Tomatoville® Gardening Forums


Notices

General information and discussion about cultivating onions, garlic, shallots and leeks.

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
Old July 6, 2019   #1
habitat_gardener
Tomatovillian™
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: California Central Valley
Posts: 2,539
Default onions, garlic, and gophers

Onions and garlic have always been easy crops for me: plant in December or January. harvest in May. This year, the gophers beat me to it. By mid-April, I noticed some of my onions had not survived at the community garden. Then all the Walla Wallas were gone. By the time I figured out that this particular gopher had developed a taste for onions, half of the 100 I'd planted (5 varieties) were gone. The ones that remained were still small, but I picked them anyway. April seemed way too early to be thinking about gopher predation!

I had hardware cloth under most of the garlic, but that, too, started disappearing before the bulbs had sized up. They were barely the size of marbles. Some were munched from the top, others from the bottom, so it could have been several critters.When I dug up that bed, however, there was a gopher tunnel running right under the hardware cloth!

So for next winter, I'm wondering if it makes more sense to plant in containers at home, or to try to plant everything in hardware cloth (I have a big pile of it that was going to get recycled). I have mounded raised beds, without borders.

Do gophers also like beets and turnips and rutabagas? They seem to have stayed away from the beds that have brassicas, but I wonder if that's coincidental.

I'm not interested in hunting them down. That would make gardening a dreaded activity rather than a joy.
habitat_gardener is offline   Reply With Quote
 

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 01:42 AM.


★ Tomatoville® is a registered trademark of Commerce Holdings, LLC ★ All Content ©2022 Commerce Holdings, LLC ★