Rabbit Repellent Success

That my friends.... is one way to foil the bunnies
and cats
and humans tending to the garden
and just about anything else

Toothpicks for everyone!

Thousands of toothpicks for everyone!

Everyone needs a personalized hand created porcupine mat around their special plants!

Try diluting hot sauce (you can find large bottles at spanish markets and Walmart in the institutional sized section) and spray the leaves lightly, You'll have to do it after rain or watering, but you can get it done cheaply. Also pieces of soap around the plants. White vinegar soaked socks work, too. Most of the commerical stuff is pretty expensive, and regardless of money-back guarantees, more work than it's usually worth. Anything with oil will stay after rains but you have to be sure only to spray around the plants and not on the leaves or flowers.

I have seen these mats of spiked plastic that can be laid into a garden bed, covered lightly with mulch to deter animals... I've never used it myself but have considered it...

Anyone else ever use one of these?

http://www.leevalley.com/garden/page.aspx?c=2&p=10302&cat=2,51555&ap=1

Ouch! Big Ouch! That looks like a bed of nails and an accident waiting to happen. I'm sort of accident prone and just the looks of those makes me shudder. I'd go the HaveAHart trap route and I'd back myself up with a good Hasenpfeffer recipe before I'd invest in enough of those mats to surround all my plants. Why do I get the impression that the wittle wabbits would just jump right over them unless they were 2 or 3 deep?

I've never used one for that same reason. I walk around in my yard barefoot and I just know that I would accidently step on that myself.... but I think about getting them when the rabbits eat all my seedlings off - is it worth thepotential pain ... I am still thinking... and shaking the cayenne pepper...

Hmmm, this recipe I found on the Internet does call for pepper. I'm sure you could substitute in the cayenne ;) I don't have that big of a problem here with them because of the raptors and coyotes but I can sure appreciate those who are ready to pull out their hair because of them.

HASENPFEFFER
8 or 10 slices of dressed rabbit
flour
1/4 cup fat (such as bacon fat)
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. allspice or cloves
2 medium-sized sliced onions, sliced
2 heads garlic
2 bay leaves
1/2 cup vinegar
1 can stewed tomatoes
1 small can tomato puree
Fresh mushrooms, sliced, optional
Roll pieces of meat in flour and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Fry in fat until a golden brown. Place in a baking pan or casserole dish and add sliced onion, seasoning, vinegar, stewed tomatoes, and tomato puree (add mushrooms if desired). Let simmer or bake at 350 degrees for 1 to 1-1/2 hours. Serves 8-10.

Alternative Recipe (As Served in Class):

HASENPFEFFER STEW
Cook rabbit pieces in 1-2 cups of water in closed Dutch oven until meat can easily be deboned. Save broth to add to stew. Debone meat and chop into pieces. Fry meat pieces in fat (such as bacon fat) until golden brown. Drain pieces and add to other ingredients and broth(as listed above) in a crock pot. Cook for 4-5 hours.

I noticed the other day that my hound dog was licking the cayenne pepper off of my queen of the prairie seedlings ...

And sometimes I wonder if the damage that I blame on the rabbits isn't actually my dogs. The old hound dog likes to eat coneflower leaves.

EQUI,
YUMMMMMMMMYYYYY!! Makes me wish I HAD rabbits around, :(

Best;
blue

Ha ha ha, no you don't. Thumper is quite destructive. I ordered 25 American Hazelnuts that I dug holes for last fall. They were all 3 gallon holes. I have heavy clay soil here- are you getting the visual on that? I got them all in the ground by myself before dusk. I was too tired and the mosquitoes were too thick to go out there with a flashlight to tube them to protect them that night so I figured I'd get up bright and early and get them in the Miracle Tubes the next morning. Bad move. I got up at the crack of dawn and every last one of them had been stripped down to nubs and it wasn't Bambi that did it this time. I was absolutely aghast. At that point I wasn't even thinking about the money but more the labor of digging those holes and sweating my brains out and the blisters on my hands from the shovel. I have three out of 25 of those American Hazelnuts that resprouted this spring. Needless to say I got my fanny out there and tubed what was left of my efforts. Thumper also nailed 100 River Birch I planted a few years ago. I think there may be all of 10 of those still standing. Thumper nails anything that isn't tubed around here. Thumper needs to be in the belly of a raptor or coyote or in somebody's stew pot.

