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canokie

could a rabbit get into my garden?

Shelley Smith
9 years ago

I recently put in a couple of new raised beds that I thought for sure would be pest proof. In previous years I lost a lot of vegetables to the rabbits (which seem to be multiplying like rabbits :) here in my little corner of suburbia, and to our dogs, who like to chase the rabbits and dig in the nice soft dirt :/ The new beds are 1' tall and are fenced in with hog panels lined with 1/2" hardware cloth along the bottom. The back is the wooden privacy fence, and the ends are closed in with 2" x4"s. I will post some pictures soon, its a little hard to describe, but bottom line is something got in and snipped off all my kale plants. The biggest gaps are 1.5" wide. Could a rabbit squeeze through a gap that small??

Comments (9)

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Yes, small cottontail rabbits could squeeze through a 1.5" gap. Some young ones can squeeze through a 1" gap. They also can dig under fences, which you can prevent by burying the fences 6" deep below grade level. With wire fencing, you have better success if you angle the fencing outwards and then bury it, instead of burying it straight down.

    If you're dealing with eastern cottontails, they generally can be excluded by fencing 2' tall, buried 6" below grade, and with no gaps bigger than 1". If you happen to be dealing with jackrabbits, the fence might need to be 3' tall.

    I think that maybe they are digging under or squeezing under the wooden privacy fence, and that's where I'd look for signs. Sometimes they'll leave rabbit manure, or a little rabbit fur stuck to the fence, or even tracks in nice soft soil or in snow.

    It also could be something else snipping off your plants. Mockingbirds are known to do that sometimes, and it even could be cutworms, though I wouldn't think cutworms would be active in early January. I usually don't see any sign of cutworms until spring. It might be squirrels. If y'all haven't been having much rain, they may be biting into plants searching for moisture.

  • Shelley Smith
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thank you, Dawn. I did not realize rabbits could get through such a small opening. I will use more 2"x4"s to close off the ends of the beds so there are no gaps at all, and I will plug that open space between the fence post and the vertical fence panels, because its the width of a 2"x4". Hopefully that will take care of it. I'm attaching some pics, below. As you can see, I used cement blocks along the front edge. Along the backs of the raised beds, I put 4"x8"x16" cement blocks, sunk in about 4" to 6" inches, and placed the raised beds on top of that. I suppose they could dig under those though and come up through the bottom of the bed? I'll have to watch for that. Might be easier to just cover the bottom of each bed with poultry wire before I put them in place and fill them with soil. Thoughts?

    https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/DjHkRfvjauEtLewJK6sPAQiDl0-KbvjG67KHJmIVBio=w353-h198-p-no

    https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/BCd1qLaIsndp8hfDnfmDtd3zGmUGBQ1yfDywstN_cDw=w352-h198-p-no

    https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/LD22T-PqpN_mtkLTrruTsWGp1kH92EDbzBkA_KWe1v8=w353-h198-p-no

    https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/W8b4BcT-aFZUrNCBAVULQv6bZLdbfcXjdxzMK_AM4TU=w353-h198-p-no

    https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/2arAiEeMhTEmNiE8zaF2cCwuTQnwzIgSw9gCqV2WqZU=w117-h207-p-no

  • Shelley Smith
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Trying again with the photos:

    {{gwi:2129111}}

    {{gwi:2129114}}

    {{gwi:2129121}}

    This post was edited by canokie on Sat, Jan 31, 15 at 22:22

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I don't necessarily think that rabbits would tunnel under and come up through the soil into a bed, although I suppose they could. There are many other hungry creatures that might, including field mice, rats, voles, and gophers. Instead of poultry wire, which might have openings a bit too big, I'd use 1/4" hardware cloth to line the beds. That will keep everything from coming up underneath beds and it won't rust and corrode as quickly as poultry fencing does. We use it to exclude pine voles from some of our raised beds. We buy it at Home Depot in big rolls.

    One of the hardest lessons we have had to learn (over and over and over again) since moving here in the late 1990s is how persistent wildlife of all types can be and will be. Never make the mistake of declaring anything "rodent-proof" or "predator-proof" or "pest-proof" because just making that statement seems to guarantee that something is going to prove you wrong, and it will happen sooner rather than later. We just kept plugging along and improving things until we finally now "think" we have gotten everything more-or-less rodent, predator or pest proof. We haven't had the same luck with making things snake-proof, but we are getting more successful every year in that area.

