Rabbit repellent???

Anybody know of a good rabbit repellent? Johnny's Select seeds has some stuff called Hinder but it's awful expensive if you have to keep applying it every two wks. Has anybody used anything else effectively?
-Juli

Blood meal works for me, but you do have to apply it after every rain.

There is a commerical product available at Lowes, it smells like mothballs.
But mothballs work well. If you want to go to the trouble of smashing them,
they will go further. But every thing has to be reapplied after a rain. But it does help here in Central Tx with lots of Jacks. Txsdar

I had a spearmint plant that got overlooked when the tiller worked through a bed a couple of years ago. The little roots got chopped up and spread around, and I had spearmint sprouting everywhere! I planted snow peas and pepper seedlings, didn't bother weeding out all the spearmint (it's pretty shallow rooted), and do you know the bunnies didn't munch a single goodie in that bed! So the spearmint stayed, and it seemed to do the trick last year also. For the record, we have dozens of bunnies in our yard. I've also had pretty good luck with other scent tricks..... I put tufts of cat hair (combed, not pulled, from the cat!) all around my rows of beans, etc, and I also chop up scented geranium leaves and any other aromatic that I've pruned back and sprinkle that around. Maybe it works, and maybe the rabbits just prefer the clover that's all over the back yard, but they haven't been much of a problem (knock on wood). On the other hand, those groundhogs..... grrrrr.

Gardens Alive has some products for all kinds of pests, and they are ecologically sound too. Got my catalog yesterday with a $25 gift certificate attached, no stings attached. Check it ou and maybe you can get something FREE.

Also, I have read that wormwood is a good plant to grow along the borders of your garden, like a fence. It repels all kinds of pests, bugs & critters alike.

Thanks guys and gals. You've given me some things to try. This is our first year at this house and when the neighbors saw us tilling up the soil they just laughed and said "feedin the bunnies huh?" Another neighbor told us that they hadn't done a garden in years because of the rabbits. Now I'm probably swimming up stream here but that's just my way. What is the sense of having all this land if you can't plant on it?
-Juli

Amen sister! You could also plant a little "extra" for the bunnies. ASk them what their favortie is, and tell them to eat only that LOL, no really I do know some people who have had success with the "extra" idea, but personally I don't want them sedning out radar for all their friends to eat too...

I'm with Farmerdill on the bloodmill, plus its good for your plants!

It probably works great, but doesn't it get washed away? And I don't use it because it is not organic. I don't want stuff from the slaughterhouses in my garden :-( On another note, I recently found coyote poop in our driveway for several days in a row, RIGHT BEHIND our cars. So I startted having my kids pee in the driveway, and they quit. IF you have a young boy (or an old one), you might give it a try on the rabbits. It is also supposed to work with deer, but I only KNOW it works with coyotes.

We used the juice from meats at the cafe' last summer. Mixed it with garlic and hot sauce sometimes for sprinkling on the plants. No more rabbit problems.

Actually blood meal is considered an organic product and is allowed by the NOS (National Organic Standards). And yes, you'd have to reapply it after a rain or heavy irrigation.

I'm more tempted to make up a pepper/garlic spray and spray that on occasion to help deter them pesky wabbits! (Course now, I must admit, I'm even more prone to set out some rabbit boxes, trap them and enjoy some rabbit stew, rabbit and dumplings, fried rabbit, etc.)

Julie, depending on how big your garden is it may not cost very much to fence it in with some small mesh fencing. Even the new vinyl fencing would work to keep rabbits out and at Lowes/Home Depot it runs less that 20 bucks for a 100 ft roll.

If you fence, be sure to tack down the bottom of the mesh every 2 or 3 feet with landscape pins or bent lengths of wire (eg, cut up hangers), or the bunnies will slide right under. We fenced around the orchard area the first year to keep bunnies and especially groundhogs away from our baby trees. Veggie garden was inside the fence, too. We used 4 foot fencing on 4 ft. poles (with bottom 12" in the ground these were 3 ft. high). We left an extra inch or so at the bottom to be flattened against the ground and tacked into place, and we left about a foot at the top flapping loose & hanging outward, which is supposed to deter groundhogs from climbing in. I patrolled the perimeter (coffee cup in hand) every couple of days to make sure there were no signs of tunneling, but that wasn't a problem, probably because the critters liked the clover etc in other areas well enough.

We also use my grandpa's rabbit trap. He used to catch rabbits in his garden and drive off with them, announcing he was taking the rabbit "for a little ride in the country." We nodded & smiled and thought, oh, sure, he's just driving around the corner and then knocking it on the head (Grandpa was a farm boy, so he was pretty pragmatic about that sort of thing). Years later, I found out that he really did drive a couple of miles past the city limits and let the bunnies go in a big, grassy field! Now, of course, I do the same.... if I want rabbit for stew, I will get it at the market & let somebody else do the butchering! LOL

I think it is tempting to catch some and keep ina cage for all the poop for the garden! And that is under consideration at this time.

Meanwhile, I saw a product today in Mellinger's catalog that is ORMI listed. I believe it was called Scare Away. The one for rabbits and other small rodents was made from fox urine. I am not sure the rabbits around here would recognize a fox though LOL

I have a hunting dog who stays at the house. Her bark keeps that rabbits at bay. Every 10 days or so, she gets to run loose and have her fill. Then for a few days, you don't see them around at all, they are scared and hiding!