus crushing & shredding up most of the beans! This was before I knew what riacin was! Um yeah, I am never sending castor bean seeds again. They apparently just taped it shut and delivered it to her. She ended up with a few bean seeds to plant and I don't even recall now if they actually worked haha! All I remember is freaking about about them shredding the envelope.

SD Shine. Some days I feel like I'm one step away from Caddyshack! I've never heard chonkers before. Does it mean crazy or plump or something else? I'm learning so much this week!

Carol -- I think my sister's lab could figure out the gophers because she has a huge fenced yard for the dog to play in for hours. I don't have any fencing, but do have a ton of wild life, so I could not leave a dog unattended in the yard for hours -- which is what I think it would take for them to figure it all out, do the patient stalking, etc. And, you're right, not ready for another dog! :-( I *have* thought about adopting the feral barn cats that are offered from time to time. But then they might take my little birdies.

I don't want a badger destroying my garden, but I would love to SEE a badger!

Sultry, the stainless steel gopher baskets are a thin stainless steel, and the gophers chomped right through them! Castor Bean is an invasive plant in California, so maybe it is better that the post office shredded the envelope! Can you imagine if the feds had showed up to question you about trying to poison people with your castor bean!??!!! 😱🙀

BEN. I think I need to go wash my eyes and ears out!!!! Was that ever on TV, or just online??

Deborah - oh, yeah...no fencing. Plus you're not ready. It was just a shot in the dark idea.

Badgers look like very mean raccoons on stubby legs. Apparently nothing can outdig a badger. But in case one of the varmints gets away from the badger, a coyote stands by to chase down the varmint. Badgers can't tun fast. So these two predators work in tandem. That's what they say in these parts. This county pays a bounty on gopher tails, or at least they used to do so......I love kitties and my current love is a sweet orange kitty named Finn. He's released from house arrest to go out and hunt voles and mice if weather permits. Finn is a very cautious, fraidy cat, and he stays in our back yard--doesn't even venture to the front. He is frightened of the road and cars. Anyway, he's well supervised, and cautious, but he's hell on voles and mice. I've had only one bad vole attack, my fault, in winter of 2022 because I left a packed stand of heliopsis dead tops which the voles used for cover to build a vole city beneath the heliopsis. Lesson learned. Don't give voles cover in winter. I dug up the helopsis, and Finn moved in and polished off the voles, which we occasionally find, minus their heads. Diane

I love heliopsis and used to leave it up in winter as cover for birds. But in the winter of 2022, this army of heliopsis was used for vole cover, to build their city, move in, and kill three of my roses.

Long ago, we had planted a cutting of "Ragged Robin" which was the finest (and I'd bet NOT virused) one we'd ever seen. It was doing SO well, that I frankly cried when I went down there one morning, and found it laying on its side -- Every root eaten down to nothing. Just a round knob.

It had been 5 ft. tall.

Clay picked it up and put the bottom of it in a bucket of water.

After a few days, we planted it in a 20-G Squat.

Kept it watered well, and it never hesitated."

Today, it's about 7-ft. tall.

I know the gopher frustration all too well and I’m almost afraid to say that I’ve pretty much conquered them, because I’m sure to find a new mound in my yard tomorrow morning. But, in my walled in yard and garden area, I have pretty much eradicated them by two methods: cats and poison. I know, everyone is going to tell me how dangerous it is to use poison when you have pets and I get that. But though I’ve lost a few barn cats to the coyotes here, I’ve never lost a pet to poison. I’ve lost gophers to the poison and that’s good with me. I’ve tried so many methods you mentioned: traps, smoke bombs, flooding tunnels, etc. I’ve gotten some that way, but never got on top of the problem. I tried the gopher poison pellets and that only gave them a bellyache for several days and then, back to their dirty work! One day when I was out of options, I grabbed a bucket of rat poison, the stuff that is shaped like a snickers bar. I opened the mound to where there was an open tunnel, shoved a whole bar of poison in, covered it with a heavy rock and covered it back up. I watched for days for any more activity. I kept doing this for any new tunnels and I have finally gotten on top of the problem. Now out front in my orchard area, there are still many, many mounds! I need a pet badger.

I plant most of my roses (eventually) permanently in 15 gallon black nursery pots. The two types are 'squats' and 'talls'. All are in the range of 15-18 inches in height and diameter. When you calculate the volume, the squats hold more soil than the talls :-D

I was surprised to hear that you had gophers chew through pots of any kind. That is different from my experience. I lived for decades in gopher country (I have since moved) and I found that that rigid wire cages worked reasonably well (not perfectly). I did not like the soft flexible wire cages, very fiddly to work with and I abandoned them. There is also someone making stainless steel cages that lasted better in the soil. More expensive, and very conspicuous unless you spray paint them black or dark brown with Rustoleum or a similar ourdoor paint, which I did. But when I really wanted to protect special plants, I used 15 gallon nursery pots (the squat kind) with several dozen 2/3" holes drilled in the pottom third of the pot, buried in the ground. 20 gallon woud be even better for truly large roses, but I never did that myself. Credit where credit is due, I got the idea from Jeri. Thank you, Jeri! You need to plant with the top rim 3-4 inches above the surface so that the gophers have to expose themselves to danger (owls, dogs, maybe hawks) in the garden. The extra holes are to make the water inside and outside the pots be at an equilibrium so that the roses are neither desparately dry or drowning in too much water.