I can relate Eqiliburim!

Being a newbie gardener I had NO IDEA how destructive cute little bunny was and I was shocked at the damage one could do just over night.

Altogether 7 of my plants were chewed to death. Four of those were lobelia cardinalis returning from last year, but they never got a chance.

Also, when you say miracle tubes, is this an actual product? I have been making tubes from hardware cloth and my arms look like I've been in a fight with an alley cat. I'd love an alternative that wouldn't scratch me up.

http://www.treepro.com/id93.html
Read at that site and there should be links to the product.

Here's another brand but I go with Tree Pro. You will need to shop around to get the best prices.

http://www.greenwoodnurseryshrubs.com/page.cfm/3892

Thanks alot! I will check those out.

Hmmm, looks like a hunk of 6" PVC pipe to me.....wonder if I can get it at a home center or plumbing supply MUCH cheaper???

Best;
blue

No, you'd end up spending considerably more for the pvc.

I bow to EQUI's superior knowledge of PVC prices, ;) :)

Best;
bluelytes

Yes, bow to my pvc pricing knowledge! All joking aside, it's too thick and you'd have difficulty staking it to the ground. The tubes also allow light.

There is a product called Shake Away. I have used it successfully. I think it is crystalized fox urine. Gardeners supply.com We have had tons of those wascally wabbits around here. Tried liquid fence (PU!) and didn't realize the wind was blowing in my direction! Liquid fence did nothing. Blood meal did nothing! I applied the Shake Away around the plants the rabbits were eating, had to do it several times, but now they are no longer eating my garden alive. Oh, also in the past I used the pepper spray, it also did absolutely nothing. Try Shake Away.

I have a bed with a lot of spearmint running through it, and I've noticed that the bunnies stay out of this bed. In fact, they did not even find some tender snow peas that I seeded there one year! So I have been chopping mint and scented geranium leaves and sprinkling them around my garden. I think it really helps. Of course, it could also just be that the rabbits would rather eat clover than veggie plants, and I do have plenty of clover.

I guess rabbits wouldn't see an owl or hawk image (like a plastic owl) in the nighttime?

Because if it worked even a little, this might be an option for that community garden. Safe and no smell or anything to deter from the flower beds' appearance. Of course they eventually might habituate, but if it could work for a little while...


And how awful, Equilibrium. That sounds as bad as my story of the stupid deer eating all my tomato seedlings one afternoon. And as you said, it's not the money, but the work that you lament. I, too, have clay soil, and in addition to having to remove a bunch of English ivy (silly, silly previous house owners) and rocks first (with a pickaxe no less) before I could plant the seedlings, I also spent over 2 months growing the maters - over 20 varieties of them. The deer found all the varieties equally delicious. And here I thought that tomato vegetation was poisonous so nothing would eat them.

Thank goodeness they never came back, or I'd be sending Hubby out with his shotgun. Venison tenderloin is delicious, but I would imagine even more so with a dash of revenge added.

Yup three is about how many tomatoes of mine "came back" to any extent after the Bambi assault. All of the others (probably 30 or so good -sized tomato plants, plus some still in pots waiting to be planted) were eaten to the ground.

Hubby and I were able to eat almost all the meat off the two deer my hubby got us a few years ago - a lady let him hunt on her property, because the deer were destroying her trees. She was very happy that he got them - she'd had enough.

I even took the neck area (bones and all) and boiled it. The broth of that became stew like you mentioned. The rest became loose meat sandwiches, but boy were they delicious. I didn't expect neck meat to be so tasty.


Maybe you could find someone who likes rabbit stew to come trap your rabbits for you. You might make some hunter very happy.

NIGHT,
Me thinks you need to do some bambi assaulting of your own, with an ASSAULT RIFLE!! lol.

