Basket Bondage?

It’s spring in full-tilt boogie. Where there are gophers, the trend has been to plant in wire baskets. In the past ½-inch aviary wire was used. While fairly easy to work with, it doesn’t last a long hardware cloth with regards to rust. There are some pre-made commercial wire baskets. They aren’t very deep, but the wire is studier than aviary wire.

The fear is what happens to the roots that grow thru the wire. As illustrated in my blog of 5/10/10, many roots are eaten at the wire’s edges. This makes the plant more like a container plant with the roots feeding only within the wire basket. Those that do manage to escape the cruddy teeth of the western pocket gopher have to deal with growing in and thru the wire.

The question is as the roots that grow thru the basket, as shown on the left, get harmed and is growth reduced? Wire can be included within the tissues of growing plants without apparent harm. The other photograph shows how an oak tree is slowly swallowing a 4” X 4” sign post.

In my experience a plum tree planted in a very shallow wire basket was greatly stunted. It failed to produce the thicket of long spindly shoots each summer. With all the other trees planted within 4’ deep & 3’ wide baskets, seems the trees a perfectly happy. They are the Asian pear, plum, plumcot, apple, and persimmon trees.

So it seems wire is simple swallowed up by the basket and the transport of water & nutrients up-and-down the tree remains relatively unharmed.



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Let me know what you think. Visit my web site to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books. Thanks, Robert

Gopher It - Baskets & All

Spring time and baskets are rollin’…into the ground. Gophers in the west (certainly around my home) have sprung from the womb and are seeking new territory. This means there’s a mass migration as each gopher tries to stake out it’s new home. Thus many gophers means plenty of damage to roots. In my neck of the woods, gardeners are “planting” wire baskets with the transplants inside. It seems to work, but not all the time. I lost an apple tree to a gopher who simply climbed over the wire and into a protected paradise of yummy rootlets. I spent hours in the USDA Ag. Library (the largest collection of ag. and hort. books in the country) looking for “the answer”. I finally found a report where the researchers wanted to capture live gophers. They built a “V”-shaped live trap with 10-inch-tall wire sides. The gophers simply crawled over the wire. Alas, my futile attempt at a four-inch exposure above the mulch didn’t save the apple tree. However, I learned a lot about roots after I dug up the roots of the apple tree. Nearly 90% were inside the two-foot wide by 24-inch deep wire basket. Most roots where eaten off just as they tried to leave the basket—as seen in the photo on the left. Here is one of the lone roots that escaped the greedy gopher mouths.

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Let me know what you think. Visit my web site to learn about my new book on drip irrigation and other gardening books. Thanks, Robert

Gophers Rule (?)

The attempts to annihilate gophers in agricultural fields and gardens reveal how resilient life can be. Gophers are industrious and fertile. These pesky subterranean rodents love to eat the roots of wild and domesticated plants alike. They must tunnel no matter what they eat in order to survive. A typical gopher's teeth grow 15 inches per year. If the they didn't burrow around, a gopher's teeth would grow into a long curve which would impale the base of their own skull.

They are as reticent at being killed as they are reluctant to tunnel. A farmer might put poison bait in the soil, in fake gopher tunnels made by a tractor-draw implement, over a 20-acre area. Yet this will only protect the center of the field for approximately two years. By then, the offspring of the gophers around the edge will have migrated into the "free" area. Gardeners face a more difficult problem. Gophers are territorial. They make plenty of babies (up to seven in each “brood”) who must stake out their own turf. Even extensive trapping, the Macabee trap is my favorite, is often compromised.

Only religious, consistent trapping (especially in the Spring when the young are trying to establish their new territory), is a possible solution. Trapping in your neighbors’ yards can help the invasion from the edges. Kill more gophers!

Let me know what you think.

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Gettin' Gophers

Even though it's summer, the little ground rats are taking down some of my plants. So, a different look than previous posts on killin' gophers.

I’ve had good results with the “California box trap”. I think the box trap is easier to use if you’ve never set gopher traps before. The box trap in the photo here shows the installation, but the trigger has been activated – see the wire in the up position. [The gopher from the same trap pictured above would fill the entire box!]

