Small Homestead

I envy people who have ugly, gross garden pests.  Some fat caterpillar or some ugly beetle that you could pluck off and smash without guilt.  Or sprinkle a little sevin dust on your plants and do away with the evil little beasts but no, I have to have sweet, cute, soft and cuddly garden pests.

Photo Credit PaulS

I had read the story of Peter Cottontail as a child.  I remember the evil farmer who trapped him while Peter was only trying to nibble on the carrots.  I remember thinking that it was mean not to share with Peter, after all, how much damage  could one little rabbit do.

Let me tell you that one hungry little bunny can decimate 15 feet of green bean plants in a week.  They are quite efficient.  The simply reach in with their little teeth and cut the stalk and then eat all the leaves.

They are very systematic.  They eat every leaf on each plant and they move from one plant to the next.  It looks like someone came through with a weed eater and cut the tops off of the beans.  So far, our little bunny and his friends have eaten a row and a half of green bean plants.

At first we thought it was some kind of bug but they ate too much too fast.  Then I tried scaring them away.  Scarecrows might scare crows but not bunnies.  I tried letting the dogs scare them away.  It worked while we were out there but as soon as we left, the bunnies came out to feast.

So we have declared war on the garden bunnies.  As much as I love watching them, I did not spend all that money on seeds and all that work weeding and cultivating the garden to feed the bunnies.  I am looking into bunny repellants but the only one that sounds promising is blood meal.  The rest are very expensive and don’t work for very long.

If the blood meal doesn’t work, I am going to plan one heck of a rabbit stew.  Does anyone have any tried and true methods of keeping bunnies out of the garden?