Ravenous Rabbits and Other Garden PestsPart #3.

Thought with a new gardening season upon us, I would move us over to Part #3 where we can all post our woes as we start our new Gardens....

We came from here:

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/893935/

Thanks for the new thread, Gita!

A lot of crocuses got munched by bunnies this year, some before they bloomed. :-( But that happens every year, and my answer has just been to plant 1000's of little crocus bulbs so that I'll be sure to see some flowers from them!

I've got 2 fat rabbits hanging around, and you know that means I'll have more since they've been chasing each other around the yard. LOL

Well, market saturation IS part of the solution but most of us can't achieve that. The first year my blueberries bore, the birds just got every one. Lately with three bushes bearing, I can beat them to many.

Oh, good, Gita, this is going on. I know I may have some more tales (tails) for this season. Last year was my first time to suffer bunny rampage. I also want you to know, Sallyg, that they DID get the purple coneflower. The thing was, they ate through the white one first to get to the purple one behind it. I at first thought it was just the fragrant white ones they loved. Dummy me!!

Critter, I tried crocus before and never saw a flower. The leaves looked neatly clipped to the ground. Think growing things in pots off the ground can help outwit them to a degree.

Does anybody know if they like Knautia? Mexican feather grass? Bee balm? They don't bother lemon balm or rosemary, but they dig chamomile, oregano, and scented geraniums.

Well-=--I seem to be having a NEW problem here.....Haven't seen the critters yet--but the shredding of any cardboard box I leave out--even on top of my picnic table right against thr house--and, yesterday--my whole roll of paper towels was strewn all over the patio--shredded----me thinks there must be some rats around....UGH! All the years I have lived here (almost 40) I have only seen a rat once.

I would not be surprised that they come from the storm drain which is right behind my shed on my back-yard neighbor's property....or all the bird seed scattered on my patio from the feeder that hangs under the roof attracting them....Just the thought of rats is sickening!
My new neighbors (the ones from pakistan) swear she has seen 3 of them--or the same one, three times? Seems no doubt that there are some around...
I don't see that they have bothered anything else--but on 2 occasions, I had cardboard boxes with some stuff in them outside--and the sides and top were all scraped and shredded...I hate to think they might be nesting in my shed. It has plenty of gaps and cracks for access.....
I have put out those green waxy bait cubes here and there and I see the nibbling on them--but it could also be the chipmunks.....

Any suggestions? Doc--I am sure you would now?

AAAARRRGGGHHHH!!! Gita

Foxnfirefly, the bunnies never bothered my Monarda.

Gita, I've had squirells rip apart a roll of paper towels and dig in cardboard boxes left outside. Caught them in the act both times!!

Critter, I've never seen any deer here. As I could not locate any feed grade black strap molasses for my compost, Doc suggested that I purchase a product containing the molasses that's used to attract deer. I mixed some in my compost today, hopefully Bambi won't come calling.

Critter & Foxy, you've solved the mystery as to why there are some holes in my Crocus border. I thought maybe it was the voles, but supposedly they don't bother Crocus.

Yesterday, I saw GIANT ants in my roadside bed and thought maybe I should put some Diatomaceous Earth down there. I only got the mouse traps down just today and found that the peanut butter is attracting hundreds of tiny ants!!

Right now I'm on a two week staycation, which is why I've had time to post, take photos and try to catch up on garden chores. This year I've been busier with work than in many years past and desperately need this distraction. It may be easier when I return with the tax season past, but the economic state will prioritize my business efforts over gardening. So I am enjoying this as much as I can. Not sweating the small (furry) stuff so much this year.

This weekend I found a pile of fur along side the base of this bed!!

Gita- If the rats are in the storm drain you may find a trail worn in the grass. close to the drain, they can wear out a path if there are enough. They like to be near water.
You know what mouse poop looks like? Imagine proportionately bigger for rats. And get rid of the spilled seed! Birds will mooch from your neighbors a while and real food is coming out soon. At least, clean up and only put out small amounts of seed. Then maybe the bait will be eaten.

Please be careful about where you put that bait, Gita. At least maybe get some lengths of PVC and put it in there then secure the pipe so a neighbor's visiting dog etc. can't get at it easily. Most of those baits are pretty nasty stuff, and even secondary poisoning can be a concern (mouse eats bait, cat eats mouse... end of cat). PalmBob (who is a vet) wrote about rodenticides a while back: http://davesgarden.com/guides/articles/view/601/

Jill,

I am aware of the dangers and have hidden the bait cubes where no one will ever go.
I also do not have any loose dogs or cats around here. Only chipmunks and sqiurrels and rabbits....Seems this is not a neighborhood of too many pets...

Sally--With all this rain--i have not looked for trails from the storm drain, as it is almost a river near it--everything flows from both sides into it.
I also would not expect that there is an invasion of rats--maybe one or two? As I said--I have not seen any, but one day I walked out on the patio and must have startled whatever was ther--and I heard this super fast scampering....but never saw anything.
Stormy suggested it might be a squirrel, but i would have seen a squirrel run away.....
made me think of my battle last Summer with that ground Hod digging under my front steps!!