To set the box traps, locate the main tunnel with a probe. I use a 24” piece of rebar. The permanent or main burrow [as opposed to the feeding runs] can be found by probing about eight to 12 inches from the plug side of the visible mound and is usually located six to 12 inches deep. When the probe penetrates the gopher’s burrow, there will be a sudden, noticeable drop of about two inches. You may have to probe repeatedly to locate the gopher’s main burrow, but your skill will improve with experience.

Use a shovel or garden trowel to open the tunnel wide enough to set traps in pairs facing opposite directions. By placing traps with their openings facing in opposite directions, a gopher coming from either end of the burrow can be intercepted.

Box traps are especially useful when the diameter of the gopher’s main burrow is small (less than three inches.)

Some claim it is a good idea to use lettuce, carrots, apples, alfalfa greens, or a drop of anise oil as bait. I rub all surfaces I’ve touched with grass or weeds and be sure to rub the trap trigger. [Or, use hospital disposable gloves.] Then I leave a piece of grass or whatever then it has been eating behind the trap’s wire.

After setting the traps, exclude light from the burrow by covering the opening with dirt clods, sod, cardboard, or some other material. Fine soil can be sifted around the edges to ensure a light-tight seal. If too much light enters, the gopher may plug the burrow with soil, filling the traps and making them ineffective. I place a large piece of plywood or cardboard over the entire “excavation” to make sure no light gets through.

The theory is that the gopher feels the flow of air and wants to plug the breach of the tunnel system. The gopher runs through the tunnel and is in the box before it knows it because the flashing on top of the box excludes light but allows air to escape.

Check traps often and reset them when necessary. If a gopher is not caught within 24 hours, reset the traps in a different location.

This is adapted, in part, from: Publication 7433, University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources. Revised January 2002.

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Root Bondage

Here’ a view from above of what’s left of an apple tree’s roots growing in a wire basket.

Wire baskets around here are becoming required planting additions for perennials, shrubs, and trees. I once had a wire basket protecting the apple tree in the photo. The wire was four inches above the mulch. That didn’t stop a gopher from climbing over the wire to be encaged with all those succulent roots. The tree leaned over and simply died.

As the photo shows [I’m the only person I know of that has excavated the roots as they grow when using wire baskets] very few of the roots got out of the basket to explore a bigger volume of soil. For practical purposes, this tree should have been treated like a container plant—keeping all the moisture, fertility, and mulch within the basket’s diameter. BUT, the wire must extend 6-12 inches above the mulch to have a shot at excluding these pesty critters. Such a wire basket is very hard to make and isn’t to be found commercially. Your up to your own to make a Rube Goldberg machine-made, anti-gopher basket .

However, wire baskets can work with smaller plants.

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Go Pher Them

Pocket gophers, with Botta's pocket gopher (Thomomys bottae) being most widespread of the five species found in California, are a gardener’s the greatest fear in the west. [Those who garden east of the Mississippi river are free of these elusive pests.] When the Russians settled just north of Santa Rosa on the coast in 1812, the story goes “we could have made a good living if it weren’t for the land rats”.

These pesky critters are burrowing rodents that get their name from the fur-lined external cheek pouches, or pockets, that they use for carrying, and short fur that doesn't cake in wet soils they dig and tunnel constantly. If they don’t constantly make tunnels their teeth will curl up toward the brain and pierce it.

They spend a lot of time on the surface at night and are the prey of barn owls. Many vineyards, in their futile attempt to appear environmentalists, build barn owl boxes. They don’t know that the great-horned has a territory of up to ¼ of a mile from its nest. The one near my house and next to a vineyard, has this large predation area and keeps out the barn owls. Ever year I hear the great-horned owl gradually find each other for mating with hours of hooting. The vineyard is 100 feet from my house. Not many barn owls near me. Furthermore, the usual diet for a barn owl eats only one gopher each night. Thus, the gardeners in my area have resort to trapping (killing) these “ground rats”.

Unlike moles, gophers “throws” or mounds are crescent- or horseshoe-shaped when viewed from above. [See the left photo.] Mole mounds appear circular and have a plug in the middle is more likely volcano-shaped. Unlike gophers, moles leave a raised ridge to mark their path. Also, moles are carnivores and gophers are vegetarians.

