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The Empowerment of Chicken Wire

11 years ago

I've been so depressed with the gophers (yes sorry, yet ANOTHER gopher thread). It seems the odds have now tipped in the gophers' favor - I cannot seem to keep ahead of them and they are doing a tremendous amount of damage.

Saddened by the loss of some smaller dahlias which are becoming one of my very favorite companions to my roses, I went out and bought 4 biggy dahlias. No clue of names, one all dark red (about 7" diameter), one dark maroon with white edges (a little smaller), one white with purple edges, and an outrageous yellow inside, red outside, which of course I have in the same bed as Ketchup & Mustard.

I found some chicken wire on the ranch, and lined the holes for the dahlias with it. It felt SOOO good. At least these 4 plants will be protected from those nasty gophers.

Not quite ready to start digging up all the roses and replanting, but certainly everything new going into the garden will have such protection.

I was so empowering, and only a few extra minutes in the planting process.

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Comments (2)

TNY78
11 years ago
I never knew until I started reading posts on these forums that you guys out West had so many gopher problems! I just assumed they were like our moles; annoying, but not really too big of an issue. It seems like they just cause a tremdous amount of work for the people who like to garden! More power to you....fight those gophers!

Tammy
Kippy
11 years ago
I spent a good part of the morning making our tiny lawn look worse than it already did. Just in time for the big party on Wednesday...

I realized something, at each major "feeding" hole excavation cluster, there was a large Alaska Shasta Daisy plant close by. With little chew marks too.

I looked around the yard and noticed almost all the worst gopher damage was close to a shasta daisy, three guesses where all the shasta daisies are now. Good thing we were not happy with how much water they wanted or how big they got.

The gophers also did a number to the roots of our unknown old rose suckers, so those were dug up (not bareroot time here but what can ya do) and moved them. I think they were just in the gopher highway zone were they come from the neighbors brick pile.

I have a few traps set, I sure hope I have less gopher activity tomorrow.

Oh and we put baskets over the poor lavenders the skunks dig up every night.

Wildlife...not the kind I love
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