Protecting Bulbs from Hungry Critters

Hello,

We have some voracious rabbits in early spring that love to sample the leaf sprouts from our spring bulbs. If I'm lucky, they will eat the entire plant and flower (sarcasm) especially tulips. I will be planting a fair amount of new bulbs this fall and was wondering if there was something I could put in the soil that would deter their plant menacing. Someone told me that if you put cayenne pepper in the hole with the bulb as you're planting it then the animals will leave it alone when it sprouts. Does anyone know if this is true or perhaps could offer alternative advice? Thanks so much!

I have the same problem with rabbits and tulips and I'm afraid I don't have an answer. I do have good luck planting a garlic clove with my bulbs to keep away underground critters like moles. Not sure about the cayenne pepper, hopefully someone will have some good news for us both.

I plant my lily bulbs with mini daffodils around them, which seems to deter the rabbits. This was a suggestion from another DG member. I had lilies that I had not seen blooming for years, because the dastardly rabbits would eat the plants. I'm going to do the same thing with the tulips this year.

Chipmunks are also a problem here, and they dig out the tulip bulbs from the ground and eat them. I hope that the mini daffs around the tulips will deter all of the critters.

Yes, mini daffs will do it. Have a look at WP Milner, which is an inexpensive miniature Division 1 trumpet. I suggest it because "miniatures" are usually very expensive. In addition, small tulips have small foliage, and it melts away faster. And yes, it works with any bulb, like lilies. Brent and Becky carry them. And they have the advantage of being essentially permanent protection.

If you are having problems with chipmunks, please know that they hate milorganite. Every time I dig a hole, I put down freshly ground black pepper for the squirrels and milorganite for the chipmunks. With those two, plus the mini daffs, I no longer lose bulbs, and I have had voles (I said goodbye to 50 lilies in a single season), rabbits, chipmunks and squirrels.

Milorganite keeps the chipmunks out of pots, too. Just sprinkle a bit - they really hate it.

Doing these things will give you a lot more control. It's nice to see bulbs after you have gone to all the trouble to plant them!

I tested daffodils with roses over the winter. I planted two identical roses in my yard. One got daffs, the other did not. One was chewed down by half by the rabbits, which love roses as snacks in winter (guess which one?) and the other was completely untouched. Ha! No more hardware cloth!

Donna

Wow, that's really interesting. I wonder what it is about the mini daffs that makes the rabbits turn away.

On a side note, I never thought rabbits would eat roses with the thorns they have and all. I guess I'll have to make sure I put the chicken wire around the two knockouts I planted this season...

Daffodils are poisonous to a lot of creatures. That's why people who have deer can actually grow daffodils - deer won't eat them.

Oh yes, rabbits will indeed eat roses with thorns on them. I don't know how they manage it. On the one hand, they have done your pruning for you. On the other hand, they might prune them to the ground. That being the case, I pop in a couple of daffs. But chicken wire or hardware cloth works just as well - just make sure you take into consideration that they can get up on their hind legs to nibble!

Yeah last year I had to put chicken wire around 7 shrubs and the ones I wanted pruned I left alone....LOL One year they were so desperate they ate some of the first year growth on our William Penn Barberries...I was wondering how they felt after that.

So even though the daffs are dormant the rabbits will still avoid the plants around them?

Thanks Donna. You are a genius gardener. I planted W.P. Milner last year in the front yard for protection from bunnies - it seemed to work - no more munching. These daffs are not very noticeable. I used other and brighter miniature daffs in the back yard - just in case (also put down bunny proofing fence on old metal fence). I got a really good pepper mill and put freshly ground black pepper by new plants and the squirrels stopped digging. Your advice worked and I have been telling many others. Have more daffodils from B&B coming soon. Also just got a cordless drill and 2 ft bulb auger. ;)

Now the remaining problem is the squirrels have discovered fruit on the new fruit trees (ran off with a peach) and also ripe tomatoes on the ones in the ground - they are leaving the ones in tubs alone for some reason.

Oh, are you sweet!

It's trial and error. And since the trials are trying, I try to pass on what works, and some things are easier than others (I like easy). I'm very pleased that the freshly ground pepper worked for you. It took me YEARS to figure that one out. No more rechecking new plants and bulbs to make sure they are still in the ground!

The squirrels actually ran off with a peach? What a sight that must have been! I'm sure they decided that you put the tomatoes on the ground just for them.

I am installing new roses so I ordered some more W.P. Milners from B&B. I laughed when I read on the Old House Garden website that they no longer carry W.P. because it is so widely available, which it wasn't a few years back. B&B actually ran out of them a couple of years ago. I think the word is out.

Oh, and in answer to the question above, yes the critters avoid them when they are dormant. They can still smell them, and that's why they work for winter protection. They need not be in bloom to be effective. Put the daffs in once, and they are almost like an invisible fence.

Thanks for the information!

Really happy to help.

