Hi Oldryder, I have quite a bit of experience with gophers. I farm a 20 acre commercial cherry orchard and probably have killed a couple hundred gophers over the years. To first answer your question based on my experience about whether gophers will get your fruit trees, the simple answer is they might. Gophers love the cherry rootstock Mahaleb so don't plant this rootstock if you have any gophers. Gophers will eat the roots of stone fruits like peach, plum, and apricot also. Same for almonds. My experience is that they don't prefer these rootstocks, and prefer other types of vegetation if present. But if there is a lack of vegetation, they will eat the roots of these trees, most likely if they are young trees. I lost a young almond tree and a couple of young fig trees to gophers. Also lost a couple of young grape plants as there was no other vegitation for the gophers to eat. My cherry trees are planted on Mazzard rootsock and gophers aren't that attracted to it. Yet, one fall while having some active gophers in my orchard, I cleaned up the orchard real well so there were no weeds. The gophers turned to the cherry trees and killed several three year old trees in only a couple of weeks. I use a fumitoxant which is highly effective. Unfortunately, it is a restricted material that requires a permit. I have also had some success with baits. I use baits with stryctnine. You can try some baits in a couple of places to see if the gophers eat it by placing the bait in the tunnels. Use a probe to find the tunnels than place a couple of spoons of bait in the tunnels. Close the hole with a solid rock. You can also slightly cover the rock with dirt. Gophers don't like to see light coming through and they will recover the holes with dirt. You can then recheck the hole in a day or two. I have had gophers eat the bait within several hours. Traps are effective but can be more cumbersome and time consuming. I prefer the traps that work like mouse traps. The trap is a square wooden box with the trap inside that is placed at the entrance of the runway which you create by opening up the hole. I know one farmer who uses this trap this way. He also places alittle cracked corn in the trap. He has killed many gophers this way. Hope this helps.

You need to read this! Its long, but its good. From NAFEX a couple of years back. [quote] Welcome to the asylum. I've been finishing up the hurry-up, freeze-up! work and haven't been able to get to this until now. I have been experimenting with growing peaches and other tender fruit trees in zone 4a, central MN, pretty intensely since 2000 and less so before that. I am a collector, tester, grower and breeder and have an experimental, mostly one of a kind, collection of over 350 trees. Many of these are hardy here (I think I may now have the largest collection of hardy plums in the US) but some are tender and would not survive without some modification to standard "plant and wait" horticultural practices. I have apricots, sweet cherries and European plums that fit this description but the largest number of these tender trees and the most tender of them are the peaches. Still, I have been able to test around 85 named cultivars and have around 55 survivors currently, both named and private selections. They are growing as branches on 45 hardy peach seedlings that are offspring of the Bear Creek Siberian C based material, which are also the basis for my testing and breeding. (Some of you have contributed material for testing or have provided information that has helped me to track down promising material and I am grateful.) I know that growing the test branches is not a true measure of absolute hardiness but it gives me an indication of relative hardiness. If a cultivar survives as a branch then I make up trees to plant out for a second test, if not, I am through with it. Meanwhile, the branches provide me with breeding material which I use to make crosses on the better selections of the seedlings. Breeding trees have been selected based on fruit size and quality and on early ripening, which is important for hardiness as early ripe trees have more time to harden off. These are the seed parents for crosses made using pollen from the good quality named cultivars with a known track record for hardiness and/or those having a long chill hour requirement, which is linked to hardiness. For pollen parents, I have chosen from the older cultivars of commercial and backyard/farmers market types rather than from newer commercial ones. This is because hardiness and other desirable characteristics seem to have become secondary considerations in contemporary breeding programs to firm flesh and other commercial qualities. My goal is to produce a peach that I can grow and eat in MN rather than one that looks good on the shelf in a grocery store half way across the country. I also use pollen from the