Welcome to The Garden Helper Clickmaster!!!

I have not tried this but others in Fallbrook have done this with new citrus trees and roses to prevent gophers. Turn a 33 gallon trash can over lying on its top....take newspaper and wrap the bottom of the trash can...place tape to hold newspaper...you can take the tape off later. Take aviary wire (cheaper and does just as good a job as chicken wire and easier to manipulate) place over the newspaper and form to trash can.....(No need to tuck under edges and make all nice and neat.)...untap the edges of the newspaper and wrap the edges over the wire this will help keep the wire from cutting you and will decompose later. Dig your hole twice as deep and wide as your root ball....amend/fertilize soil and back fill....place the contraption so it is even or slightly (I would go slightly above ground level to compensate for the soil sinking and the gophers that run the top of the ground won't get in)above ground.... place amended soil in bottom of the contraption and your fruit tree within the wire. This will not keep them from getting all the roots and but this way they won't kill the tree but will allow the tap root and root ball to stay intact.
I have heard this device REALLY does work....I have just been too lazy to do it and have been fighting the gophers my other means....(poison injected into the runs, cats, blunt end of a hand axe over their darn head when they pop out, and a spade dug through the ground and right into one....trying the juicy fruit gum dropped into the run as well.)
Let me know if you need more info as far as the contraption. I have 2 more mandarin orange trees to plant and the area I have picked out for them is loaded with gopher holes.....so I will be using this contraption within the week.
Catlover Let us know what you decided to do and keep us updated on the results of what you do....just post it back on this thread. Thanks and have a great day.

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