Pocket gophers live in a burrow system that can cover an area of 200 to 2,000 square feet. Feeding burrows are 6 to 12 inches below ground, whereas they nest and food storage chamber that may be as deep as 6 feet. [I’ve dug into food stashes of dozens of gnawed carrots.] Gophers seal the openings to the burrow system with earthen plugs. Short, sloping lateral tunnels connect the main burrow system to the surface and are created during construction of the main tunnel for pushing dirt to the surface.

The University of New Mexico says “… [gophers] may occur in densities of up to 16 to 20 per acre”. Ha! They’ve never been in my garden!

So, trapping is a must. The other photo is a eight-inch long gopher caught in a California box trap. These ingenious traps worked on the fact that gophers maintain their main “highways” six to 12 inches below the surface, not the surface feeding tunnels. If the trap is put in the main run with the metal strip on the top-rear of the box slightly raised and all sides covered with dirt. This allows air to escape but excludes light. Usually the gopher wants to protect its main “highway” when it feels air rushing out. Running toward the open hole, the gopher is in the trap before it knows it because there is no light to give it a clue as to the breach of the tunnel. Gotcha!

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Gophers & Robins - who would have guessed?

Gophers love roots and moles love worms.

Robins also love worms. They all came together one year just about this time.

I was watching from my second-story window as a gopher bumped up against the concrete slab that is part of my patio. The gopher was pushing its mound of soil (a throw) against the concrete. A robin landed on top of the throw and ate worms as they appeared from below.

It was the vibration that sent the worms topside to an ugly death. This is not just a single weird occurrence. There are worm “hunters” in Florida that gather worms for fishing bait by “thumping”. They have a wide, long board which they insert into the soil. With a wooden mallet they strike the top of the board that’s sticking above the soil. A gradual, rhythmic “thumping” causes a vibration that in turn causes worms to come crawling out of the ground. This time to lure unsuspecting fish.

That gopher was the thumper for the robin.

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Plants Really Drink and Eat Near Our Toes.

I consider those ever-popular metal tree root deep-feeders as virtually useless and mostly harmful.

Spring has been warmer than past years up here “on the mountain”. Friends are thinking about watering. I hope they think carefully. (My plants and trees receive no summer irrigation. But that’s another blog altogether.)

The roots of many plants, it turns out, don't really get most of their water and nutrients from the deep regions of the soil. Rather, most plants, tree and shrubs gather all the moisture and nutrients they require from the top 12- to 36-inches, depending on the plant. The first foot is the most critical. Here is where the soils are most aerobic and this facilitates the exchange of nutrients from the minerals into soluble form that plants can absorb. Feeding root hairs actually grow up toward those first moisture-laden nutrients. (The lettuces pictured here can send roots as deep as four feet--if you don't have gophers! This is why boxes with wire bottoms should be 24-inches high instead of 12 inches. To give the roots "room to move". Yet the lettuces still get much of their "food" from the top 12 inches. So careful irrigation is a must.)

The roots of many plants, it turns out, don't really get most of their water and nutrients from the deep regions of the soil. Rather, most tree and shrubs gather all the moisture and nutrients they require from the top 12- to 36-inches, depending on the plant. The first foot is the most critical. Here is where the soils are most aerobic and this facilitates the exchange of nutrients from the minerals into soluble form that plants can absorb. Feeding root hairs actually grow up toward those first moisture-laden nutrients. (I describe this in more detail in my newest book - Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help  Roots Thrive.)

An old adage advises gardeners to water trees deeply; this often means infrequent, but lengthy irrigation. Increasingly, drip irrigation has been used as a tool for deep, occasional irrigation. Infrequent, deep irrigation tend to produce two points in the total irrigation cycle where the soil life and root hairs are damaged enough to reduce plant growth—during both the drying stage and when the soil is too wet. Dry soil kills off the tender root hairs as they can’t survive too much air. When the ground is flooded, root hairs die and noxious gases can’t escape nor pure air enter—or as pure as it may or may not be.

The metal probe of a typical deep root feeder is 18- to 24-inches long. This means that the application of the water begins below almost the entire zone of maximum water and nutrient uptake.