Best;
bluelytes

I live in town and cannot follow my own advice. I don't even own a gun, but I do have an excellent recipe for Rabbit Dijon which I would pass on to anyone interested. Bambi is also a problem here. Also his/her mother and father, aunts and uncles. For my tomatoes I use wire cages but they get anything that sticks out. For my fruit trees, I use wire cages and they eat everything they can reach over the tops of the cages. So all of my fruit trees look like donuts. They are fluffy around the bottom and around the top and bare in the middle.
I don't know a thing about hunting and it is no doubt illegal in my neighborhood, but I do love venison, too!

Please post your Rabbit Dijon recipe.

I forgot to take a photo of those Hazelnuts. Bummer

PAJA, Who says you need a GUN???? hehehehe

Best;
bluelytes

Here are the photos of the chowed down Hazelnuts from last fall. The squirrels rooted around near the base of them exposing the roots, the rabbits stripped the bark, and the deer nipped them off at the tops. It was a joint effort that took place just after I planted them and went to bed to sometime before I got out of bed then next morning and got dressed to go out and tube them-

Another one still standing-

They collectively hit all 25 and as of this year, there are only 3 bouncing back. Here's one with regrowth that may or may not make it to next year-

And another one limping along-

This one I don't have high hopes for surviving to next year but stranger things have happened-

I don't know if the photos above show it but each one of those "sticks" was planted in the equivalent of a 3 but more probably like a 5 gallon hole that I spent all day digging. It is hard digging holes. I hate digging holes. I dug 25 holes all by myself that day and was beyond physcially exhausted. The plants were ordered as bare roots at only $3 a piece and I could get beyond the $75 plus shipping but it was maddening to walk out there the very next morning with tubes and stakes in hand to find that all 25 had been assembly line style destroyed.

EQUI,
Sounds like you need to hire 1) a wabbit hunter, and 2) a backhoe, ;)

Best;
bluelytes

Sounds like I need her recipe for Wabbit Dijon!

I would agree with that. I feel your pain--it's not just losing the plant it's all that work!

I spent long hot days digging out my beds by myself, hauling dirt, mixing and amending, then planting, to say nothing of the research as to what plant needs what--then to have a rabbit undo it in one night! I don't know what I'd do if I also had to contend with deer, but I'll keep Bluelyte's shock treatment in mind if I ever do.

I just discovered a zinnia I grew from seed that a chipmunk dug up >:( The cayenne pepper seems to work (crosses fingers) but of course as soon as I put it down that %30 chance of rain produced a heavy storm!

I wish you victory in your critter war. BTW, do those tubes let in enough light for seeds and/or seedlings?

Yes, they do. For my area, they are actually ideal as they give me a one zone bump from a 5 ot a 6 which is often times great for saplings getting established.

Has anyone tried interplanting Society Garlic /tulbaghia violacea? One of the nurserymen around here said that he doesn't have much problem with gophers since planting a lot of society garlic and garlic is listed as a deterrent to rabbits. I'm thinking I'll go out today and divide some and plant around through my salvia beds. It's hardy to zone 7.
Sherry

Keep us posted!

Oh my, I think the garlic would go very nicely with a wabbit dish. Just kidding but I've pretty much tried it all. Never underestimate the ability of a hungry critter to forgo a pleasant smelling chow house while dining. With my luck, they'd probably show up to dine with wabbit sized clothes pins on their lil noses.

I was wondering why the little itty bitty clothes pins were lying around in my garden! haha

Actually, society garlic is a good one to repel rabbits. I agree with the nurserymen. I have a couple of these and I don't think they've ever been eaten - or at least not enough that I notice. In the two years since I started this thread, I've learned that the only way to truly be content is to coexist with the bunnies. I stopped trying to plant anything they like and no longer have a problem at all. I'm back to thinking they're cute when I see them around, since they are no longer destructive in my yard. Occasionally they'll eat the young tender sprouts of new growth, but usually not enough to kill the plant (see this on Lantana sometimes) so all is well.

Good Luck!