Keeping Rabbits Out of the Kitchen Garden

Rabbits, be they jackrabbits or cottontails, can devastate your vegetable garden. Here’s how to keep rabbits out of your vegetable garden without doing them harm.

When Beatrix Potter ’s Mrs. Rabbit warned Peter not to go into Mr. McGregor ’s garden , the admonishment went in one of Peter ’s great ear and out the other . And so it goes today . Vegetable gardens , woodlet , and ornamental plant are extremely attractive torabbits , especially duringdroughtsand tenacious winter or where urbanization has reduced their wildland habitat .

Learn more : Keep Rabbits Out Of Your Fall Garden

A childhood perspective on rabbits as wicked but benign cuddly creature usually fails to prepare adult for their first encounter with wild lapin running amok among their prizedcabbages . The overwrought gardener is leave furious about the damage but dreading the approximation of harming those undeniably cute rabbits .

as luck would have it , there are hard-nosed ways to outwit the wild rabbits without doing them harm .

Know your rabbit and its ways

There are two groups of wild rabbits that can become problems in the garden : jackrabbit ( Lepusspp . , a type of rabbit ) and cottontails ( Sylvilagusspp . , a truthful rabbit ) . The blacktailed jackrabbit , the most common species , is a mottled brownish - gray with a black striptease extending along the tail to the rump . It weighs 4 to 8 pounds and is 19 inches long , with 4- to 7 - inch - long spike , short front wooden leg , and foresightful hind ramification . Cottontail cony are smaller in sizing than jackrabbit and hares . The easterly cottontail , the most widespread species , averages 12 inches in length and weighs 2 to 4 pounds . Its fur appears gray or brownish - gray . Its auricle are smaller than those of jackrabbit , and its hind feet are much bigger than its forefeet . Its short white tail resemble a cottonball — hence its common name .

Biology and behavior . Rabbits do not have a long lifespan span . jackrabbit average out five to six years , and cottontails live about two years in the wilderness . But they make the most of it by producing two to six litter per year , each litter yield two to eight youthful cony . Unlike the European rabbit , neither jackrabbit nor cottontails digging burrows . Jackrabbits opt the wide undecided spaces where they nest in natural Depression in the earth . This choice seem related to the fact that they run at a rate of 30 mph and leap 20 substructure in a single bound to escape predators such as prairie wolf , snakes , war hawk , and human hunters . cottontail rabbit are slower and choose to snuggle in a more saved environment , such as brushy fence rowing , dust - filled gully , or landscaped back yards .

The most humanistic method for protect your flora from foraging rabbits is to turn out their access to the plant .

Where food and cover are plentiful , lapin run to stay put . Cottontails can live their entire life within a 3- to 10 - Akka field ; jackrabbits may forage within only a 2 - mi roundtrip from their nesting web site . This characteristic combined with their frequent reproduction enable rabbits to quickly occupy any empty habitat create when other rabbits are trapped and murder . That is why fencing gardens when you ’re in hare country is so important .

food for thought preferences . Rabbits provender dawn and evening throughout the year , primarily on grass . jackrabbit take in up to 1 pound sterling of green flora each day . Eight jackrabbit are estimated to eat as much as a sheep , and 41 jackrabbits to eat as much as a cow . The smaller wood rabbit also have tumid appetence , especially for plant life in the rose family : apple trees , raspberries , and blackberries , in addition to roses themselves . Rabbits eat flowers ( specially tulip ) and vegetables in the spring and summer . In winter , they rivet on gnawing on sprig , buds , and the bark of new yield tree diagram , vines , and shrubs , seeking the green intellectual nourishment stuff located just under the bark . The gnawing can girdle the automobile trunk , stunting maturation and occasionally killing the plant .

Recognize rabbit damage

If you walk out into your garden one dawning and discover that it take care like someone pick out a pruning shear and snipped off the stems of young plants with clean , angled cut , mowed your lettuces and beet foliage to the ground , or gnaw at band around the trunks of trees or vines , carry upward to about 2 - 1 ⁄ 2 foot , your garden has likely been inflict by a coney or two . To corroborate your suspicions , look around for the ubiquitous 1 ⁄ 4- to 1 ⁄ 2 - inch round fecal pellet that rabbits seem to drop perpetually . The presence of their characteristic footprints , consisting of an alternating traffic pattern of small front feet and large back feet , is another clue to the identity of the perpetrator .

An ounce of prevention . . .

Where rabbits are concerned , an ounce of bar is really deserving a pound of cure . The most humane method acting for protecting your plants from forage rabbits is to exclude their access to the industrial plant , as well as to reduce the habitat for rabbit nest and cover in the vicinity of your garden .

Barrier fence . Constructing a simple conducting wire fence around the part of the garden containing vegetables and other highly rabbit - vulnerable plant is an almost unfailing method for protect plant from rabbits . Cottontails will not parachute a 2 - foot - high fencing . Jackrabbits can jump mellow if they are being chased by dogs or otherwise panic-struck , soextending the height of the fence to at least 3 feet is warrant where jackrabbits are present .

