How To Prevent Gophers In Your Yard
Implement the below ways to prevent the entrance of gophers in your yard in the first place!
- Rather than traditional gardening, you can plant a water or rock garden. As gophers only dig in soil land, these options can be excellent.
- Build a fence by burying the wire mesh 10-12 inches deep and few inches tall above the ground.
After reading the above article, we hope you now know what attracts gophers to your yard, and how to get rid of them from your property. Meantime, if groundhogs are wandering in your yard as well, then try ammonia to eliminate them for good!
Planting And Using Barriers To Deter Moles Or Gophers
Certain kinds of plants in your yard can help deter moles. Moles dislike the smells from plants like daffodils, marigolds and anything from the allium family. This kind of plant barrier is typically safe for children and pets, plus it makes a lovely colorful addition to your yard.
To deter gophers, plant in raised beds. You can also make gopher baskets from netted material and put bulbs or young plants in them. This will allow the bulbs and plants to grow while keeping the gophers out.
Ready-made gopher and mole barriers are also available in the form of baskets that can be placed around plants to protect them from being eaten.
How Extensive Are Gopher Burrows
A burrow will stretch underground from roughly 200 2,000 square feet and 2 ½ 3 ½ in diameter, with nesting and food chambers that may reach a depth of six feet. The main tunnel starts about 12-18 away from an aboveground soil plug and will typically run 6-12 beneath the surface. This leads to tunnels branching off the main. The burrow system is complex and may even carry up to 200 yards of tunnels.
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What Causes A Gopher Infestation
Within its native range, a gopher may dig its burrows just about anywhere where there is friable soil and the land is not subject to flooding. Gophers are also attracted by the presence of any of the wide range of plant parts that they eat. Since they spend so much time underground, a lot of the damage they do to your landscaping plants is done to the roots and to other underground plant parts, such as bulbs and corms. But they will also sometimes venture above-ground and eat your vegetables, grasses, or flowers. They will even girdle trees by chewing the bark, as do those other herbivorous rodent pests: voles.
How To Get Rid Of Gophers Permanently
You take all your time and money to maintain your lawn to look beautiful. One day, while you wake up and see gopher tunnels turning your gorgeous yard into a huge mess. You may go mad at this scene but dont worry, there are some remedies to start the war against the gophers. Some are natural, to begin with, and some are strong measures if the destruction is more. Some expert gopher pest control services come to your rescue and save you from the clutter created by these creatures.
What are Gophers?
Gophers are plant-eating rodents with a size bigger than mice but smaller than rats. They consist of four big incisor teeth and are wrongly mistaken for moles. But they dont consist of spade-like front paws like moles and they make crescent-shaped mounds by digging holes from the surface. Gophers act and destroy all types of plants and trees by feeding on roots and many types of vegetables like potatoes and carrots. While tunneling, they can cause harm to pipelines and irrigation lines.
How to get rid of Gophers?
Many methods could help in getting rid of gophers.
1)Barriers:
Gopher meshes barrier: Develop an inside surface fence across the lawn with available Gopher mesh or similar fencing wire. This barrier must spread 1 to 2 feet both inside and above the ground. Gophers may try to tunnel up to the barrier where you can restrict them without hassles.
2)Smells:
3) Noisy and loud setting:
4) Precise Gopher trap:
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Household Remedies For Gophers
Household and DIY remedies to get rid of other pests often are effective, environmentally safe, and save quite a few bucks. Thats not the case with gophers, though.
According to the University of California Agriculture & Natural Resources Program, popular household remedies such as gopher purge, mothballs, castor bean, and garlic havent been shown to repel gophers from an area.
Vibrating stakes, ultrasonic devices, wind-powered pinwheels, and planting chewing gum or laxatives in burrows also are not recommended for gopher removal.
While some devices claim to frighten pocket gophers, these pests dont scare easily. Their resistance is likely due to their exposure to noise and vibration from sprinklers and lawnmowers.
How Do Professionals Get Rid Of Gophers
Depending on the severity of the gopher infestation, a professional pest management company like Smiths will offer a mixture of no-kill methods and conventional options, including the following:
- No-kill Trapping. Smiths trained pest control experts will locate gopher tunnels, expose a small portion of them, and place professional-grade stainless steel traps inside the tunnel. Well cover the trap, mark it with a flag, and return to remove gophers and re-set traps in a few days.