Good pore space makes for healthier plants. An ideal mineral/humus/pore structure balance results in a crumbly soil that allows water to percolate down, harmful gases to vent out, and refreshing air to permeate the soil. Soil breathes 24/7 at a lumbering, beneficial rate we cannot see. A soil with a healthy structure allows for easy and deep root growth and will produce the best-looking lawn, garden and tree growth.

Root feeders flood the pore space of the deeper soils, which quickly becomes flooded and anaerobic. Sometimes the deep soil saturates and the irrigation water backs up toward the surface so that more shallow soils actually get waterlogged. It's a bit backwards to send the water through a 24-inch deep probe just to apply the water 6- to 12-inches deep!

I recommend you just toss your root feeder—actually, recycle the scrap metal parts. (China could use them.) A good sprinkler can do a better job. And a drip irrigation system will promote the best growth possible—better than any other method of watering.

One garden’s “deep” soil is another garden’s “shallow” soil. Another hidden assumption about tree roots concerns the depth of your garden's soil. There are places where glacially-deposited topsoil extends for dozens of feet, but these are more the exception than the rule. If you have such a deep, loamy soil, then rejoice, but remember that the majority of moisture and nutrient absorption by trees still happens in the top two feet of the soil. Typically, most suburban yards have a very shallow layer of topsoil, if there's any left at all after construction. If, for example, there is a continuous layer of rich-orange clay some 12 inches under the ground, then the 12-inch layer of topsoil is, for all practical purposes, the only place your plant’s roots will be feeding.


Most heavy clays, whatever the color—and dark blue or pale white-gray are the worst—are relatively worthless to feeding tree roots. While clayey soil has plenty of nutrients, their availability is locked up in its tight, anaerobic structure and strong chemical bonds. Tree roots can, over many years and decades, grow somewhat into clay soils, but the number and extent of roots in the looser topsoil in far greater and more important to tree nutrition.

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Raised Beds-It's Spring!

Raised beds in the garden, not the bedroom.

The simplest and most inexpensive way to make raised vegetable beds is to cultivate and rake soil up into a mounded shape. This type of “bed” should in no way be considered a raised bed made by the cultivation method often referred to as the French intensive-biodynamic raised bed. See John Jeavons classic—How to Grow More Vegetables: Than You Ever Thought Possible on Less Land Than You Can Imagine. The methods outlined by Jeavons produces a proper mound of slightly-raised soil and offers the best way to improve the tilth and fertility of your soil.

Many gardeners, however, prefer to construct formal raised beds framed within masonry, plastic, or wooden sides. These sides retain the soil while imparting order and efficiency to the kitchen garden and helping to define it. Formal raised beds also provide a number of other advantages:

 Enhanced drainage for better growth.
 Soil which warms slightly sooner in the spring.
 Sides which help keep soil or mulch from spilling into paths.
 A structure which allows wire mesh to be added to the bottom of a bed to exclude tunneling pests such as moles, gophers, and hedgehogs. However, It’s obvious that carrots prefer a deep soil (as shown to the left) with good tilth and drainage, free of rocks and obstructions that can produce deformities. In less than ideal soils, cultivate as deeply as possible before seeding. Carrots are best grown in double-dug beds with vigilant trapping of gophers, or in boxes raised 24 inches above the soil line and constructed with wire bottoms to deter gophers or other underground gnawing pests. (The root system of a carrot is taken from my new book Roots Demystified, Change Your Gardening Habits to Help Roots Thrive. The grid is one-foot square.) This shows that in a deep soil carrots are able to grow nearly eight feet deep and five feet wide!. This means that even a 24-inch raised be leaves plenty of roots for vegetarian gophers to feast on. This illustrates why extra water and nutrients are needed to satisfy a normally vast root system. (Click on the image to get a clear, detailed view of the illustration as it appears in the book.)

When building garden boxes, line the bottoms with one-half-inch aviary wire, which comes in four-foot-wide rolls. One-inch chicken wire, while less expensive, may allow baby gophers to sneak inside the box. The aviary wire also has more galvanized metal and lasts longer in the ground. Even with this protective barrier in place, the taproot and many other roots will be eaten at the bottom edge of the wire.