A 30- to 36 - column inch - gamey fence constructed from woven conducting wire with a mesh no larger than 1 inch is recommended for except rabbits . The miserable goal of the telegram interlocking should be turned outwards at a 90 - degree slant and bury 6 column inch in the ground to warn rabbits from digging under the fence . Regular 20 - gauge poultry sack support by stake can provide protection from lapin for three to five old age and is inexpensive to supercede . weld telegram will furnish protection for longer periods .

Electric fencing . rabbit ( as well as raccoons and skunks ) can also be excluded by electric fencing . This approaching is very various because electrical fencing is portable and can be removed and lay in when lapin activity ceases or the growing season ends . Six strands of electric telegram spaced 3 column inch aside , with alternating hot and ground wires , should deter most rabbits .

Cylinders and Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree guards . Sometimes it is easier to protect individual plant life than to exclude lapin from an integral garden . Tree trunk and new shrubs can be protect from hare scathe by encircling them with a piston chamber of poultry netting or welded wire with 1 - to 2 - column inch mesh . Cut the wire into 24 - inch - wide strips ( or a little broad where jam-packed Charles Percy Snow run a hare ’s reach ) and long enough to go around the Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree . Bury the bottom of the wire 2 to 3 inch cryptical and anchor the piston chamber with lath or rebar to ensure that it stands at least 2 inches away from the luggage compartment so rabbits can not promote against the cylinder and arrive at the plant .

commercial-grade Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree guards made from Al , nylon mesh wrapping , or cover jute composition board are effectual barriers to rabbits , as are homemade wrappings of aluminium foil or jute bags .

Habitat reduction . Total evacuation of rabbits in the environs is neither necessary , suitable , nor even possible without ruinous result to other mintage that prey on them . But it is potential to manipulate the home ground close to the garden to remove the cover and nesting sites ask by rabbit to survive and procreate . By selectively removing light touch piles , gage patches , dump , Isidor Feinstein Stone piles , and other junk where rabbits live and obliterate , you may bring on rabbits near the garden to relocate voluntarily to more hospitable home ground . Although this wo n’t totally work your coney problem , it will assist reduce rabbit populations close to the garden .

repellant . Commercial repellent that make industrial plant wicked to rabbits can allow for some aegis to plants for short time period of time . Common repellents admit ammonium soaps , capsaicin ( red-hot pepper ) , naphthalene ( moth ball ) , and parentage repast . These material call for to be reapplied to unprotected raw ontogenesis , and after rain or sprinkler irrigation washes the repellant off flora leaves . They should not be apply to edible portions of the plant .

Trapping . If all else fails , and if only a few rabbit are feeding in the garden , the hare can be entice into live traps and relocated . Be aware , though , that trapping is usually effective only with cottontail rabbit rabbits , which generally lack the gamy level of trap shyness exhibited by jackrabbits . tough wire lively traps can be purchase from garden centers , computer hardware stores , or seed catalogs . In some areas , you may be able to rent traps from animal control offices or pestcontrol companies .

Traps are most effective when used in wintertime , or during hazy or rainy nighttime during warm period . pose them where you have find rabbits feeding or resting , and keep them near bush or other cover so hare can reach them without having to cross wide , open areas . Covering the hole with a piece of canvas or other grim fabric can increase its effectiveness . If lapin do n’t get in a cakehole within four or five days , move the trap to another localization .

By selectively removing brush piles , smoke patches , stone piles , and other debris , you may induce rabbits near the garden to relocate voluntarily .

In the warm season , traps can be rag with whatever the rabbit has been eating . orchard apple tree and fresh vegetable such as carrot , beans , or a cabbage leaf rolled tightly and held together with a toothpick make good lure . In wintertime , a dry out corn Larus marinus ( available from provender or pet stores ) , dried apples , and lucerne are excellent baits . localise the bait on the floor at the rear of the trap ( or impale Indian corn cobs on the nail often built into traps for that purpose ) .

check off to see whether and where local regulation permit expel cony , and transport them at least several miles from where they were captured . Do not release them where they may create a problem for someone else .

Rabbits not the problem?

Maybe it’s another critter, and here’s what to do about it:

•Protect Your Garden from Woodchucks•Much Ado About Moles•Oh , Deer• How to check Voles in Your Garden

— Helga Olkowski and co - source William Olkowski and Sheila Daar founded the non - profit Bio - Integral Resource Center in Berkeley , California . They are the authors of Common - Sense Pest Control ( Taunton Press , 1 994 ) .

June 2000

wild rabbit

The eastern cottontail is cute but ravenous. Fortunately, there are many ways to keep your garden from becoming a bunny salad bar. Photo/Illustration: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service.

fromKitchen Gardening#27

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