Thanks for the planting ideas. I'm worried that the silty sand/sandy silt I'm planting in won't hold enough moisture to keep the avocado roots at the slightly moist level I've read they like. If the feeder roots populate the mulch, they should get enough moisture if I keep it wet. But what about any other roots that are spreading into the non-mulch area. I lost a lot of young apple trees before I figured out how much they had to be watered in the summers here.
Patrick, unless gophers don't like avocado tree roots, I have to protect the trees. I live on top of a gopher hill and the trees are going to be planted in an area that's combed with tunnels. A few years ago I had a nice 5 year old apricot tree die on me and when I dug it out there were no roots...I found gopher tunnels leading through the rusted chicken wire basket it was planted in and the roots had been eaten down to nubs, leaving only the trunk of the tree. What I've done with two other fruit trees where I used 24"-36" diameter hardware cloth baskets was to clip out parts of the 1/2" hardware cloth holes making them 1" holes. It's very laborious and time consuming but I don't know any other way to protect the trees. Do you know how large avocado roots will get out about 18" from the trunk? And do you think the roots would find their way through holes that are large enough?
I have gopher traps, and I put juicy fruit gum into the tunnels and that keeps the population down, and I might even put broken glass in the main tunnels...but just like with squirrels, they rise early and are active all day long. And there are a lot of tunnels that I'll never be able to get to. It's impossible to be that vigilant, there's always going to be a new gopher in town that gets to the tree before I get to it.