    Every hungry creature has its own way of approaching your garden and figuring out how to fly into it, climb over fences to get into it, or how to squeeze between something or slide or shimmy underneath something.....they can spend all day every day trying to figure out how to get to the food you are growing within your garden, and you cannot be out there all day every day trying to figure out how to keep them out. Gardeners have to be more persistent than the pests are, that's all, and willing to redo, reinforce and rework all fencing and other exclusionary devices until they arrive at whatever works for them in their individual situation. It can be maddening.

    When we moved here, I expected trouble with deer, rabbits and coons. We have had that. There have been many other creatures that have been more of a problem than expected....including possums, skunks, venomous snakes, birds of all kinds (and I love birds, but not when they are pecking tomatoes), armadillos, bobcats, coyotes, ring-tailed cats, beavers, voles, gophers, moles, field mice, rats, scorpions (they will put the HURT on you while you're gardening!) and so much more. In every case, we just had to figure out, first, what was causing the problem and then, secondly, what to do about it. We didn't always get it right on the first try.....or the second, third or fourth, but we plug away at it until we find ways to manage the problems. Wildlife never really goes away so you have to stay alert. Let one little fence panel come slightly loose and they'll find a way to squeeze over it, under it, around it or through it.

    I can tell you've been exceptionally busy. Your garden improvements look great. It is a good thing you don't have a half-acre garden or you'd work yourself to death.

    With regard to bunnies.....the babies are incredibly tiny and cute and smart. It amazes me how they, but also full-grown rabbits as well, can squeeze through very small spaces. A rabbit that looks a decent size as you drive up the road and see it sitting there in the bar ditch actually is a lot smaller than you think. Wild rabbits often struggle to find enough food and are painfully thin when you stop and look at them up close.

  • Shelley Smith
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Thank you so much, Dawn! I spent a lot of time coming up with this design. and yet when we started building it there were several things I hadn't anticipated so we had to make some adjustments on the fly. And it looks like there will be a few more adjustments yet, which is why I am glad I built only two for now. You are so right about nothing being totally pest proof! My two dogs being the worst pests of all! :) But every year does get better, so I guess I need to focus on that.

    I would LOVE to have a half acre garden. In fact, it would be a dream come true for me to be able to grow all my own food. My goal is to have something closer to that in maybe 5 years' time. For now though, I am determined to make the most of what I have with intensive gardening, vertical gardening, and whatever other techniques I can discover or come up with.

  • ken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    those pix are smaller than the holes in your wire caging ... crikey ...

    get rid of the 'lawn' ... and plant weeds .. they will stay green all summer long ... and the bunnies will prefer the salad buffet.. instead of your veg ...

    my former pasture favors dandylions.. clover ... plaintain ... yarrow .... and a host of other ground cover ..... etc ... no way to be a lawn warrior on 5 acres ...

    they are going after your goodies.. becasue of your monoculture lawn .. and presumably.. because of every neighbor for a mile around.. doing the same ....

    ken

  • Shelley Smith
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Hi Ken,

    Thanks so much for the response! I figured out how to make the pictures bigger finally.

    I would dearly love to get rid of my monoculture Bermuda lawn - I hate it, and I hate the the HOA that forces me to keep it. I suppose I could try something different in the back yard though. Do you know of anything I could plant that would choke out the Bermuda grass and provide a green lawn substitute? I would love to grow something useful that would feed the wildlife and hopefully distract them from my garden.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Shelley,

    Now that the photos are bigger, I can see even more clearly just how much work you've done. Is your garden smaller now than it was when you first set it up as a potager or is it that my memory is bad and I remember it being bigger than it ever really was?

    We planted a forage mix out behind the barn that the rabbits, among others, seem particularly fond of. We used a deer forage seed mix and overseeded it after cutting down the pasture grasses after they had gone to seed in the fall. So many of our pasture grasses are clumping types and there was too much bare soil in between clumps and we wanted to fill in the bare spots with some winter forage for the wildlife. We used a 'deer wildlife plot mix' or some sort of thing. The deer, as near as I can tell (no deer tracks there, no sign of anything in that area browsed....), could have cared less about the food in that wildlife plot, but the rabbits love it. In particular they love the clover. We let that area stay a couple of feet tall except when Fire Danger is Extreme, at which time we mow down that pasture extra short to slow down the flames if a wildfire makes it to us. The cottontails flock to that area and have their babies there near my hay bale beds. The garden plot in that area should be called the rabbit garden because we are growing a fine crop of wild rabbits back there.

    Does your HOA have the right to tell you what lawn grasses you can grow, or are there height restrictions for backyard plantings? There isn't much that chokes out bermuda grass, although Johnson grass (it is like bermuda grass on steroids) can shade it out. Maybe Ken will know of something.

