I use a very effective gas called "Giant Destroyer" and it is a god-send. They look like sticks of dynamite, come in 4 packs and can be found in any box store garden section. You light the fuse, stick it in the hole, and quickly cover it up - ensuring no gas is coming out of the ground anywhere and vwalah - the end. I've been using them for years to keep the horse pastures free of deadly holes. I just started using them in the garden this year as it became overrun with gophers. Had 5 different areas with gopher tunnels underneath rose/flower beds. One Giant Destroyer in a fresh hole leading to each tunnel and ... right now, all is quiet. I love animals and it doesn't make me feel good to kill these guys. But - I also love my flowers and horses...

Ahhh....the taste of sweet revenge! Thanks for the tip Jeri. I got two black box traps, doused them with carrot juice (that no one in MY house was going to drink), set the traps up end to end and caught a gopher in about an hour. As we were dousing with carrot juice we saw the earth moving. My DH jumped back about a foot....which was pretty funny. The gopher was trying to poke through the dirt before we even got the trap covered. The gophers seem to be tunneling under my neighboors sod lawn that they installed last year. They had some sort of special screening put in under the lawn to avoid seeing the gopher holes. It cost them thousands of dollars for their small front lawn. My neighboors are serious about their front lawn. They have no other plants to speak of so as long as the lawn looks pretty they are happy. In the meantime the gophers travel merrily over to my garden to feast. I have two golden retreivers that are very sweet but not much for catchin' gophers. They'd much rather catch a nap or two instead. I cleaned the trap and had DH reset it in the ground. There may be more, but tonight I will have sweet dreams. Thanks everyone! ~Melissa

I have the same problem as you with having cats... coyote food. As to garlic.... one year, as fate would have it, I ended up planting several hundred garlics all over the gardens. They all grew so well that I thought I would have garlic into my old age. One day I noticed a particularly nice specimen... leaning. Upon further inspection I found that the leaning top was all that was left of the garlic plant.... eaten from the root up. Slowly but surely every garlic plant... leaned. Now, I plant garlic in pots... just like all my other food plants. The Iris bed is 8" deep on top of hardware cloth and it sticks up out of the ground another 4". ANything not a Salvia/Sage gets planted in an underground wire cage. PS: writing in all caps is considered to be yelling on forums... or super emphatic.

Gophers are back .... I now have around 110 containers that I have buried in the ground. It seems that the gophers are pretty much not bothering the plants in the buried containers (yet ...). The gophers are even pulling down the California Poppies! I think this is the first time they have bothered the California Poppies, but I really don't mind, if that will keep them from completely destroying my best plants. My funds are extremely limited, but I do plan on laying down chicken wire, and if possible laying some rocks over the chicken wire. I will only be able to do this with very small plots (2x3 feet, or 3x4 feet), one at a time. My health is not good, so I work very slow, sometimes extremely slow ..... I'm also experimenting with allowing some wild plants to spread naturally, like Stinging Nettle, Chickweed, Henbit, and whatever else comes up as volunteers (Tomatoes, Oregano, Thyme, Calendulas, Radishes, Mustard, Chinese Cabbage, Garlic, Onions, Potatoes). I'm hoping that by allowing the Stinging Nettles to grow wild and spread everywhere, perhaps the gophers will stay away from the Nettles mixed in with almost everything ... ??? I have not yet seen the gophers stealing any nettles.