private seedling selections I have collected and, of course, I am making reciprocal crosses on the good quality branches when their flower buds survive the winter. The first planting from the crosses of selected seedlings x Harrow Diamond made in 2004 were grown out this year. They made around 3' of growth and should provide a small amount of first fruit for evaluation in two more years. Here are some things I have learned, many the hard way, about growing peaches in a cold climate: 1. Hardiness is much more complex than minimum winter temps. Especially so are the conditions in the fall when trees are going dormant, which is almost never given the attention it deserves and may be at least as important as winter minimums. Many trees thought to have been killed during a late Jan/early Feb deep cold spell may have already been dead from a sudden change to cold in Dec/ Nov, even though the temps were less severe. Of course when they don't leaf out in Spring the mid winter cold is blamed. Last years minimum was only -23 F with good snow in late Jan, which should have been easy for my trees, but we had sudden unusually cold temps for a long period in December before there was snow cover and so there was a lot of damage and mortality in the peaches. 2. The weak link in peach tree hardiness is the trunk. A tree goes dormant from the top down and the last thing to harden off is the trunk. An early cold snap that comes in before the trunk hardens off can kill the tree trunk without damaging any other part of it. I have learned to delay celebrating tree survival in spring beyond an examination finding green twig cambium right out to the tip of every branch and plenty of live buds. Too many times I have seen those buds break into lush growth only to then stop growing abruptly and then dry up. This is because, as it has turned out too many times, the trunk was dead just above the soil line. I am experimenting with budding and grafting 2'-3' high on the rootstock in hopes of providing a hardy trunk. 3. Bailey rootstock is not the answer to hardiness problems. It may well be a vigorous rootstock that is itself hardier than most peaches, but it grows too long into the fall and induces the scions grafted on it to do so as well, delaying senescence. The common peach seedling rootstocks Lovell, Halford and Nemaguard also have this effect, as does Pumiselect and the plums St. Julian 'A' and Mariana 2624. Siberian C based peaches defoliate early and induce the scion grafted on them to do so when used as a rootstock, or at least it doesn't get in the way. Some other plum rootstocks including P.americana and, less so, P. bessei so the same. I am experimenting with various cherry plums as rootstocks for peach with this in mind. Scion overgrowth? Sure, but the tree will probably be dead from other causes before this becomes a serious problem and staking is easy. Suckering? Its easy to cut off the suckers. An additional benefit of using plums is that you can then grow peaches in heavier soil than you otherwise could. 4. Warm wet weather in fall trumps rootstock in the battle to get the tree to shut down. Tarping off the roots seems to help but sweating and the continual presence of the tarp does not permit drying out of the soil between rains. I wish I knew how to do this without having to roll the tarp up in good weather. Anybody? 5. Southwest injury is a big problem. For those who are blissfully ignorant of SW injury, here is the story: its a cold day in January with high pressure in control. There is only a light breeze and a few white puffy clouds in the the clear blue sky. At 2:00 PM the high temp for the day of minus 15 F is approaching but while the low sun angle doesn't provide much heat to the earth (thats why its winter) it feels warm on your face despite the cold. It is also warm on the vertical tree trunks and their temperature has risen to way above 0 F. Then the sun dips behind one of those clouds for just a few minutes but that is long enough to make you feel cold and to bring the trunk temp suddenly goes back to -15 F. Sun, shade, hot, cold... repeat until cambium is completely dead on the southwest side of the tree. Even if the tree isn't killed outright the tree is doomed because there is now an entry point for insects, bacterial canker, you name it. Pertinent contributing factors: when the weather is the coldest the sun angle is near its lowest, and, the farther North you are the lower the winter sun angle and the bigger the danger of SW injury. By all means paint the trunks white as high as you can reach and put on white tree wrap/guards (why do they even make brown tree wrap?). 