Rosefolly -- thanks for your comments here. I am still using the harder gopher wire baskets/cages, and they DO work to protect the roots. My only complaint is how big I have to dig a hole, and for smaller, own-root roses, I think that really slows them down. Maybe I need to put all smaller ones in pots until they fill out the 5-gallon gopher wire baskets. But I'm also a tough love kind of gardener. I don't have the time or inclination to baby them! Yes, I've had gophers take a drainage hole in the bottom of a pot and then expand it. Not the pots on concrete, but any that sit on the ground. So either I have to set it on a gopher wire basket, or plant whatever I want to keep within the pot in a gopher wire basket. Resin, plastic, ceramic, and oak barrels. All have holes in them (not all of the pots, but at least one in each of the above). A gardener just told me yesterday to chop up a fennel bulb and put a piece of fennel in with the trap. So today I rinsed out all my traps, sprayed some lube to make sure evyerthing slides well, and then rubbed them down with fennel and put little pieces of fennel in the tunnels. While I was gathering the traps, a gopher actually popped his head out and grabbed some new little seedlings. I threw him a piece of fennel, but he disappeared down his tunnel. I wish I'd had my camera. The gopher hawk (before all the treatments) was about 4" from his come-outsit. (ha! blast from the past! when we played marbles/aggravation growing up, my mom was always nervous about landing in someone else's "come-outsit" -- where you start the game when you come out of your little marble den. "Oh! I don't want to land there! That's your come-outsit!"

Anyway -- Rosefolly -- I guess you are glad you don't have to deal with gophers anymore!

p.s. the gopher looked really cute.

Deborah, good grief, you must have gophers galore, and bold as brass. How horrible. We had a few around when we first moved here, and before the badgers did their job on the gophers. The gophers were secretive, and the only one I saw was lying on the yard grass and had been killed and torn apart by a kitty, I think. A badger would have carried the gopher off and devoured it, I'm sure. With all the snow we have, I'm watching for voles who love to tunnel under snow and do their dirty work. Diane

DIANE!!!! So good to "hear" your voice! :-D

Dang those voles.

Oh -- these gophers ARE bold as brass. During the pandemic, we had to each our classes outside, under these big tent/canopy things. California doesn't always have good weather -- one time the wind blew my laptop off the table, and a student caught it! Another time we were so called I had to give the students a break so they could go to their rooms and get big blankets to huddle under. The good thing was that we were able to stay open and face-to-face when most other colleges were online. The bad news was that I wrecked a good number of shoes and ruined the hemlines of several pairs of trousers/slacks (I won't say pants as a courtesy to some of our international friends who would have a very different vision of what I'm trying to communicate here). In a couple of places, the grassy lawn area became totally overrun by gophers and ground squirrels, so as I was moving around to teach I would step in various holes. Plus, all the foot traffic, chairs, rain, gophers, etc. made the area pretty muddy. One day for a faculty lunch time talk, someone sat down with their sandwich and one chair leg went all the way down a hole and he tipped over. It was only funny because it wasn't me!

Deborah, I know farmers and ranchers here hate gophers because of the crop damage they do, but also the gopher holes cause cattle and horses to break legs. The counties offer a bounty on gopher tails that are brought into the proper office (the department of gopher tails--ha). I could go on. I just thought of something I did years ago when I spotted vole or possibly gopher holes. I stuffed wads of aluminum foil down the holes. Lots of wads. And it seemed to totally frustrate the little devils from ever using those holes again. I got the idea from learning to stuff small places with foil to prevent mice from entering a house. Mice won't chew chew the foil. Good luck getting rid of these varmints, but you really need a few badgers. Don't you have hawks and coyotes? They are helpful, too. Diane

The hawks, coyotes, king snakes, bobcats, etc are really sleeping in the job! The vector control guy told us to stuff steel wool in any places where rats might try to get in…maybe I should stuff steel wool at the bottom of plant holes!!

That might be a good idea, Deborah. It would work on the same principle as aluminum foil. You say above vector control. Do you mean varmint control. Vectors are math. Diane

Diane, there is another definition of vector, other than the math one :-D

https://sustainability.santabarbaraca.gov/programs/vector-control

I wonder if the origin of vector control comes from math - to plot disease vectors? varmint control is what Yosemite Sam does.

Thank you, DD

BTW, I made a typo. The holes were not 2/3", but rather 3/8". Young gophers can wiggle through a 2/3" hole

Deborah, it could be the origin. But I'm not Y.Sam, and I do varmint control. Kitties are good at vole control, and probably would inhibit gophers if the gophers were around here. Diane