Tiny House Garden - Is the Gopher Proofing Working?

The garden above is the one I started as soon as the snow melted my very first spring here in the tiny house. And after a lot of work to create it, mostly involving removing truckloads worth of rocks from the size of chicken eggs to dinosaur eggs (seriously, some weighed more than me! 💪), it thrived for several years. Those rocks all went into helping form the lane that leads to my house. Then that lovely garden was discovered by evil marauding little demons. Otherwise known as

northern pocket gophers. These little rodents, about twice the size of a mouse, are voracious eaters of green plants. Frustratingly, they almost never come above the ground surface. Instead choosing to pull plants down underground by their roots and eating them. I've still only seen their heads above ground three times total over all the years since they moved in. 

 For just one example, the year they found my garden, this is what the pea bed was looking like. Well a few days before this photo it had neat rows of pea plants with no gaps at all. Now able to move freely underground (Remember those truckloads of rocks I moved? With all those in the way of tunnel digging it hadn't been a livable location for them before.) they munched through every pea plant in that bed but one. And at least 75% of the rest of the garden. And if you are trying to produce the food you eat, that's pretty devastating. No amount of trying to discourage, various live traps, various dead traps, smoke, car exhaust, filling tunnels with water, explosives, etc. and as a last resort, buried poisons, phased them at all over a couple years of trying. Failing not only to kill, but also failing to even discourage a single one as far as I could tell. And sure, if you want, go ahead and link to all the different ways different folks have tried to get rid of these guys. I already read or watched them all and tried every one that I could here. 😀 Just shy of Caddy Shack style, but I might have detonated a few small things. So I gave up on the idea of fighting them and decided to move and rebuild the entire garden. 

With cement (not cinder) blocks and hardware cloth underneath hoping that would prevent the possibility of chewing through from any direction. Since they almost never even stick their heads out of the ground, I hoped they would not be willing to surface long enough to climb over the top. And figured if they did they would probably be somewhat claustrophobic inside the beds as the sides and bottom would prevent them from tunneling where they wanted to. You can see all the steps to how I put the new beds together in this video if you hadn't seen it before - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3T1Dhosptfw .   

And last year, I was rewarded for the somewhat massive amount of work that took, with this beautiful and productive veggie garden. Not a single gopher made it in. But I've continued to hold my breath wondering how long that will last. Since they still merrily eat through everything else they can get to like the less rocky edges of the yard, all my herbs, flowers, etc. So I was very curious as the snow receded this spring on the second year of these beds to see if any gophers had found a way in. 

In the not fortified growing areas like my mint bed above, this is what just a fraction of their tunnels looked like this spring when the snow receded. And supposedly they don't like mint and you should plant it to discourage them. Ha ha! Below is part of the yard and herb/medicinal flower beds. 

But the fortified garden beds seem to be holding! In several places you can see where they tunneled through the paths and right up to and tried to get through the blocks. But without success.

If you move some of their piled dirt like up against the garlic bed (The last year in the old garden, they'd eaten every single garlic plant too, though that is something else they are not supposed to like and you're told to plant to deter them.) here you can see how after hitting the concrete, they burrowed down and that tunnel follows the bottom of the hardware cloth as far as I could see or feel under the bed. But they didn't get in! And while you can't really see the tiny shoots in this photo, the garlic is starting to sprout up. 

So far, I have to say the new beds are a real success. The galvanized hardware cloth, now underground for almost 2 years shows no signs of wear or rust at all. And of course the blocks look just the same. At the moment anyway, I am very happy with the beds overall and would anticipate doing the same thing, only a layer or two of blocks deeper for greater soil depth and ease of gardening as I age, in a long term location for gardening. Hopefully that experience and feedback is helpful if you have gopher problems, are just building or setting up a garden and want to avoid the problems in the first place, or were just curious how my setup was working out!