Wascally Wabbits!!!

The rabbits have finally caught up with me...they've never done that much damage here but now they're wanting to sample salvias. It's bad enough to plant everything in wire under the ground, now enclosing in wire above ground?! I've been told by a local nurseryman that his gopher problems disappeared after planting tulbaghia / Society Garlic everywhere and garlic is listed as being a deterrent to rabbits. Has anyone tried this? The ferrets have done a real number on the gopher population....I'm seeing NO gopher activity now, and I've seen the ferret getting rabbits,but don't think it can keep up with the sudden rabbit population. I'm not that crazy about tulbaghia as a 'design element',but, in my beds of 'mother plants', I'm thinking I'll go out today and divide up my tulbaghias and put a plug next to each salvia. If anyone has tried tulbaghia for this purpose, plmk. Thanks
Sherry

Does the ferret do any damage to the garden? We need one to thin our squirrels. Trade you a bun-bun for a rocky.

I've read about the society garlic, too. If it works, I'd try it whenever we plant something, too. The *&^%$# gophers took one of our Ceanothus Tassajara Blue plants recently - gone without a trace!

On the good side, a roadrunner ran into our window this afternoon going after a grasshopper - nice big snack!

Tomorrow I'll divide up my tulbaghias and put one small division by each salvia and we shall see. No, the ferrets eat protein, mammals,reptiles. I thought maybe just lizzzzzzzzards on the reptiles, but my neighbor saw one bookin' across the road with a bullfrog in his mouth. Whether that means they'd be hard on the toad population or not, I don't know. I'm real pleased about the gophers,but then the rabbit thing pops up. It's always something! At least we don't have deer here. Or armadillos. Or all those other things they have problemswith back east.

How would I go about attracting ferrets to my yard? I could use some good gopher control, gallons of castor oil and the neighbor's cats aren't quite doing the job. I saw a gopher snake sunning himself on the pathway at a park last weekend and was all ready to pick him up and bring him home with me, but they had signs up all over about not collecting wildlife! LOL

I don't know about rabbits, but I had a bunch of society garlic at my old house and the gophers didn't bother them, but they munched plants that were right next to them, so I don't think the protection extended very far! I just bought a bunch of castor plants so I'm going to plant those in various spots around the garden this weekend and see if that does anything.

For the bunnies, you might try something with hot pepper in it, or there's stuff called Shakeaway that has fox urine in it, that's supposed to scare off things like rabbits.

I have such a lot to powder or spray. That's discouraging news about the tulbaghia. I have some, so I'll try it anyway. I'd read that rabbits don't like nepeta and hoped that would keep them out of some of the beds, but I have nepeta by the birdbath where I also feed the birds. And the nepeta doesn't keep the rabbits from scarfing up birdseed. They even root around under the nepeta to get the birdseed. I used to complain about our coyotes,but I'm not hearing them around at all lately, and am now wishing they'd come back. I wonder if the rabbits eat hay or anything so I could just go buy them a dinner or two to keep them away from the good stuff...maybe alfalfa?

Sometimes the internet is your friend:

http://www.complete-gardens.co.uk/online/online-gardening-plant-solutions-category.php?cat=15

http://landscaping.about.com/cs/pests/a/easter_rabbit_3.htm

http://www.highcountrygardens.com/library/view/article/97/

Sherry, you probably have a lot of these plants in your garden already, but there might be some other ideas that are useful. I had a bunny problem at our old house, but they NEVER touched the flat leaf parsley!

Thanks,Kathleen....I've marked those sites and will take a closer look. One of them had salvia as a plant they won't eat...go figure. It seems that they have different appetites in different areas. My rabbits don't eat the Shasta daisies, but apparently do in other gardens, I've heard. They haven't munched all the salvia, just certain ones, but I have a lot of them to put into the ground and not knowing which ones they'll eat is costly. They've eaten rudbeckia this year and it's never been bothered before.

You must be vewwy vewwy quiet when hunting wabbits !
E. Fudd

Sherry,

I hope you're having better luck with your wascally wabbits than I am with the *&^%$# squirrels! Yesterday I was planting, put in a couple of erigeron along the path to our pond, watered them in and called it a day. Not two hours later John calls out to me and says one of the plants is gone. Blasted squirrel made off with the whole thing! At first I thought it must be a gopher, but no tunnel. Grrrrr...

Our rabbits have been eating weeds.

Kathleen, I haven't had problems with squirrels yet....don't tell them where I live! I've had them eat sunflowers before and am wondering whether I should risk them here. Our rabbits have a lot of other things to eat and they don't bother all of the salvia, it's just the 'not knowing' which they will eat. Dh is tired of making wire 'cages', I'm tired of making wire 'baskets', and yet we persevere. If I were starting all over here....I don't think I could stand knowing how many years of wire basket making were ahead of me. I have not forgotten your epi cuttings, I just don't go that way very often...only to HD and then we're towing the trailer. Will put cuttings in your mail box next Sunday so as not to get in the way of your mail.

Don't worry about the cuttings, Sherry - we're so busy weeding & watering I had forgotten. I will be happy to get them any time! Our mailbox has a roadrunner on it. Stop and say hi if you have time. We have a circle drive, if that makes the trailer thing easier.

