Rabbit damage

[coachgrd]

Please forgive a newcomer if this has been bantered about before. I did a search but came up empty. If there is a thread concerning this issue, please point me in that direction...

Anyway, we deal with this problem every spring/summer. My wife loses a good many perenials to some critter, prusumably rabbits and/or ground hogs. These things take them right down to the ground. Surely we're not alone in our frustration. We have tried a good many things like sprinking hot pepper on the plant, leaving chewing gum out, spraying with a gawd awful smelling concoction from Tractor Supply Co. Nothing seems to deter these guys. What's the answer?

Thanks!

[Bird]

I had a problem with cottontails in my vegetable garden a few years ago, and farmer neighbors said the way to keep them out is to spread Blood Meal around the perimeter of the garden. If you're not familiar with Blood Meal (as I was not), it's generally sold as a Rose fertilizer. So I just used a little hand held broadcast spreader, and walked right around the perimeter of the garden with it. Now I can't say for sure whether that was what did it, but the rabbits left my garden alone. The only problem with it is that you need to re-apply it after a rain, when it soaks in, but perhaps an advantage is that it sure makes the grass grow good around the garden perimeter. [img]/forums/images/icons/laugh.gif[/img]

[JazzDad]

I'm just writin' & thinkin'. (Maybe I'd better off doing these activities in the other order.)
Are there any remnants of the plant around? That would (most likely) say something ate it, as opposed to something just chewing off the stem and dropping it.
Is any type of fencing an option? We have a few strands of electric wire around our garden. (I won't go into detail about killing a cardinal in our design error. [img]/forums/images/icons/blush.gif[/img] )
Can the fence be strictly a physical barrier?
These questions can be properly considered only when you have determined what is doing the damage. You may need to camp out and watch through the night.

[ThistleKop]

Coachgrd,
My mother would sit a glass jar up-side-down by each plant if she did not have too many plants to defend. It worked pretty well.

TK

[GAFarmer]

What would that do to stop rabbits? [img]/forums/images/icons/confused.gif[/img]