I hope they all eat enough bait and disappear......

Gita

There were rats in our neighborhood a year or so back. As far as I know, they never made it to our yard, but I couldn't feed the birds for months because the neighbors were so paranoid about the seed attracting rats. I didn't point out to anybody that our "wildlife friendly" yard had a whole lot more than a little spilled birdseed that rats might find attractive... but I did keep an eye out in the garden for signs of a warren (holes, trails, feces).

I figured you probably knew about the baits, Gita, but I thought it was worth a reminder & a link given the topic of this thread. :-)

I say buy yourself a cat, that will solve your rat problem.

Yes! Thanks, Jill! I meant to say that when i replied.......
Better late than never!

Critter, So far you are right. I found 3 traps sprung, still with big gobs of pb on them, but no creatures. Except back where the GH used to live, there is a heavy concentration of voles. There, 3 of the traps were sprung and there was not a trace of PB to be found on them, just licked plain clean

However, something larger is prowling around back there. I found this Lily laying on it's side. Something did this several times last year. I also found some tulips with blossums snapped off at the neck and some of the blossums were scattered about the bed, still whole.

Groundhogs????

Gita, you've probably nailed it. There may not be tenants, just visitors! I may get some of that Shogun Deer & Rabbit repellant. It is Thiriam mixed with a transpirant. It lasts for 3 months. I'm not going to use it on everything, just lilies and young shrubs and maybe other things as they are targeted. I hope nothing but grubs will bother the hosta.

The squirrels here will bite the flowers off of tulips and just let the flowers lie on the ground. No rhyme or reason for this behavior, either. Nasty little critters.

Whereas, groundhogs will eat one half of every baby cabbage in the garden, or all the leaves off your young pumpkin plant.

Gita, would the city perhaps be willing to do something to help about the rats? Seems like they're a bit more serious than voles or squirrels. Rats are also very, very smart - much smarter than mice. That means they're a lot harder to trap.

Critter, I've always been afraid to use poisons for the mice here for the same reason you cite. I saw Palmbob's article a while ago too. I asked my vet about it a couple of weeks ago and he swears the secondary poisoning isn't a problem. He said he uses the mouse bait all the time and he has the most gorgeous cats you've ever seen.

I am sooooo mad at the deer. For the second year in a row, they managed to nip the growing tips off several my lilies before I even knew the lilies were up. I don't want to have to put deer fence around that bed so I guess I'm going to have to move the lilies to a bed where they don't bother the plants.

BTW, thank you so much for starting a new thread. I hate those monstrously long megathreads.

This message was edited Apr 23, 2009 11:26 PM

Deer are the worst pests. Although I haven't seen any, a neighbor said she saw some on the next street. I have some azaleas that look like they've been "browsed." No other evidence this year. So far....

oh well, it's the multiple critter assault! C'est la vie. Found more headless tulips today. No voles in the traps. No more Lilies mangled though. It was so windy out there, it was all I could do to get through some chores.

A gal on the lily forum told me she plants a mini daff, wp Milner, around lilies the bunnies bother. She swears that doing this along with using the Thiriam works against both voles and bunnies. She also plants her bulbs in Permatil.

So happy there are no deer here, just 10,000 of them less than 1/4 mile away! There are merits to living near a line of electical towers.

That was easy to find. Lots of places carrying it. I'll definitely try that daffodil but I think the best solution is going to be to move the lilies. I have them growing in two other beds that the deer never bother.

http://www.daffodildepot.com/Daffodil/W.P.-Milner/Mid

Electrical towers repel deer? Maybe I should just invite Shenandoah Electrical Coop to throw up some across my land. LOL The deer fencing does work, I just don't want to use it out front. If the place wasn't so big, I'd wrap it around the entire property.

Yes, Hart apparently the deer don't like the vibrations the power lines emit. The Thiriam based deer repellant for lilies is Shotgun deer & rabbit repellant. It is a transpirant and they claim you only need 1 application per 3 months.

Well the traps are all sprung with no creatures caught. First I tried pb, then apple chunks. The wildlife enjoyed them both, and they even made off with 2 traps!

Some dumb creatures chomped away on the bloodroot leaves today. Suppose they'll be one less creature in my garden!

Gita, I had read about this product last year, but lost the link. Someone in the lily forum just endorsed it.

http://www.treeworld.com/

Yesterday I dug up and moved my Giant Sum & Substance Hosta that just started to unfurl it's leaves. This one had been planted before I started using the vole cages, so I made a very large cage for it and planted it in "Vole City".

Today, I find that some above ground critter has confused it with lunch!

NOT in MY budget!!!!
I seldom buy anything on-line--TOO expensive!!!! Plus--you have to pay shipping......

I'll keep putting up my plastic rabbit fencing......

El Cheapo.....Moi

Has anyone ever seen tulip bulbs dug up a year after planting?

That's weird.

