How much harm do gophers do to plants? You mean, besides eating their roots and killing them? A better question is what harm they do to the gardener when they kill a valued plant. [BTW, they have an evil genius to choose the most expensive plant to kill][favorite rose, young apricot tree, tomatoes just ready to start producing aaargh! ] As for their tunnels helping to aerate the soil ... plant roots do a much better job [see cover crops] The link below shows how wide/deep plant roots extend. BTW ... use whatever means are available/suitable to get rid of those gophers. Here is a link that might be useful: Root Development of Vegetable Crops

No offense to hoovb, but yeah, Jean, I was waiting for someone to say something. It's a lot of work, trying to clean up all the "dirt" around here. It's an overwhelming task. It's like steppin' into "uncomposted manure", at times... Speaking of, Grandma, who would be 102 today, said that when she was a young girl, she'd go out and squish her bare toes on a cold morning in warm cow paddies. She also told me that when she was a child, her grandma told her that the Devil had laid her out on a stump, and the sun had hatched her. I used to think she was for real. Turns out, I started learning about biology, and that it was impossible for a mammal, like we are, to be hatched from an egg. And then I learned about the platypus. M

.. gardengal48, Thanks for the reply. I donâÂÂt have the resources to invest in a rain garden right now. All but one of our downspouts empties on to our property either directly or across the driveway and then onto the grass. IâÂÂll divert the last one from the street before the season starts in earnest. The lawn out front slopes away from the house and IâÂÂve noticed when IâÂÂve left a sprinkler on too long during my weekend deep watering routines it will leak through crack in the pavement to the street and quite some distance from the sprinkler. We have a winter rainy season and remain pretty dry the rest of the year. So we get a lot of rain during one season and our soil out front just isnâÂÂt holding it in. I planted a couple of trees out front and I think thatâÂÂs starting to do the trick on one side. The other side has an old tree right smack in the middle. IâÂÂve been propagating California poppies from an 89 cent pack of seeds I bought as an impulse buy in a drug store some time ago. I threw some seeds around when we first moved in and from the couple that thrived we now have them spreading about as I harvested the seeds over time. I go around and trim them in an attempt to keep them going all year long so their taproots keep running deeper and become more substantial. Time to spread a bunch of the seeds I saved now that itâÂÂs the end of November. One of these days IâÂÂll find some other suitable natives to plant. Native California plants offered are often Northern California and not always suited for our hot dry spot between the desert and the coast. For gardening IâÂÂm probably going to go down the container path. Our garage is in the back so a lot of ground is taken over by concrete. The rest of the yard was already planned and planted when we moved in and the open grass area is needed for the dogs. I havenâÂÂt figured out what to do with the lawn out front. IâÂÂm having troubles with the âÂÂwell conceivedâ part. In the meantime I keep the watering to a minimum and alternate between grass cycling and harvesting grass clippings for feedstock in the digesting bins I maintain for our yard clippings and kitchen scraps. to sense ..

Anyone have experience with long term (say 10 years) soil amendment? Yes, but we have to define what kind of amendment we want ;) The organic matter gets 'eaten', not by the clay soil, but the organisms in that soil. That organic matter doesn't last long is actually a very good thing even though it feels like lots of work. The decomp of the OM leads to increased fertility as well as formation of humus which aids in keeping those tiny clay particles from sticking to each other. The OM break down also leads to improved tilth which is simply individual soil particles getting glued together to form larger particles by secretions from the soil critters as they do their thing. This improves drainage and enables more oxygen to reach into the soil and nourish roots. However, if despite all the advantages of using OM to improve soil qualities you still wish a more permanent way to improve drainage/aeration of the soil and reduce the rate it compacts/clumps etc. then you can use a product called Turface. It's a calcined clay product used for sports fields. Unlike the clay you have now, this is fired at high temps so it remains very stable and never becomes 'muck'. It's not like pebbles that have no internal porosity either, it's incredibly porous. A substitute would be calcined DE which is sold by Napa Auto Parts stores as 'Floor Dry'. You can read more about Turface here. Click on the tab at the top "Where to buy" to input your zip code and find a local source. It lasts, literally, forever.