6. Don't plant a tender tree in a "protected" site. I wish I knew how many times someone has told me about the peach that died in spite of their having planted it in this great warm and wind protected site right up along the south side of the house. Absolute cold kills peaches not wind chill unless you are in a prairie climate with dry snowless winters, and then that is bud desiccation, not wind chill. And minimum temperatures come around sunrise, way after any benefit from yesterday afternoons buildup of slightly warmer temperatures in the tree's little heat island is long gone. Once in a while I even hear about someone who has tried to espalier a peach against the south wall of a building in an effort to get it through the winter - Geez! 6. Plant your peach on the north side of a shade source - building, row of evergreens, etc. It should be located far enough away so that it gets full sun in the summer but close enough so it is in the shade through the coldest winter months and up to bloomtime. Tender trees can survive severe cold, often colder than they are rated for, if they remain in deep dormancy. I found that many zone 5 trees were hardy in my zone 4a temperatures when they survived -29 F during the winter of '03-'04. Often the zone 5 rating reflects a trees inability to resist de-hardening in a warm spell and/or to recover from it and re-harden when the weather turns cold again... rather than its susceptibility to cold midwinter temperatures. Winter shade helps keep the tree dormant during winter warm spells, delays its breaking dormancy in the spring, and delays bloom. In addition, no winter sun on the trunk = no SW injury. 8. Peaches and apricots are a good risk in cold climates. They are very vigorous and so recover quickly from winter injury. Since they bear fruit on one year old wood they are always just one good winter away from a crop. So for an established peach that has died back to the snowline in winter, it would not be unreasonable to see 6' of new growth during the next summer which would then bear fruit the following summer after a mild winter. Madison and Hardired are good choices in spite of tender flower buds because they are very wood hardy and the tree is more likely to survive a cold winter in good condition even though the flower buds may die, then they can produce a full crop the next year if a mild winter follows. By contrast, my sweet cherries need two mild winters to get fruit - one to form spurs and another to get fruit. Every cold climate gets occasional mild winters but 2 in a row is rare. 9. Don't plant a peach tree thinking that at some time in the distant future, grandchildren at your side, you will be able to look back and fondly recall this day. Plant peaches like you do tomatoes expecting their demise and planning for their replacement. Even in ideal climates and conditions peaches are not an icon for longevity and for sure they are not going to be when you plant them on the fringes of their range and beyond. Better to take heart in the fact that they are vigorous and precocious (I've had a partial crop on peaches in their second growing season from the graft ) and you might get lucky for a while with a few unpredictable crops before the tree dies... and that they are so very good that when you do get them it is worth the risk and work. 10. Reliance is not the hardiest cultivar, and it doesn't have to be. There is a group of relatively hardy varieties, named and unnamed, that includes Reliance but also Veteran, McKay (at least as hardy for me as Reliance in flower and wood) and Madison and Hardired Nectarine (might be a little more wood hardy). Within this group, planting site and horticultural methods are much more important than which cultivar you choose to grow. The "Haven" peaches from MI have done well for me as have the "Prairie" series from IL and the Harrow varieties. 'Sunapee', the other peach besides Reliance out of NH, has done well as have WI Balmer, Champion, and Polly. But again, let me emphasize, its not which cultivar you choose within this group but how you grow it. Somewhere warmer than here the choice of cultivar may be enough to make the difference but in my location this alone is not enough as my pile of dead trees will attest. From what I have learned by listening to the problems people have growing peaches in zone 5 and even warmer, any place that has serious winter to the extent that they hope to have a white Christmas - whether they get one or not - could benefit from some or all of these growing principles. 11. For those of you planting seeds and making your own grafts, no one year old peach tree is hardy regardless of cultivar. You could get lucky with heavy snow cover or a mild winter but to ensure survival for the first winter you have to dig it up a tree and heal it in at an angle with mulch over the top, or protect it some other way. Any hardiness a peach may eventually have comes about with age and is not present the first year. I don't mind killing trees if I learn something from it but nothing is learned from losing a one year old tree. Good Luck and remember that grow is a verb. Dave[/quote]

