The reign of garden terror is over
May 7th, 2010
At least we think it is. So far it stands at four elephant garlic lost and one R.O.U.S. caught. This pocket gopher was just a tad out of Jack’s league when it comes to her mousing. It was enormous! Like scare you and turn around screaming enormous.
Lee went to the farm store last night to get a cinch trap. It was his last ditch effort before we sat outside with a shotgun. My dad humorously suggested building a guard tower in the garden. I was thinking that we were going to have to give up gardening for the year. Lee was getting horribly frustrated watching a garlic disappear down a hole every day. The whole situation was getting somewhat morosely comical. I’m glad that it is over with. At least I hope it is.
May 7th, 2010 at 10:14 am
Man! He IS big! Woohoo! The bad old gopher is dead! I hope his ghost warns all the other gophers that you guys mean business!!
May 7th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Good grief that thing is HUGE!
May 7th, 2010 at 10:27 am
Oh, and this makes me wonder where Mrs. Pocket Gopher is, and if she has quintuplets hidden away in a back tunnel somewhere……
May 7th, 2010 at 10:28 am
I hope it didn’t smell too bad after eating all of that garlic! Good job catching ‘em.
May 7th, 2010 at 11:13 am
I love that movie!
May 8th, 2010 at 3:26 am
Interesting. We don’t have those around here, fortunately! Odd anything would go after garlic.
May 8th, 2010 at 6:21 am
Congrats, you won!!! That thing is huge! And now the gardening can go on in peace!
May 8th, 2010 at 9:23 pm
I really enjoyed your humorous account of the battle… but yeah… I know the feeling too well. To be so violated, and running out of options…. I have visions of Caddyshack all the time out there in the garden.
Man, you guys sure do have a lot of grass. I can see why you are thinking sheep!
Ron
May 8th, 2010 at 11:17 pm
I feel like his eye is staring at me…
May 9th, 2010 at 8:11 pm
Yes, I feel bad that we had to kill such a big great-great-grandfather gopher, but it was definitely either him or our vegetables.
Benita – I hope this warns them too. I don’t mind gophers out in the field, but the ones near the garden have to go.
Jessica – I’m wondering about the quintuplets too. I’m going to buy a few more traps online and try to further reduce the gopher and vole activity.
Matt – Hard to tell. The whole area smelled like garlic from all the munching.
Dan – Us too!
Leigh – Elephant garlic is supposed to have a much milder flavor and larger cloves. It’s different from “true” garlics. We’ve never grown or tasted it before. The gopher didn’t eat any of the true garlic, so perhaps it really is milder tasting.
Lynn – Mostly in peace. The most recent bed I turned over had three small tunnels running the full length of it. Looks like voles.
Ron – Time to break out the dynamite, eh? Yeah, grass grows pretty well here, and as our pasture class has shown us, we aren’t even remotely reaching the full potential for the property.
Charity – His eye or his ear?
July 11th, 2010 at 12:48 am
[...] next year. I did pull my three remaining elephant garlic that survived the destruction of the fat pocket gopher. They didn’t get as big as I had hoped they would. On the other hand, each row was tunneled [...]
July 12th, 2010 at 3:48 pm
[...] Last fall we got our garlic planted at the right time and we added complete organic fertilizer to the soil. It’s amazing how much bigger the bulbs were for this year’s harvest. This is only the second time we have grown garlic but I can’t imagine not having it out in the garden from now on. It doesn’t need watering (in our climate), is easy to keep weeded, and has few pests. (Other than pocket gophers.) [...]