N
napalisherpa
- Posts
- 8
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- Joined
- Aug 7, 2014
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Our plants have been doing beautifully throughout the season. This photo was taken today. Almost all the plants look like this
.
Sunday, we discovered this
and this.
Since Sunday we have:
pulled up 3 plants that died within 24 hours of finding limp branches,
have one plant that's halfway dead (like this)
and another that is showing signs like the previous four
We dug up the plants to find the roots looking like this
and the interior of the plant looking like this
We also have not watered since Sunday. In the previous days we have thought one of these now dead plants needed water, but it only seemed to accelerate their death, while the others are still okay for now.
We did not find mold when we dug through the mounds, we did not find an infestation of insects that would kill the plants this quickly and systematically. We have yet to find a gopher hole IN the garden, but we did find this 100 feet down the hill
Another hundred feet we found a colony of mounds.
This is the type of terrain we're working with up top. We had to use a jackhammer to break up all the rock so we could bring native soil from below to act as a buffer, then we put our good soil on top and formed mounds.
We have cages for 3/4 of the plants, we questioned even needing them in the first place. Out of the 5 plants that got sick one of them was caged, but didn't have any holes anywhere around or atop the mound. We're pretty certain the problem is gophers, but the healthy tap roots and the lack of gopher holes in or even that close to our garden confuse us. What else kills off a healthy, vigorous plant without any warning? Over the course of a day?
I'm going to home depot after I post this to try and ward off these bastards (if that truly is the problem), hopefully some repellant will help. Tomorrow, I'm watering in actinovate (which I had already planned on doing last week). I'm wondering about treating/dreanching the soil with insecticide, or if I'm wasting money (we've been very diligent about preventative treatments).
Mostly, I'm looking for similar stories/solutions/questions to make it easier to troubleshoot. I think it's gophers, I may be wrong. Help
.
Sunday, we discovered this
and this.
Since Sunday we have:
pulled up 3 plants that died within 24 hours of finding limp branches,
have one plant that's halfway dead (like this)
and another that is showing signs like the previous four
We dug up the plants to find the roots looking like this
and the interior of the plant looking like this
We also have not watered since Sunday. In the previous days we have thought one of these now dead plants needed water, but it only seemed to accelerate their death, while the others are still okay for now.
We did not find mold when we dug through the mounds, we did not find an infestation of insects that would kill the plants this quickly and systematically. We have yet to find a gopher hole IN the garden, but we did find this 100 feet down the hill
Another hundred feet we found a colony of mounds.
This is the type of terrain we're working with up top. We had to use a jackhammer to break up all the rock so we could bring native soil from below to act as a buffer, then we put our good soil on top and formed mounds.
We have cages for 3/4 of the plants, we questioned even needing them in the first place. Out of the 5 plants that got sick one of them was caged, but didn't have any holes anywhere around or atop the mound. We're pretty certain the problem is gophers, but the healthy tap roots and the lack of gopher holes in or even that close to our garden confuse us. What else kills off a healthy, vigorous plant without any warning? Over the course of a day?
I'm going to home depot after I post this to try and ward off these bastards (if that truly is the problem), hopefully some repellant will help. Tomorrow, I'm watering in actinovate (which I had already planned on doing last week). I'm wondering about treating/dreanching the soil with insecticide, or if I'm wasting money (we've been very diligent about preventative treatments).
Mostly, I'm looking for similar stories/solutions/questions to make it easier to troubleshoot. I think it's gophers, I may be wrong. Help