Well it has been over a year now and the Gophers have still not managed to cross the moat.

I have filled in all the old individual trenches around the trees with compost- well, and a lot of brush clearance debris. The trees should enjoy that. And I have 2 trenches 1 on each side of a path that goes around the entire orchard (a little tractor is amazingly handy). If the gophers break through the first 1, I will still have a bit of time to chase them back out before they can even start to cross the second and get to the trees.

If I was going to do it all over again I would rent a trencher or in my case a trenching attachment for my tractor and make a tic tac toe grid. I would make the distance between trenches somewhere between 5 and 10 feet. 10 feet probably would be better as it would be easier to maneuver the trencher. I would make the trenches somewhere around 9 inches wide so that I can just get a shovel in – but they make some fairly narrow shovels (trenching shovels) too. My orchard is over 200 by 100 feet. I would start in the middle and do what I could in 1 day. Or 2 days if I got a special weekend rate. Make sure I end up with an outside trench all the way around. Then I would plant my trees and keep an eye out for gophers. With the grid in place sectioning off the existing gophers with just a shovel would be easy. I would be able to tell where they are and even in a large area there shouldn’t be more than 3 or 4 — they’re solitary. I would dig them up and let them go outside the moat like I did this time. By the way if anyone ever tells you that it is impossible to dig up a gopher, smile and nod. That’s what I do — even though I dug up 4 :-)

Depending how much I got done that first day I would expand if necessary some other day. But I would certainly have a bunch of trees planted and an area with no gophers without killing anything to do it. And once the Gophers are out, fill in the inside trenches with compost, kitchen scraps, shrubbery prunings, go on Craigslist and advertise for tree trimmings. Live peacefully with the world ecosystem!