Donna - I have found your advice very valuable in the past, thank you. If I find tete a tete mini daffs cheaper than Milner, will those work for rabbit deterring? I assume any daffodils will work, but you use minis because their foliage is less noticeable? So I also assume any minis will work, but I wanted to see if you have tried others and find the milners just work best.

One more question as I reread this thread. I actually do have daffodils planted next to my tulips and still have rabbits chewing the leaves when they come up in the spring. But I have them in rows and there is a daff row in front of the tulips, but not behind, I have gladiolus behind. Then I usually plant peas behind the glads and the rabbits love the peas. Do you think another row of daffs behind the peas will help? To totally encase the bunnies favorite stuff?

here are 2 photos of the area I'm talking about. You can see the fence going in in the back of one of the photos for the peas. Maybe putting daffodils behind that would be too far away from the tulips?

Any daff will do. I chose Milner because of size (smaller foliage) and cost. Excellent that you found something less expensive.

I put my daffodils in triangles around tulips, so if they are freestanding they are protected from the rear. I sometimes intersperse the Milners amongst them. If the tulips are against a building and the rabbits cannot get between them and a building, I just put them in front. My guess would be that the tulips need to be close to the flowers thy are protecting, but it's just a guess. I life to keep them no more than 8 inches away.

There were places in my yard in which lilies and tulips did not bloom for YEARS because they kept getting chewed. I marked their locations, popped in some daffs, and the lilies magically "reappeared".

I'm so glad to read this. I filled up my lily bed with daffoldils this fall. I to am sick of the rabbits eating my lilies. I'm planning to cover them over with that nasty deer fencing as soon as the ground thaws. That will at least give them protection til they are reasonably up. I figure if I spread it on hoops at least out by a foot they won't be able to get to them. Now to fight off the deer with milorganite and sweenies.

Yehudith

Well so far the daffs haven't helped the crocus much. I would assume this is because they are only an 1" tall or so. It's more important for them to protect the tulips anyway. I am having success so far with Milorganite sprinkled on top of the soil. We'll see how that works as time goes on.

Oh, I must say I have had NO LUCK hanging on to crocus, either at my former home or the new. Some that were planted many years ago by the original owner come back, but I have probably planted 150 crocus that ended up as somebody's lunch.

But they ignored the tulips next to the crocus and daffs. So...

Yeah the tulips are the big show. Truth be told, I should never have planted crocus along with because they are too small to make a big statement where they are at. They would have been better served elsewhere in the yard.

Yes, I noticed today all my crocus and most of my tulips near the house are mowed down. I planted a lot of daffodils last fall around mostly lilies, ground phlox, and asters. Of course it's too soon to know if the daffodils are keeping the rabbits away from those. I also dug up a lot of daffodils I had planted in front of the long row of tulips in a garden away from the house. I replanted all the bulbs with the tulips now sandwiched in between 2 rows of daffodils. As of today I do see tulips poking up and not one has been chewed, so I am optimistic that Donna's trick is working.

I put WP Milner near my tulip turkestanicas and the tulips are showing (and so are the squirrels!) but they haven't touched them.

If only I could find a solution to crocus!

My minor bulbs are starting to bloom. Had scilla, scilla misch*, and today W P Milner. My first dwarf daffodil in front yard and earlier than last year. I looked out my front window and saw a daffodil - could not believe it. Spring, spring, spring. It is by an azalea. I put dwarf daffs around everything in front yard. (By the way, the 2 ft auger with drill did not work, it stopped drilling after it opened a very shallow hole. Guess drill not powerful enough?) If daffs do not work with crocuses, are they being eaten by something besides bunnies?

We didn't have squirrels in my former community, but the crocus disappeared. So it had to be bunnies or chipmunks.

My azalea is in bud, and WP and Tulip turkestanica are under it. Funny that of all the plants in the world, we grow the same ones.

Donna, your azalea is in bud? What kind is it?

I wish I knew what it was. It is one of the few plants that was here when I moved in. The people who lived here were not interested in ornamental gardening, so the front bed was filled with purple coneflowers (gone) and had three thorny suckering Crimson pygmy barberries. Other than the azalea, which they could not identify for me, that was it (and it's all gone).

Two years ago at this time, March 20, it was actually in bloom (1st picture).

The second picture shows the flowers, actually a bit past best bloom, on April 30.

It grew by 50% over the year because they never did anything for it. But like my usual anal self I looked up what it liked and acidified the soil with Ironite, used acid based fertilizer and pine bark mulch, and put a soaker hose around its feet so I could water it regularly.

Ha! I have to prune it after bloom this year. It's gotten too big!

Very pretty! Could it possibly be a PJM variant?

The leaves look too big for it to be an Azalea.

This message was edited Mar 24, 2014 10:19 AM

I have no idea what it is. I don't know a rhodie from an azalea. I come from alkaline land. I never grew them. The people who lived here have no idea what it is. So PLEASE educate me.

Do you know what it is? I have to look up PJM..

Oh, my goodness, I just googled it!

Thank you!