 The Cadillac version is to use one-quarter-inch hardware cloth because it doesn’t rust through as quickly.
 When preparing beds for planting, be sure to work the soil with a spading fork to crack open the soil before building the box. After the soil is in, use a flat-bottomed spade so you don’t damage the wire.
 A way that pathways between beds can be cleaned and tended without disturbing plantings.

Raised beds also have certain limitations or drawbacks:

 A formal raised bed with solid sides will cost more and require more time and effort to construct than a simple mounded bed.
 Some gardeners find the angular geometry of the raised-bed structures unaesthetic. (Beds can, however, be masked by perennial plantings or low evergreen hedges.)
 When watering a raised bed with drip irrigation, extra effort must be made to bring the water supply into the bed unobtrusively.

There are many materials which can be used to construct a raised bed. Each has its own unique mixture of attributes and imperfections:

Used Bricks (Recycled)
Pluses:
 Very good looking; construction has character when first built.
 Since bricks are fairly narrow, the finished wall doesn’t take up excess garden space.
 Wire mesh is easily added to the bottom.
 Uses recycled materials.

Minuses:
 Expensive if new.
 Requires some masonry skill or practice to construct.
 In areas where the ground freezes, requires a poured concrete base.

Cinder Blocks

Pluses:
 Wide enough to sit on while gardening.
 If unmortared, easier to work with than brick.
 Can be built on a base of packed gravel
 Easy to add wire-mesh bottom .

Minuses:

 Not easily found as recycled material.
 Best used only for square and rectangular beds.
 Thick blocks take up garden space
 Looks gray and “industrial,” like concrete.
 The large holes in the blocks, usually placed facing up, tend to fill with mulch and soil from the bed.
 Unless mortar and a concrete base are used, the blocks will often settle in a slightly skewed position.

Plastic “Wood”
Pluses:
 Easy to work with, like lumber. No splinters.
 Made from recycled consumer plastic waste.
 Has a long life and won’t rot.
 Easy to add a wire-mesh bottom.
 Easier construction of odd-angled shapes such as octagons or pentagons.

Minuses:
 Up close, looks very fake.
 Expensive compared to lumber.
 Requires screws instead of nails for sturdy attachment.

Recycled, Untreated Rot-Resistant Lumber

The use of the two main rot-resistant lumbers available, redwood and cedar, is controversial due to environmental issues. They are, however, still the easiest material for building raised beds. (Use of recycled wood lessens environmental impact.)

Pluses:
 Good-looking natural surface.
 Available as recycled material.
 Easy to work with; no mask, gloves, or goggles required when using hand tools.
 Easy to add wire-mesh bottom.
 Can be used to construct odd-angled shapes.

Minuses:

 If in contact with the soil, may have to be replaced within 4-20 years. (Note: redwood heartwood can last this long, but white redwood sapwood usually rots within four years and should be avoided.)

So, the choice is yours. Happy gardening.

Please leave a comment- I'd like to hear from you.


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All rights reserved. Copyright 2008

NOTE: The comments section at the bottom of the post has disappeared. Click on the "___ Comments" button or the title under the "Blog Archives". Thanks, Robert

Visit my web site to learn more about my gardening books.

Gopher it!

It's spring, the young gophers are out, searching and fighting over new territory. The battle begins.

The earliest “modern” settlers of our coast north of the San Francisco bay were the Russians in March of 1812. They were gone by 1842. One anecdotal saying goes “we could have made a living if it weren’t for the ground rats”.

Ah yes, the hated gopher. These herbivores tunnel at both shallow and deep depths to eat on the roots of plants. An average of 22 gophers per acre translates into four pounds of fresh vegetation eaten every day—a rather healthy diet. It is thought that there are 1,000,000,000 rodents in California of which the most abundant is the pocket gopher. Large fur-lined external cheek pouches are used for temporally storing food. Thus the name pocket gopher, referring to these pouches, or pockets. Sometimes they collect pieces of roots, such a carrots, and stash them in a food reserve burrow for perhaps a truly “rainy day”. Many gardeners have watched a wiggling garlic top or freshly-planted lettuce and all of the sudden it is pulled beneath the soil. Fodder for the ravenous western pocket gopher.
(Those of you who live in the northeastern part of the country are blessed—no gophers. Skip the rest with delight.)

