Your lawn and garden serve as outdoor havens. Whether you are cooking supper, hosting guests, or simply unwinding after a hard day, your outside space should be a sanctuary.
Unfortunately, the mere presence of a few gophers or ground squirrels is sufficient to change that serene area into a horror. Their ugly burrows and plant damage can swiftly wreak havoc on a landscape.
Luckily, there are practices for eliminating these creatures and reclaiming your property.
Precaution
Remove any weeds that grow around the edges of your garden. If there is no food in your garden, gophers or ground squirrels are far less inclined to make a home.
In addition, you might want to plant these repelling plants such as catmint, oleander, salvia, rosemary, or lavender in your yard.
To prevent gophers and squirrels from entering your garden or yard, you might alternatively install an ultrasonic gopher deterrent spike that is driven by solar energy, batteries, or both.
These preventive measures produce minute vibrations that cannot be felt by humans but can be felt by digging animals.
Repression
Suppressing the gopher and ground squirrel population is a strategy that complements avoidance and preventative measures.
Trapping is the quickest and most dependable method for accomplishing this. Finding the gophers’ burrow is essential for successful trapping.
Get a big, strong stick and look for the most recent gopher and squirrel mound in your yard to find the entrance to the tunnel. Stick it into the ground about 8-12 inches from the mound’s edge.
You can tell when you’ve reached the burrow because the stick will suddenly plummet to the ground from 6″ to 12″.
Following the tunnel’s discovery, the traps may be placed by removing the plug from the entrance hole.
Repellants
Many humane and natural methods exist to prevent these animals from entering your yard and some useful items you may already have in your kitchen.
Because of the repellents, they will avoid the treated area and look for a new place to tunnel. Many are organic but mechanical, electrical, or chemical are possible.
Plan an escape route for the gophers/squirrels before applying repellents. Then, put the repellents in and around the dens closest to your house and garden.
After a few days, move the repellents closer to the intended departure point by placing them in burrows farther from the house. The gophers or squirrels will gradually be driven from your yard using this method.
Warning
These approaches have been tried and found unsuccessful:
Flooding – there is a common misconception that filling gopher holes with water would force the rodents out. Sadly, it does nothing but harm your lawn and loosen the earth under your grass, making it simpler for rats to tunnel through.
Fumigation – exhaust or carbon monoxide is used to lure them out of their burrows. These approaches will not get rid of gophers and may be harmful to people, pets, and the landscape. Gophers may easily shut themselves off in a tunnel by shifting some soil about when gas begins to seep into underground chambers.
A gopher and ground squirrel infestation is a terrible problem that no one wants to deal with. Thankfully, you can rely on Facility Pest Control. The homes and businesses we serve have relied on us to eradicate these problems and restore their yards. You can contact us, and we will be happy to help you.