No one has been able to identify it, but since it has been there with no care for at least 25 years it make sense that it is a tried and true plant.

http://www.missouribotanicalgarden.org/PlantFinder/PlantFinderDetails.aspx?kempercode=c163

Thank you thank you thank you!

Interesting - mine is thriving in full sun on the south side of my yard.

Yeah there's an 'Olga' version that is more pink and gorgeous too. I had two of them in part/mostly shade and both got phytophthora and died. Glad to help :)

Thank you again. I'm very anal. and it drives me nuts not knowing what is in my yard!

This message was edited Mar 24, 2014 5:40 PM

Lol I hear you :)

Between the snow and the deer my crocus are about done. Funny the deer didn't touch the tommies but the chewed a whole patch of the other kind. They also seem to leave the orchids alone.

Yehudith

I seem to have read somewhere that Tommies are resistant to chewing. I'm trying to find the source.

I can grow just about any bulb because I figured out the various solutions or repellent. But I have never been able to plant crocus and have them last more then two seasons, although there are some Remembrance that have been on the property for years and are untouched. It's my favorite crocus vernus, but when I put them in, Poof! You could actually see the digging. Rude!

I'm not having problems with them being dug up, just the tops chewed. The others were all up and blooming when the snow hit and they went to mush after being squashed under the weight.

My lily bed is packed full of daffodils that are struggling to come up let alone bloom. I hope they'll protect the lilies but I'm going to net the whole bed this weekend. What with Passover maddness coming literally within days and such a late spring I'm not going to have time to guard them so at least this way they'll have a chance to make it out of the ground in one piece.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a robot we could set up in the yard that would the ((*^*$ out of those 4 legged terrorists we have to deal with. The hawks and vultures in the area would take care of the carcasses.

Passover madness? LOL!

What's Passover madness??

The easiest way to describe Passover Maddness:

Have you watched the movie Ten Commandments with Charlston Heston? Do you remember the Exodus sequence? If you haven't, go to your Old Testement and read the Exodus story. OK, that sets the scene.

Now, where it says "remove all leven (basicaly any thing that has been made with wheat products) from the home. We take it literally. Starting a month before Passover most observant homes start a spring cleaning spree that would put an Amish housewife to shame.

Think cleaning out light sockets with tooth picks (I am not kidding). We start in the rafters and work our way down to the sub-basement. Every pocket is turned out, every corner of the garage, the strainers from the faucets are removed, makeup and hygiene products are checked (vit-e is grown on grain) and don't even think about what we go through in the kitchen. The kitchen alone is enough to drive you to the therapist. Grass seed and a lot of my garden stuff is on the list as well. And the "beat goes on.....".

Now we start the shopping for the approved foods. Think Christmas shoppers multiplied by a factor of 10! We're not just talking food, new cooking utensils, clothes, guest things like table clothes and napkins and on and on.

Our boys have to get haircuts because they won't be able to cut their hair for the next 2 months. All the kids that are going off to highschool and college all around the world (Yudi thinks he's going to be in Israel next year, he's coming home from Toronto on Tuesday) are comining in. As an aside, this is the second largest Jewish community in the U.S. BWI and Regan for the next 3 weeks will be packed with returning black hatted teenage boys and long skirted girls and kids on their way back to places like St. Louis and Omaha.

Now the cooking starts. 8 days of kosher for passover meals cooked according to rules that were laid down 3,500 years ago on Mount Sinai. That is 24 meals most of which are company meals. At least two of those meals by the way go on until 4 in the morning if there are a bunch of boys from Yeshiva or a couple rabbis in the family. Many of those company meals can be for in excess of 20 people when you consider the number ofof friends and family involved (some of my friends have 12-16 kids and 80 grand kids. So, we are now on an 8 day round of Christmas dinner with Aunt Agnes the boozer and Cousin Frank with his 8 spoiled ADHD (my son has ADD) kids and Sister Girty whose divorcing her husband and is taking Valium to get her through it. Oh and lets not forget Hank who swears its all hocum and tells all the kids not to believe a bit of it and will sneak them out for pizza if they don't say anything, but likes getting a free meal.

Now you see why I call it Passover Maddness.

I know what you are thinking, but no. There is no way we'd stop doing it. Just think, 3,500 years ago we packed up everything we could carry, left the homes we'd had for 400 years knowing that we'd never see them again (can you imagine packing for that trip, I'd kill to hear some of the conversations that took place), traveled out to a barren rock in the desert where we made a promise to live our lives according to 613 laws. Through persecutions, good times and bad we've never let go of that promise. So, G-d willing until Mosiach comes we'll be cleaning, cooking and going mad every spring.

Yehudith

This message was edited Apr 17, 2014 3:43 PM

Yehudith, that sounds wonderful and maddening at the same time ... Like most family gatherings! Most of my Jewish friends are secular and the one Passover dinner I attended was a rather simple affair. I loved hearing the ancient prayers in Hebrew, though. It helps you feel connected to the past, even if they're not your direct ancestors.