Rabbits in my Garden

    See that cute little bunny on the left. Hey, that critter is about to eat the lettuce in my garden. It is no cute little bunny, it is, as Daffy Duck always told us, a despicable critter. As Elmer Fudd knew all too well, this arrogant varmint must be controlled or your vegetable garden will be destroyed. Bug off, Buggs! My spirit is in the wolf on the right.

    Gardening is my primary hobby, and has been since I was a youngster. I recently moved to a new house, and am having to learn to deal with rabbits. We did not have rabbit problems where I lived before (just about a mile away), perhaps because there was a bobcat or two in the neighborhood there. My rabbit problems at my new house started early this spring, when they ate about a third of my peas. I tried using a trap, but the only thing I caught in that was birds. After that, I planted all of my veggies within a fenced area. I needed to fence the garden anyhow, since one of my neighbors lets his Dalmatian roam. I was going to put up chicken wire, but my wife objected that it looks too tacky, so I bought some green, vinyl coated fencing, about 2 by 3 inch grids. That worked just fine in the Spring, and all was well (except for the stink bugs, blossom end rot and some mysterious disease on the tomatoes, but that is another story). But as summer arrived, so did a bunch of young rabbits. On the first day of summer, I saw two young rabbits in my garden, eating my beans. I went after them, but, to my great surprise, they just dashed through the fence as if it was not even there. The next day I took off of work to stay home and work in the garden. On four occasions that day rabbits entered the garden while I was weeding. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to capture them, but I did manage to whack one a glancing blow with a piece of electrical conduit I was using to flush them out of my beans. That evening I spent some time searching the web for information on how to control these varmints. The pages I found most useful are linked below. I bought two foot high, one inch mesh, chicken wire, which I attached to the bottom of the fence I already had up. I never had any problem with the rabbits after that.

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Dr. Karl L. Wuensch

This page most recently revised on 10. May 2002.