Meet Mike in Maryland! Mike will appear at the Calvert County Home Show at the Fairgrounds in Prince Frederick on Saturday April 28th. Find details here.
Martie in downtown Rockville writes: “Last spring, I wanted to change my landscape over to native plants. I had noticed a rabbit infestation in our neighborhood previously. In fact, I thought they were cute and paid them no mind — until they ate all my newly planted perennials! I put up chicken wire in my front yard, but the neighbors don’t like it.”
Yes, Virginia, there are bunny-proof plants
That fence can come down if you change your focus a bit and instead concentrate on growing the plants that rabbits don’t like. The mail-order firm Bluestone Perennials (a favorite among our listeners for quality and price) has a special section that lists hundreds of pretty plants that rabbits avoid, including daffodils, hellebores, sedum, phlox, delphinium, digitalis, anemone, astilbe and many more.
You can find the complete list on Bluestone Perennials website. You can find lists of other rabbit-resistant plants online, too.
Good fences make good neighbors — and hungry bunnies
Bunny-battling Martie writes that her neighbors “don’t like” the chicken wire she is put up.
Well, who would, Martie?
Chicken wire is easily the least attractive — and flimsiest — type of fencing. So keep the basic idea, but change the material. Our local rabbits are poor diggers and worse jumpers. Local rabbits can be easily excluded with a 3-foot fence — 1 foot buried, the other 2 feet above ground.
You have many attractive options in terms of material, so it should be pretty easy to turn an eyesore into an effective deterrent.
Oh, and make the rabbits pay for the wall!
Repelling rabbits with rotten eggs
Martie tried to install native plants, but her abundant “rabbit infestation” ate them up. She writes: “I got some predator powder and it helped a little, but the stuff is expensive and it stinks. Will your recent Tabasco recipe work against rabbits as well as deer?”
Stop with the predator urine Martie, it is ineffective. And the “collection” of the material is cruel in the extreme.
Many gardeners tell me they get great rabbit results with commercially made deer repellents. Products containing “putrescent egg solids” (yum!) are the most reliable at keeping Bambi away from the rhododendron, and I suspect that rabbits will find it equally unappetizing.
Homemade rabbit repellent
Martie wants a homemade repellent recipe to battle wascally wabbits. Sure thing, Martie!
Blend up a couple cloves of garlic and a hot pepper in a pint of water, strain it, add a drop each of vegetable oil and dishwashing liquid (or even better, horticultural oil and insecticidal soap), shake well and spray heavily on the plants under attack.
Back when I was the editor of Organic Gardening magazine, a reader wrote that he mashed up a big batch of garlic in a bucket of water, let it ferment under window screening for a few days and then strained it, sprayed the very aromatic mixture on his plants and the local rabbits moved to another state!
Hair and/or hot peppers
Martie in Rockville wants some help battling the rabbits that are devouring her newly installed native plants.
Spreading dog hair around the plants — a technique originally designed to protect tasty tulips — has been found to be very effective. It also kills slugs that get tangled up in it — and the hair will eventually return plant-feeding nitrogen to the soil.
Or buy hot (cayenne) pepper, shake in bulk and spread that around.
Or grind up a big batch of dried hot peppers and spread them around the base of the plants. Be careful you don’t inhale a big cloud of the dust or get any of it in your eyes, because if you do, that will be the sound of evil squirrels laughing that you hear.
Mike McGrath was Editor-in-Chief of ORGANIC GARDENING magazine from 1990 through 1997. He has been the host of the nationally syndicated Public Radio show “You Bet Your Garden” since 1998 and Garden Editor for WTOP since 1999. Send him your garden or pest control questions at MikeMcG@PTD.net.