DH doesn't have near the patience you two do - he quit making baskets long ago. He will indulge me with the cages, though, especially after seeing what happened Sunday. My hands won't take too much of that wire bending business.

We have also had voracious grasshoppers this year and they chomped two of our newly planted Ceanothus down to nubs and a gopher got a third. Las Pilitas is seeing way too much of me!

Tired making of mesh wire baskets! Here's the plastic bulbs-planting basket:

http://www.oldhousegardens.com/bulb.asp?Cat=TH&page=6

Hope it keep in basket and keep the critters out of this!

Hi Anna! Thanks for the link. I don't know if the gophers would chew through that or not. It's sure a challenge trying to garden around all these critters!

I think the gophers could chew right through those plastic things if they wanted to, although maybe it's enough of a deterrent that they won't bother to. Let us know how they work!

Dawn, you're right...they ARE devil bunnies! We've never had this problem here before and now they want to eat everything. Try this list and see if any of these are things that will grow out in Antelope Valley.
http://www.ipm.iastate.edu/ipm/hortnews/2002/6-28-2002/rabbitdamage.html
edited to add that according to this list my cleomes and 4 o'clocks should be safe from the rabbits and I'm so tired of making gopher baskets AND above ground wire cages that look nice to keep the rabbits out. So I'm going to risk it and see what happens. Looks like all my rudbeckias are little prisoners.

This message was edited Jun 30, 2007 9:04 PM

Sherry, you should see my poor little Erigeron Wayne Roderick plants in their cages. The bunnies have been chewing them around the edges to little nubs. :-(

DH has been making nice looking green heavy gauge wire cages...of course the grids are large enough so that itty bitty bunnies can squeeze through and eat, so now inside of the cages I also put plastic webbing with small scale mesh...so now they stand on their tippy-toes above these 12 inch high cages to bite off my rudbeckia flowers. Not EAT...just bite off and spit out. I used to hate coyotes, now I want more...gimme some predators!

Dawn, Here's another 'rabbits won't dare eat these' list:
http://www.allearssac.org/poison.html#anchor100266
edited to add that I keep seeing that ipomoea is poisonous, yet the gophers and rabbits love it and gobble it...it certainly does not seem to be poisoning them.
Asclepias is also supposed to be poisonous, yet two newly planted a. purpurascens were bitten off.
I love it when I find a list of 'gopher resistant' plants that the lady in Manteca has grown for years and finds them all to be 'gopher resistant' and smack in the middle of that list is ROSE....(Sunset mag. '03)......kinda invalidates everything else she said. LOL!


This message was edited Jul 1, 2007 2:10 AM

My current situation isn't as destructive as the rabbits and gophers, but more annoying than anything else: Those huge black crows come down and pull up all my new bedding plants on a daily basis.

They don't eat them, they just pull them up and toss them on the grass. I can't figure out why they do this.

My cats are of no help whatsoever. The minute the crows land, the cats high-tail it inside!!!

I know it's said that the crows are awful birds, but I love them anyway, don't know why. Love to hear them talking. We have tons of crows, JD, but so far none of that behavior. It must be those 'city' crows...they're smart....they're pushing your buttons. Tell them to go chase the parrots......

Don't pick on the parrots! Get some mockingbirds nesting so they can chase the crows. :-) Your neighbors will love you. lol

I respect the intelligence of crows, but that's a far cry from liking them. Can't stand that "caw caw caw" either. Give me a nice loud parrot any day. :-)

Nature is curing our rabbit/squirrel problem, but at a huge cost. I noticed that although we had lots of both critters around until a couple of weeks ago, the squirrels haven't touched my plum tree this year. Last year they stole every one. The rabbits seem to be dwindling. We found out why last week: a bobcat has been dining on them in a shady corner of our back yard. Sadly, he also killed our 18 year-old cat, who rarely goes outside anymore. We are heartbroken. We've lived in hilly areas for 20 years and have never lost a cat to predators, so I guess we've been lucky. This morning we pushed through the bushes and found a lot of feathers and fluffy fur balls. We've seen him but not for several weeks, but now we know he's still around.

I did put some rabbit repellent out earlier this year but it didn't help. I'm wondering if the urea in it attracted the cat.

How sad for you, Tourmaline. Bobcats are scary creatures - my brother lost a loved cat to one a couple of years ago. First time he'd thought of shooting anything in years, but it was at night and he could not get a clear shot at it. They live in the mountains near Yosemite.

Our last cat to be outside during the daytime (and me sometimes waiting up until midnight to get him in) became an inside all the time cat after the mountain lion here in town killed 3 cats belonging to one family. Give me coyotes over bobcats or mountain lions any day. We have squirrels also, but they haven't bothered my plums. They are the reason I can't plant sunflowers...well, I guess the rabbits would probably do them in anyway. I think I want to live in the city. Maybe not, JD's crows are destructive and I heard from someone in Point Loma this a.m. that the wild parrots there eat his plums.

Okay, JD, it really could be worse...seems that different communities of crows have different bags of tricks...... the same person in Point Loma says there's a place in Utah where they go camping every year and the crows there steal the plastic parts off of the windshield wipers. I think you gotta love a bird with that kind of sense of humor!