- Carbon monoxide gopher removal. Our trained techs can inject carbon monoxide into the gopher holes if trapping gophers is a concern. This method satisfies Healthy Schools Act requirements and is an excellent solution for daycare centers and schools.
- Annual gopher removal. Since gopher infestation can be a recurring problem, Smiths also offers a yearly gopher removal program. If you enroll in this program, a technician will visit your property every month, adjusting the gopher removal approach accordingly to ensure your yard stays beautiful and gopher-free.
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More Ways To Keep Gophers Away
Exclusion is another way to keep gophers away, specifically away from trees, shrubs, and garden beds. This works great in tandem with scent repellents.
According to the University of California Agriculture and Natural Resources, you can use hardware cloth or wire mesh to exclude gophers. It should be buried at least 2 ½ feet deep, with the last six inches being bent into an L shape away from your vulnerable plants.
With raised garden beds, you can line the base and walls with mesh and/or wire to keep gophers from burrowing up and into your gardens and damaging your crops. Mesh like Gonzos Gopher Shield will work great and is designed specifically with gophers and moles in mind.
Adding exclusion methods into your gopher deterrent plans will give you further protection from those destructive burrowers.
If youd like, you can check out our piece on using wire to keep gophers out here.
Gophers Hate Coffee Grounds
Coffee grounds are an effective and easy-to-use gopher repellent. Application is fairly simple and if you are a coffee drinker, the grounds are as simple to come by as holding onto the grounds from your morning pot of coffee.
To use coffee grounds to repel gophers, pour some coffee grounds into the gopher tunnels that you have found in your yard. Cover the holes with some soil.
The acidity of the coffee grounds will deter the gophers from digging in that area again. While this method may not completely take care of your gopher problem, it will be a good addition to your efforts to get rid of gophers.
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When To Call A Professional To Get Rid Of Gophers
Still wondering how to get rid of gophers? If youve tried every method to no avail, it may be time to call in a professional wildlife removal service. While it may seem more costly than do-it-yourself measures, professionals can save you time, energy, and added stress. Gophers can cause extensive damage to your crops, plants, underground cables, and more, which might result in thousands of dollars of damage over time. A professional will assess your situation before deciding which measures need to be taken.
What Are The Options To Kill Gophers
One natural control method is ideal, but not suitable for many people. If its viable for you, these guys are great, and they will work for food!
Hawks and owls, snakes, cats and some dogs can be all that you need. In large open areas, promoting these predators to kill gophers makes sense.
However, for most homeowners, your choices will be:
- Traps
- Professional help
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How To Get Rid Of Gophers In Yard
Here are some non-lethal, humane ways to get rid of gophers from your farms or garden as early as possible!
How To Check For Gophers
To check for gophers, look for any displaced earth or fan-shaped mounds measuring 12 to 18 wide and 4 to 6 high. These mounds will have a hole off to one side. Additionally, check your crops and plants for damage too. Gophers eat the plant roots from underground but they can also pull above-ground plants down into their tunnels.
Finally, check for problems with your utilities as gophers can chew through underground cables, sprinkler systems, and plastic water lines in search of water. A gophers teeth are constantly growing, so chewing on things like cables helps to maintain their incisors.
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Green Gobbler Vinegar Weed & Grass Killer
This weed killer from Green Gobbler is natural and organic, and doesnt contain harsh chemicals that will endanger your pets, children or family who enjoy playing around in your yard. It contains 20% acetic acid thatll decimate weeds within a couple of hours and is safe to use anywhere. Its perfect for use on driveways, mulch beds, in gardens and flower beds as well. Its made straight from corn, is ready to use right out of the container and is certified for organic use as well.
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Some Of These May Surprise You
One natural method to fighting gophers is to create noise in your yard
As it turns out, moles and gophers are sensitive to noises, especially loud noises.
So adding some natural noisemakers such as wind chimes in your yard is a good natural way to annoy these critters enough to leave your lawn. Whats more you can take this method a step further and introduce a radio into your yard.. But more on that later.