Gophers are very nocturnal creatures walking or skirmishing across the surface looking for new places to burrow. This is especially frantic in the spring, usually March and April, as young gophers go for their own territory. Once a gopher has a territory it maintains if for life. But for unexplained reasons, male gophers are polygamous which means their territories overlap or they wander at night to court their next “babe”.

The common gopher snake is thought of by gardeners as a hopeful controller of this pest. Alas, studies have shown that only 6.4% of the snake’s diet comes from gophers—better than nothing I guess. (Gopher snakes are territorial. So don’t try to move one form someplace to your garden. They’ll just wander off in pursuit of their previous home.) Rattlesnakes get only 2.5% of their diet from eating pocket gophers as the tunnel system makes it unlikely for them to coil and strike. The most significant predator, at 71.4% of it’s diet, is the barn owl which eats at night as the rodents scurry along the surface of the soil. The average barn owl will eat 155 gophers per year. Alas, if a great-horned owl lives within one square mile, the barn owls are scared away or eaten—something overlooked by the local vineyards that are trying to appear to be environmentally responsive by putting up barn owl nesting boxes near where great-horned owls reside.

In spite of the barn owls, most gardeners have resorted to wooden raised beds with wire bottoms—galvanized one-half inch aviary wire or hardware cloth. This doesn’t always stop them. A friend has vegetable boxes 12 inches high with wire bottoms. There was a gopher mound or “throw”, such as they are inclined to make when surfacing, up against the wood. He watched as the gopher merely climbed on top of the throw and hopped over the top of the board.

Wire baskets are becoming required planting additions for perennials, shrubs and trees. I once had a wire basket protecting an apple tree. The wire was four inches above the mulch. That didn’t stop a gopher from climbing over the wire to be encaged with all those succulent roots. The tree leaned over and simply died. However, wire baskets often work.

Lining the garden with a fence is trickier and riskier. Studies show that the fence would have to be at least two feet deep and up to seven feet deep in deep soils. One research study found gophers getting over a 10-inch high barrier! One recommendation would be that the fence would have to extend to 12 inches above the soil. Nothing is simple or safe!

I recently helped maintain an estate garden riddled with gophers. Even though all the dahlias were wrapped in 1/2” aviary wire, up to one quarter were destroyed by these troublesome varmits. I taught another guy on the crew how to use a Macabee trap—with its piercing tongs. After a month or so he had killed 100 gophers. So I presented him with a Macabee trap sprayed gold as a trophy. Sad truth was the owner stopped the trapping program. Gopher mounds showed up in her lawn and more dahlias bit the dust.

There is no silver bullet.

I must admit I find gophers fascinating, when I’m not cursing them, knowing that they must tunnel to keep their teeth in order. If unable to tunnel, their teeth would grow up to 14 inches a year in a curl that would eventually pierce their skull. Not a pretty sight. Although many gardeners would be delighted.

I’m always curious about their tunnel systems. The feeding tunnels, which terminate in a mound, are usually four too eight inches beneath the surface. The maintain “highways” used for routine travel are 12 or more inches deep. And gopher tunnels have been found at a depth of six feet. So I tried pouring plaster of Paris down a tunnel. I did get some of the plaster down to the second run. This mold of a gopher run hung from my ceiling for months.

After St. Helens, in Washington, erupted in 1980 it was the activity of gophers, their defecation, that brought mutually-symbiotic mycorrhizae to inoculate other plants for a better and healthier life and the restoration of the disturbed soil. (Mycorrhizae are beneficial fungi that extend to the root system of many plants to make it easier to gather nutrients such as phosphorous. Trees are especially dependent on phosphorous for good growth. Without the mutual symbiosis of the mychorrhizal association most trees would not prosper. The tree gives the mycorrhizae carbohydrates in exchange—this is not a parasitic association but is a two-way street for the benefit of both.)

Gophers turn over the soil more effectively than earthworms. And the mounds are good for the soil. One report (Effects of Pocket Gopher Mounds on Plant Production in Shortgrass Prairie Ecosystems, W. E. Grant, N. R. French and L. J. Folse, Jr.) states “…total above-ground plant production would be increased by roughly 5.5% by the presence of the mounds.” So they aren’t completely malicious critters with no worth what-so-ever.

I still hunt these “ground rats”.


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