from your garden?? what do you do?? well, the most humane way. I heard from someone to plant marigolds in your garden, but those rabbits just ignore the marigolds and go after the tastier plants...... my dad put moth balls all around the garden, so the smell is pretty intense..... but it has kept the rabbits away, so I guess it works..... is there any other way??
This might sound funny, but herbavoires (spelling?) can't deal with the urine of a meat eater. My dad is a farmer and one year had serious issues with deer eating his fields... so he actually ordered some wolf urine over the internet. On a smaller scale, my grandmother used to have my grandpa and other male family members pee around the edges of the garden... like a smelly urine-rabbit fence.
We have a huge Malamute. He pees all over the yard. We still get rabbits, skunks, possums, woodchucks, raccoons and other critters. (Only he kills them if he gets a chance.) I also killed a rose plant with moth balls. We have neighbors who have feral cats, and like to make my rose garden a toilet. It got rid of the cats, but it killed my roses. So be careful where you put those things. It is almost impossible to keep rabbits out of the garden. We always have them. We even tried digging the fence to the garden INTO the ground, and they stilll found a way in. Sometimes, something shiney and moving will scare them away, but you have to vary it, or they'll get used to it, and it won't work. I use pie pans, a big ballon with "eyes" in it and mylar streamers, and keep changing it around.
Get some habeneros/jalpanos (yeah I know misspelled), crush 'em, put them in warm water. let it sit in the sun for a day. Filter out all the leavingsSpray the plants just before the wabbits come out. enjoy as wabbits nibble. laugh your ass off as wabbits run around in 5,000-7,000 units of peppery hell > Repeat until someone calls animal control.
Some folks I know swear that if you get human hair (clippings from a barber or salon) and put it all around the edges of the garden, rabbits will stay away. I don't have a rabbit problem, so I haven't tried it, but it might be worth a try.
Get an outdoor cat. JK, don't do that, although it will get rid of the rabbits and everything else. If you have a small garden it's not too expensive to put up a short fence. Welded wire, about 3' high. It'll keep other thing out too. Dig the bottom edge into the groung so it's harder for them to go under. And I wouldn't trust a dog to pee around my garden. Sooner or later, he's peeing ON your garden!
Bunnies are eating the shit out of my tomato plants too, but I have an indoor bunny so I can't be mad at them. Plus I love animals too much.
If any of you guys with rabbit problems live anywhere near York, UK, I'll be happy to come and sort them out for you. Totally humane, I guaruntee it.
As to "Getting rid of pesky rabbits" Several years ago, I traded enough of my time, for a large enough stack of green rectangular pieces of paper, which I then gave to someone, for the privilege of being the caretaker & steward of these acres on which and with which I now live (Translation: I worked & saved enough money to "buy" my farm). Anyhow, when I arrived, the south west and north east cornors were (and still are) natural woods. Between those cornors were farm planted pine trees. The entire place was covered in trees and some underbrush. In fact, the entire surrounding area was covered with woods and tree farm. I started using empty patchs and clearing other areas for the gardens etc. The path I cut going to the main veggie garden was lined up so that in the morning I could sit and drink my coffee and look right down the path. Rabbits, lots of rabbits, were running across and along the path I'd made. It looked like the shots in movies when the camera is looking down a hall and people are running back and forth. I watched and smiled, sometimes laughed. I knew that the rabbits had been there before I arrived and would be there after I had been forgotten, same with the raccoons, shunks, possiums, armadillos, wild turkys, deer, turtles, fox, etc. in the area. But, since I've been gardening since the late 1950s and this is my third try at the living-off-the-land/ self-sustaining farm thing, I also knew that I'd have to discourage them if indeed I was to reap what I had sown. Here's what worked, here, for me. Doesn't mean it'll work everywhere, I don't think anything will. The first two lines of defense were fence and a small dog. I used 2 foot tall chicken wire because I can step over it but most critters can't. The dog was trained to stay out of the garden areas. The dog loved to chase rabbits (and the other critters too), couldn't catch them, but loved to chase. That's just what I wanted. Most of my problems were under control. Then it was time to take on the deer. (I know this thread is about rabbits, but this will work for them too). Among mammals, deer are probably the worse eaters of gardens. It is possible to fence out deer, but not on my budget. I've seen deer jump a six foot fence like it wasn't there. So here's what I did. I got a pair of motion sensing outdoor light fixtures. I got the ones that use two bulbs. I use one bulb in each and in the other socket I put a plug adaptor. Then I got a pair of small outdoor usable radios. I pluged in the radios, set them to a Rap music station, covered the light sensors (so they're always active), and place them in opposite cornors of the garden. When anything "trips" the sensor, the light comes on AND the radio. The combination works very, very well. I also experimented with a fan on each, to add motion to the set-up. The fan experiments never got too far. There is a master switch on the way down to the garden, so I can turn the whole set-up on & off. A modification I added was to put a small light on the post where the switch is, so I can tell from a distance if the system is on or off. The combination of fence, dog and the light/noise system did a great job of deterrent. Then came the loggers. All of my neighbors had all there land clear cut. All the animals I mentioned above are gone. I haven't seen a rabbit in over two years. The dog wandered off (bored I guess), the fence and light/noise system have been removed, and there is no "damage" from critters. But I sure miss watching the rabbits play on the path....... Peace, poor_old_dad
poor old dad, you are so smart to ward off critters with rap music! But, it is terribly sad that the land around you has been cleared. I am so afraid that will happen where I live. It seems to be happening everywhere.
Thank you, but it wasn't like that. It was trial and error. To begin with, I set the radios to classical music. I was thinking, "This is good, when I'm moving around, working in the garden, I'll have music." Then I tried Jazz, then oldies rock & roll. Turned out that the deer seemed to really like the classical and jazz. And didn't mind the oldies. Deer have good taste. I would have next tried a talk radio station, but none come in well enough. That's when I tried the rap music. That's also when I added the switch to turn the whole thing off. Then I added the on/off signal light. I couldn't remember if I'd turned the system back on. I guess it was that short term memory loss thing, but I can't really recall. Yea, it's a big concern of mine, but I won't go into it, that's for a different thread. Peace, poor_old_dad