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What Are Pocket Gophers
- Pocket Gophers, also known plainly as gophers, are burrowing rodents that get their name from their large cheek pouches, or pockets which they use for carrying their food and nesting materials. This method of carrying food in their cheeks often get them confused to be a chipmunk, a woodchuck or a squirrel.
- Pocket gophers can cause a lot of damage, not just from burrowing but also from their eating habits. Pocket gophers eat just about anything. Most of the eating they do, however, is from underground. They yank plants down from the root and eat them underground.
Ok So You Put All Of Your Hard Work Into Making Your Lawn Look Like A Golf Course And Then You Wake Up One Day And See Gopher Or Mole Tunnels Running Through The Yard
This is enough to make any homeowner go mad but the good news is there are ways to fight the war against moles and gophers, some natural, and some a little aggressive however we have done the research for you to lay your options for you so you can best decide how to fight and win the war against moles and gophers in your yard, sound good?
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Trying To Get Rid Of Gophers For Good
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Sometimes called a pocket gopher because of its fur-lined cheek pouches, this small mammal is unique to the Western Hemisphere. Its homelands stretch from Central America to Alberta. This means that much of the U.S. serves as a gophers backyard, from coastal areas to high elevations. Unfortunately, its tunnels create a host of problems for North American farmers and homeowners. Along with being part of the food chain, gophers do play an important role in ecology. Their burrowing adds organic matter to soil and increases aeration. But if you think or know that they have caused damage on your property, your first step is to understand gophers and how to spot signs of their activity.
Effective Steps On Gophers Removal From Your Yard
Gophers can be a nuisance and difficult to get rid of without professional help. Luckily, you dont have to hire an exterminator and spend your hard-earned money when its possible to do the job yourself. Here are 5 steps on how to get rid of these pesky animals.
Eliminate gopher food sources
Gophers are known to eat plants, shrubs, and the most common trees. They also love bulbs, roots of perennials, strawberries, vegetables in your garden, small rodents nests, molehills, and frogs eggs. To get rid of gophers in your yard it is important to eliminate their favorite food sources. If you remove what they are looking for is likely that they will look somewhere else to find an alternative source.
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Next I Bet You Didnt Know That You Could Repurpose Your Dog’s Pet Waste To Fight The Battle Against Moles And Voles
Most people dont know this… But these critters are deterred by pet waste just as much as humans are, so placing your dog’s waste near the entry and exit points of the mole’s tunnels is a good way to naturally encourage these varmints to infest your neighbors yard and not yours.
Moreover, yet another natural way to fight moles is to strategically install plants throughout the yard that the moles naturally dislike.
Not only could this be an aesthetic way to win the battle but the good news these plants such as Castor bean, Crown imperial, and Narcissus are examples of mole-repelling plants. and are known for being effective for deterring moles and gophers out of your yard.
Strong Scented Geranium Repels Gophers
Geranium is a popular flowering plant that is used in a variety of ways from essential oils to perfume. The essential oil of geranium is actually distilled from the leaves. Whereas the flowers are often used for cutting flowers for landscaping.
Because of the strong scent geraniums have, these plants deter gophers from burrowing near them and snacking on them when they are in your yard.
You can use geranium in its essential oil form by mixing a spray at home or soaking cotton balls and placing them in trouble spots around your property. Just be sure to dilute your essential oil with water.
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Identifying Voles And Vole Damage
Like moles, voles also tunnel and create runways through your lawn. However, this is where the similarities end. Voles typically tunnel on the surface and eat their way through the grass to get to their burrows. They can also make small runways underneath the surface that are about two inches in diameter. Many vole holes are found underneath low lying leaves or plants, so make sure to double check near your garden or extra leafy areas.
While voles mainly love to inhabit grassy areas and subsist off of green vegetation, they will travel to the next best thing they can find when food is more scarce, which usually means your garden. If your plants have started to wilt or turn yellow, there is a good chance its roots have been eaten by a vole. Fruit trees and shrubs are also in danger of having their roots eaten. Routinely checking plants for signs of wilting or color change as well as nearby tunneling will help you identify whether your plants are in danger of being eaten by a vole.