No. But I've found lilies dug up right after planting. That was last year. And I've found tulips "cut" and the buds left on the ground. Think perhaps a bird? Or the bunnies tried to taste it but it was too high for them? They only got two this year. Last year, I only saw one cut like that. Weird.

Stormy, you need to call National Geographic to come and do a story on your animal bandits. :-)

Somebody mentioned last year about tulips cut off like that, can't remember who, not this forum...

Sally & Foxy, I did have tulips broken off at their necks and thrown around the bed this year. I think it's the groundhogs doing that. But here, some creature actually ripped these bulbs out of the ground. They had already finished blooming. I have never seen that before.

Well, I'll be collecting and discarding all of those mouse traps. What a waste of time!!

This hosta was attacked, probably by the voles, right at ground level before the pips unfurled. It could even have happened underground as the pips were nearing the surface.

Foxy, that's funny! I don't think NAT GEO would find it funny. This is the first year that I ever put out bird feeders. I bought one of those suet cake cages and hung it in February. Well, those darn squirrels would eat the entire cake in a day. So, I stopped filling it. Now I've put out a hummer feeder and will see who comes around.

There has been somebody digging down into my compost bin and pulling out fruit scraps. I find them tossed about the beds.

If you have rodents, you need a Westie like my Tiffany! The great white hunter! She "terminates" any rodent she can get (not many, because I keep her on a lead ). She also barks and digs anywhere there was recent rodent activity. I put moth balls (I know, not exactly organic) in the utility closet and under the drain pipe where I had rodent problems. That seems to keep them away. My grandmother used to put one moth ball with each bulb she planted. I don't do that, but might try it if I had a big problem and the bulbs were away from anything edible.

I have a background in chemical engineering and biochemistry. I know that moth balls are not "healthy". I keep them outside in a glass jar, handle them with gloves, and never use them inside. I do think that they are a cheap, and effective, rodent repellent.

Gardenquilts, Nice to see you here! Unfortunately my highly talented squirrels play volleyball with moth balls!!! Although, the Napthalene does keep the bunnies at bay.

It is Tiffany's dream to one day get a squirrel. She chases them away when she is here, but they come back. I have a black walnut tree, so it draws them. They are more interested in the tree than my garden, luckily. I had bigger problems with field mice and chipmunks, at first. Tiffany, mothballs and a lot of steel wool and spackle has kept them at bay.

My pet peeve is bird seed feeders. They seem to feed the rodents as much as the birds!

Gardenquilts, please tell us about your spackle and steel wool techniques!

Really stormyla? My home improvement efforts more "Comedy Channel" than "House and Garden".

When I first moved here, mice were getting in behind the stove/dishwasher near the pipe. Tiffany, my Westie aka "The Great White Hunter" started barking and scratching at the dishwasher. A frightened house ran out and she grabbed it, shook it and dropped it-dead. I was impressed, up to that point she had been a spoiled spunky lap dog with a hand knit sweater wardrobe. I am recovering from an auto accident, at the time I was still wearing a neck brace. I called the BF and he helped me move the appliances and seal all of the pipe penetrations. He dropped a few mothballs in the hole, packed them with steel wool (I used generic SOS pads from the dollar store), and patched them with spackle. One hole needed a sheet of patch mending stuff (sold in the same isle as the spackle). He cut a hole in the middle of the patch the same size as the pipe and a line so that it could go around the pipe, then spackled it. As I paint the rooms (takes me forever with my neck/back), I remove base molding, seal it with caulk, sometimes batching it first, then replace the base molding. I have no more indoor rodents and fewer bugs.

The BF and the neighbor have a novel squirrel irradication method. My first winter here, I heard scratching in the roof. I had just had jaw surgery (same accident), was in bed in pain, and hearing the patter of little feet running in the ceiling. Bad enough on a good day, but when in pain and moody from the pain meds. Of course, Tiffany was barking like a maniac. BF to the rescue! He placed a lit incense stick by the bathroom ceiling fan and the squirrels ran away. Then, he went out for a few cigars. He and the neighbor took turns with cigars and air rifles (Of course they did this during squirrel hunting season and both have permits. Yes, there is such a thing as squirrel hunting. I am told that they taste like chicken.). Once the squirrels were gone, they sealed some spots in the roof where they were getting in. We still have too many squirrels outside, but none inside.

Sounds sood! I had some in the attic. They ate a bunch of insulation. Now they are just in the garden. Hope your recovery is progressing well.

LOL... when I read about sealing some "spots" on the roof, I thought you were talking about dings made with the air rifles...

Heavens to Murgatroid!
. . . and I thought I had problems with voles/moles!

has anyone tried Liquid Fence??
- dont know the price but it sounds good - as they all do!

Guess Ive little to really be concerned about - at least for today!!

I do remember when a mouse got into our house thru the garage
- and hon poo-pooed: "Oh no mouse will stay in this house."

Alas, SCRATCHING was heard, Literally on the ceiling over HIS head!
. . . as he laid in bed!
Better Still . . . HE Heard it!! LOL ! ! !
- and that ended his words of doubt!