Why don't you poison the gophers and get ride of them once and for all?
Alternatively why not build an an automatic watering system to care for the plants in their existing pots?

Hermitian, goodness, you live in Vista with me. You must be the only person in S. California without a serious gopher issue. You can poison and poison and poison. And they just keep sending their relatives back to your yard. You can keep them at bay to some degree, but you you can never "get rid of them once and for all". If that were the case, I'd be a billionaire on that idea. I agree you should definitely try to control for gophers, but you'll never get them totally gone.

Barb, your slope is south-facing, which is absolutely ideal for sun. Plus, on a gentle slope, totally perfect. They may get some shade in the early morning and late afternoon, but that should not affect the amount of mid-day full sun, plus, in the winter they will get a good amount of sun being south facing.

You can try creating your own gopher cages out of hardware cloth instead of the more flimsy gopher cages. You cam make them bigger, and they will last longer, giving your trees another year or two to establish themselves if you want.

Set up your drip system and monitor your amount of water getting to your trees so you don't over water. Top dress with some good top soil like Kellog's GroMulch and then put mulch down over top, keeping it away from the trunks. Be sure the tree is planted higher in the middle of the well, than the perimeter of the well, so the water will collect at the perimeter of the well, away from the trunk to prevent foot rot.

Let us know how it goes.

Patty S.

This post was edited by hoosierquilt on Wed, Dec 3, 14 at 23:50

hosierquilt, mine are totally gone. Same treatment worked in Rancho Penasquitos. And previously growing up in Redlands we kept them out of the citrus orchards. If you want local help you can talk with the advisors at Crop Production Services. If you want evidence of my success then come visit me on Highland.

Barb

I would go ahead and plant outside. I have potted, bottomless container, and in ground citrus trees and fig trees. The in ground trees do far better than the potted, with the bottomless container trees still doing much better than the potted trees but not as good as the in ground.

A bottom less container is tall enough that the roots don't reach the bottom and bottom has been removed so the water goes into the ground the container sits on.

I have a video of a bottomless containerized tangerine tree getting potted up click below. Bottomless may be the way for you grow

Here is a link that might be useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AkMFbhlgB0

Herman, I also trap and poison, and set poison bait stations to keep the ground squirrels and roof rat population down to a low roar. Fortunately for me, my gopher issue is very very low, for the same reasons yours are, but you will never get rid of them entirely. They are rodents. And, they proliferate faster than my eradication techniques can manage, or the predators can eat. And I have every predator known to a rodent on and around my property, including the Spotted Weasel. Elusive but very effective predator. In fact, I just had on pop up for the first time in about 3 years, in my back yard. Trap is set.

Steve, a bottomless container will not deter gophers, unfortunately. They have a penchant for young citrus tree roots (and especially young fig tree roots). They merely tunnel underneath the container, then come up the bottom.

Patty S.

Hermitian, we trap all the time. Last year we got around 35 or so.
I have not tried poison, but I would be concerned about them possibly coming above ground to die, as we live in a suburban neighborhood with cats and we are near a wildlife preserve and get a lot of coyote, skunk, raccoon and hawks. What kind of poison do you use?

One neighbor used to have about a dozen feral cats and the other had a thick brush/hedgerow area decades old with a resident owl, and we had very little gopher troubles then.
Cat neighbor sold the house and the cats went to the pound, and the other neighbor cut down the brush are and the owl left. That was about 7 years ago and we had a huge population boom of gophers. First year we trapped almost 100. It has gone down a bit but like Patty said, there are always more moving in from the surrounding area, one gone, one moves in.

Patty thanks for the idea of hardware cloth cages. That will give me a few more years I think. I think it's better to plant in spring, so I could make the cages this winter.
There is an old irrigation system from the previous owner, but it was done with very cheap plastic lines and the gophers,(again!) chewed holes in them. I will do drip but leave the main lines above ground, probably mulched, so I can see and fix any chewed areas easily.

It used to be a home orchard with stone fruits, you can still see a couple left. But this area was not fenced back then and the darn deer really destroyed his trees over the years. The couple left have big strips of bark missing and are on their last legs.
Now the fence keeps the deer out mostly, plus I don't think they are as fond of citrus leaves as stone fruits leaves, though they will eat them if there's nothing else.

I think Steve was mostly saying that his plants do better in the ground, even the semi-container ones without bottoms. Not that it would deter gophers.

Barb you are correct. I miss read who had eradicate the problem and thought it was you. Until you fix your gopher problem oversize bottomless container will do. Steel feed trough would work fine.

Steve

Barb, the location(s) look fine to me. I have 35+ in the ground in Danville on lousy adobe fill clay. the lot is sloped and on a hillside so drainage is never an issue... (water retention can be).
I have found that 1/2 day sun is just fine and also that the trees with afternoon shade have done better (this could be due to chronic [drought] under-watering.
For all new plantings i dig down very shallow and pretty much plant on a large mound. I build up the mound / area around the planting with amended Napa soil; with granite gravel and a bit of compost (very light on the compost) and form a berm around 2' radius (or larger if needed). They are finicky but the soil is usually not the issue, consistent hydration and therefore adequate feeding is.

I do not have gophers. But, on multiple occasions have been told that to deter gohers, to bury a square pattern/network of 1 1/2' deep metal mesh. The gophers get claustrophic evidently. it sounds like allot of work.

If i do get an attack of gophers i will be hitting them with traps and poison - and perhaps watch Caddyshack for futher methods.!

- George