Gardening Report June 7, 2021

=Or=

Things That Happen When You

Don’t Have Your Phone With You

As reported earlier, due to a voracious rodent problem (rats and gophers) we needed to fortify the plots we tend at the community gardens.

Step One was digging an 18-inch deep trench all around the plots and putting in chicken wire fencing to keep the gophers out.

This appears to have worked.

Step Two requited the construction of a 10 x 20 x 6.5 ft enclosure to keep the rats out, and this too seems to have worked. 

A month ago we noticed signs of gopher activity outside our plot. They didn’t appear to have breached our underground defenses but our neighbors across from us were not so lucky.

We contacted the garden committee and they sent the resident gopher slayer after them.

At first we thought he solved the problem, then Saturday we noticed evidence of gophers around our plots again.

Another call to the committee.  They relayed back that the gopher slayer only managed to get a couple of small gophers the last time but had seen evidence of large ones that he couldn’t trap.

Well…yeah.  The dumb ones get caught early, the smart ones grow to large size.

Sunday brought no new evidence of gopheric transgression so again we assumed we dodged that fur coated bullet.

This morning we went and saw twice as much evidence of gopher activity than we had on Sunday (but again, no evidence they got past the chicken wire in the trench, so we’re still in good shape).

After tending the garden for a few minutes, I happened to look at one of the mounds of dirt kicked up by the would be invader.

I noticed a large hole I hadn’t seen before, then a few moments later a brazen little gopher pushed out some dirt and went back for another load.

Like I said, the things you see when you don’t have your cell phone with you…

I got a hose, shoved it as far into the gopher’s burrow as I could, and turned it on full force.

It ran for about two minutes then suddenly the roof of one of the gopher tunnels blew open outside the enclosures, spraying water four feet into the air.

I shut off the water and pulled the hose out.  No sign of the gopher, but I’m not surprised; it doubtlessly turned tail and scurried away as fast as it could when the hose started coming down the shaft.

And, no, I don’t think I drowned it,
I think it was too fast and too savvy for that.

But I do hope I scared it enough to go dig somewhere else, and that the water collapsed enough of its burrow to discourage it from coming back.

© Buzz Dixon