Gopher Wars Continued
More from Teri:
I like to wear suspenders AND a belt, so I’m thinking of using a combination of 1/2″ hardware cloth AND 6″ of rock at the bottom of my 20″ raised beds. Mostly the rock would be to take up space and provide more drainage and also as a further discouragement to the gophers. But is rock really less expensive than soil?
I think gophers would chew through any sort of plastic–they have chewed clan through plastic valves inside my sprinkler valve boxes…causing me to replace them with brass valves. Take that, you annoying creatures!
Sometimes I feel like Bill Murray in Caddy Shack, but I’m with you on the glass! Yuck!
Answer from Pat:
I probably read your mind, since as soon as I wrote that answer it occurred to me I should have suggested putting rock or gravel under and also nailing on the wire. Many people have done this and so far as I know it works to keep gophers out of raised beds. I am not sure that gravel or crushed rock alone would work because the earth from the raised beds eventually sifts down into it and then gophers would just push the earth and rocks aside and worm their clever way through it.
Yes, of course the gophers would chew through the landscape cloth. That’s a given, but then the idea is they would encounter the broken glass. The cloth would be there indefinitely, despite holes made in it by gophers, to help mark the spot for future removal of the glass. That was the idea, not to keep out the gophers, but the broken glass for sure will do so—not that I am advocating the use of broken glass. Like you, emphatically, I am not. As far as expense, you will need to do the research on that, but I believe crushed rock or gravel costs less than top soil.
Thanks very much for your kind words Yes, I totally agree that my book works hand-in-hand with Sunset Western Garden Book. They belong side-by-side on the gardener’s book shelf.
Thanks a million, Pat! I can’t believe a landscape legend such as yourself takes the time to actually email readers! You are awesome!
I would be adrift without your month by month “To Do” list!
Ever since I was a magazine editor many years ago and all the years while I was on TV I have always answered every single question ever sent to me. (Except one and that time we lost the address.) In the old days the letters were handwritten and were sent to me in a big envelope every Friday by the TV station (Channel 39, NBC in San Diego.) There were about ten a week and I answered them Friday night and over the weekend by hand. People sent their own stamped self-addressed envelopes which made it easy.
Now I have a website and a web-partner to manage it. Questions are flooding in. I am addicted to answering them. I am hoping they help many more folks than just the persons who write in, but I am too much of a perfectionist and write long answers covering every possible problem. This I have to find a way to change or I won’t be able to continue and also write books, paint, travel, and have a life in nature and with family and friends, all of which are important to me.
Glad you like my “To-Do” lists at the end of each monthly chapter. No one grows all the plants on those lists, but at least they can find the items that apply to them.
OMG Pat! I see you recently came out with a book on Organic gardening for So Cal-ers! I just finished raking up the last of my brown Narcissus leaves and yanking up weedy grasses that are growing in an obnoxious manner underneath my Muhlenbergia, so I’m off to my reward (Barnes and Noble) to get it!
I live in Topanga Canyon on an acre and a half and there is never any shortage of gardening chores on my “To Do” list. Next week I’ll tackle building three 4′ x 8′ raised bed (20″ high) veggie gardens. Late in the season, I know, but the soil and compost can settle in, then I’ll be ready for some cool-reason crops–organic–the Pat Welsh Way! Yay!
Delighted to know you are galloping off to B&N to get my new book! You’re lucky to have a whole acre and a half in Topanga Canyon, a nostalgic place for me. When Lou and I were first married, we rented a house on the beach in Malibu, just north of there. I took cuttings of a big shrubby scented geranium that grew in that garden. I still grow it today.