If I watered 1-4 hours per zone on my system (I have 6 active zones) I'd have water puddled and streaming into the street and neighbors like crazy. My lawn just doesn't soak up water like yours does apparently. How many inches of water do you put down every week? My combination of water pressure, hose, and sprinkler put down 1/8 inch per hour over an area of around 900 square feet. Everyone's situation will be different. Furthermore everyone's soil, humidity, and grass will be different. The idea is to put all your water down at one time and not spread it over 7 days. If you water every day you are asking, no BEGGING for weeds. You can wean your lawn off of frequent watering. You can also spray it with soap to help the water soak in much deeper and remain in the soil longer. Another method to stop runoff is to water for 15 minutes and wait for 30. Then water again until you see runoff. As soon as you see runoff, stop and let it soak in for 30 minutes. Letting it soak in is important. It is exactly like wringing out a sponge. The water will eventually drain much deeper in the soil and retain that moisture much longer. Also, I see you discourage Scotts Weed and Feed type products. Why? Weed and feed products sound very good and they are easy to market. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Here is the problem. Weeds die best when they are well fed. The take up the poison more completely and die. When they are not well fed, their uptake is weak and they might live through the poisoning. When you apply weed and feed, the weeds get fed from the fertilizer right away and the weed killer starts to deteriorate right away. By the time the weeds are healthy enough to be affected by the poison, the poison is gone. A better idea is to fertilize and then wait 2 weeks. After 2 weeks sometimes the weeds will be gone simply because the healthy grass pushed them out. For those remaining weeds, use a spray product like Weed B Gone to spot-spray each weed. This method is much more effective and helps keep the use of poisons to a minimum.

I'm here. Zone 8 in Texas...you can't be far away. Growing St Aug is very easy once you get the hang of it. There are three elements to it. Watering, mowing, and fertilizing. You did not mention mowing but I suspect you were mowing way too low and that's why your grass died. Otherwise, if your grass was being mowed at the highest setting on the mower, then watering an hour a week, all at once, should have been enough to at least keep it alive. St Aug will do a good job of filling in the areas that are dead now; however, not good enough fast enough. In the spring (late February) I suggest you get some pieces of St Aug sod to cover the areas where it is dead now. They will be a dollar per piece. Get the Floratam variety if you can find it. If you are in San Antonio, Milburger's nursery carries it. They have Floratam Fridays. Putting the sod down is all you need to do to keep new weeds out. St Aug is amazing like that. When you put the sod down, walk on every square inch of it to make sure it has good contact with the soil underneath. Roots will not grow through the air to reach the soil below. Also water it 3x per day for 10 minutes each time. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are perfect times to water. Do that for about 2 weeks and then back off. Eventually in the hottest part of summer you should be watering for an hour a week. If you did that last year and did not get good results, then you need to water more. I water for 3-5 hours per week to get 3/8 to 5/8 inch with my oscillating sprinkler. I am in fairly deep shade on shallow, limestone soil. You'll have to adjust for your conditions. Do not fertilize the new grass until after you have mowed it for the second time. That ensures you are fertilizing actively growing plants and not dormant plants. Mow at the mower's highest setting. You will NEVER have to mow it at any other height. Ever. If you decide to use organic fertilizer, you can apply that in Feb. If you decide to use synthetic fertilizer, you can fertilize in March after the second mowing. Then fertilize again with either one on Memorial Day. If you want to apply fertilizer in the summer, the only choice is organic because the synthetic might burn. Organic will never burn. Do that on July 4th if you do it. Then fertilize again on Labor Day and Thanksgiving. Those are all easy dates to remember. None of this should impact your tree at all. Other than that do not use any weed killers or preventives. If you are mowing at the highest setting and watering infrequently, you should never get weeds. The weeds to watch out for are the broadleaf weeds. While St Aug will out compete grassy weeds, it will not out compete broadleaf weeds. Anything that looks like clover needs to be pulled before it gets started.