Gardening Challenges: Gophers and Moles
I am coming up on my second summer of gardening in Chico, and I am happy to say that I don't have a problem with gophers or moles, at least not yet. There seem to be no shortage of them in my neighbors yards.
There are likely a combination of reasons why they have to this point avoided my plants, and why I have not had to resort to traps or chemicals:
1) Dogs and cats, both of which are present in our yard, I am sure provide some level of gopher abatement.
2) Two prominent weeds border our yard--Datura ("Jimsom Weed") and spurge (euphorbia). Both of these plants contain very potent chemical compounds. In fact, we have 3-4 different varieties of spurge which grow and reseeds itself including petty spurge and gopher spurge. The spurges contain a milky sap that is an irritant to gohers (and to human skin which it readily chaps).
3) As a preemptive strike, our two raised beds are lined with wire mesh (aka hardware cloth), and we likewise lined the holes we dug for our berry bushes and bare root fruit trees with wire mesh "baskets."
4) I have heard mixed reviews about using garlic as a repellent. Apparently there are some garlic concentrates out there that the critters don't like, though fresh bulbs are not strong enough.
FYI, if you can live with them, gophers can have some positive effects on the garden, including the tilling of soil and moving of nutrients.