Looked up a few youtube post about fighting gophers. 3 prong attack. Gasing, traps, n poison. You sure they gophers and not voles. Put a piece of plywood down and open it a week later. See how many voles you got. You dig up the trees and look at the roots? Poison under pieces of plywood make great vole bait stations.
Assuming base of tree areas are clear of weeds.
May need to gopher guard the trees buried fencing or something like that.
Thought there was something to repel the gophers too besides kill them.
not sure if the root treatment of immacloprid effects gophers or not. Systemmaxx pesticide.
Here's wsu's guide to them.
treefruit.wsu.edu
Did some homework on it 2 or 3 years ago when I started planting trees. I did not spray around plum trees in 2017 and voles got to them bad.
Buy some gravel with sharp edges and mix it with your soil around the tree about a foot to foot and a half down. It deters critters from digging. There are tree guards for gophers you can get. Like WSU said keeping it mowed and open deters them too. They mention owl boxes too, might be more for voles.
Dont ammend the soil, it makes it easier for them to dig. MAybe you can handle them like woodchucks. I used to have a garbage can with a hose and a 12v blower fan. Fill it up with stuff to make smoke, smoke em out n shoot them. USed ot hunt them like bunny rabbits with a shotgun or small rifle once the weasel pops out. Farmer would trade dead woodchucks for doe tags. First time using that method I had somewhere around 25 in one day. Cows break their legs sometimes from the holes. Used to fill the holes with stone too.
MY oldest got a picture of an owl taking out a adult possum, so gopher might be on the menu for them too.