    We have bermuda and I hate it, but not living in an HOA neighborhood means we can do as we please, so I've let every "weed" known to mankind infiltrate it. Besides that and shading it out with trees and shrubs, I like to overseed it with rye grass in the winter. The rye grass feeds the bunnies and other wild things, and if we let the rye stay kinda tall in spring (i.e. for as long as possible before we cut it), it hurts the bermuda grass by shading it out until the heat begins to kill the rye grass. On our property, wherever the land is open and not wooded (about 10 or 11 acres are wooded and the rest is open), the rabbits live, but they all come to the rye grass to eat it when it is up and growing. Sometimes there's a ridiculous number of them out there, but they've got to eat and we've got something they like.

    Our lawn is not a conventional lawn, having tons of henbit, chickweed, dandelons, etc. but I don't care. It is not a sterile monoculture lawn and it does support a lot of wildlife. I've only had a couple of rabbits find their way into our fenced veggie garden the last couple of years, and I'd like to think it is because there's as much to eat outside the garden as inside of it. One got inside in the winter, and I never found where it had eaten anything, but something else got in there and killed the rabbit and ate most of it. The other one only nibbled nasturtiums that were companion planted with tomatoes and some herbs. It showed me how it got in so I could repair a cut in the fence that it had used.

    It is virtually impossible to fence out every possible creature that can get into a garden. I just overplant to allow for losing some plants to wild creatures. It is odd. You'd think animals sneak in over or under fences, or find a way through them? Most of my wildlife encounters, including with a fox, a cougar, several deer, a bunch of rabbits, feral (and dangerously so) dogs and a whole ton of timber rattlers occur right at my garden gate/entry arbor. I close it and latch it behind me now when I enter because I don't want most of those creatures to come into the garden when I'm in it. Usually the snakes see me coming as they are crossing the driveway and race me to the gate, which is not amusing. Most of the other wildlife I encounter when I "suddenly" (from their point of view) open the gate and walk out just as they are either approaching it or passing by. Obviously using the gate is easier for them than finding a way over or under an 8' fence. When the fence was only 4' tall, we had bobcats in the garden almost daily, which likely is why we didn't have vole problems in the garden then. We surely do have them now. I've left the gate open all winter, hoping bobcats are coming in there at night looking for voles. About the only creatures I'm seeing less of around the garden are skunks, armadillos and possums and I don't particularly miss them.

    What is on the other side of your back fence? Is that open land? Is that the wildlife corridor your visitors are coming from? If it is land that is not maintained by anyone, I'd expect it to be a mixture of different native grasses and forbs that the wildlife would like, except it all might be plants that are dormant in winter. Our lawn and meadows have lots of cool-season plants, so they are green even now. If the only green plants in your yard right now are the ones in your garden, well then, of course the wild critters will want to eat them. Winter is their hungry season.

    Dawn

  • Shelley Smith
    Original Author
    9 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Hi Dawn,

    My old potager, which is in the northwest corner of my little backyard, is a 12' by 16' area enclosed with a fence. It contains just over 100 square feet of raised beds and is still mostly intact except where I have transferred some soil to the new beds. These two new beds provide less than a third of the growing space my old potager did, so you are very correct in remembering that it was a lot bigger. However, these two new beds are supposed to be a test to work out the kinks before I put in 13 more beds. Basically I plan to have beds all along the three sides of my backyard, except in the south corners which are shaded by the fence. This will more than double the growing area (240 square feet) I had in the old potager (112 square feet). I may not get them all built this year, but my hope is to hire help this time since it is, as you note, a lot of work.

    Someday I will have more space and I will definitely never live under the rule of an HOA again. However, that is a few years off for me, so this is the best I could come up with for the space I have. I'm not sure if it's because my garden is so small or our rabbit population so overwhelming (probably both!) but the rabbits can wipe out my lettuce and kale in a night or two. They don't share very well :) Overseeding my lawn with rye is permissible so I'll do that next fall. And I think I can do what I want in the back so I may try a patch of clover and see what happens. Thank you for the ideas.

    The thought of racing a timber rattler to the gate is hard for me to imagine. You are one brave woman and dedicated gardener! Our neighborhood is new - when we moved here in 2009 this was just a newly graded field. Now we are surrounded by houses all around and there is nothing wild for miles in all directions. It makes me sad :( You have inspired me to look for ways to feed the rabbits and have my garden too.

    Shelley

    This post was edited by canokie on Sun, Feb 1, 15 at 11:35

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