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Ireland Ie

how do you stop rabbits eating your plants




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I'm struggling with this too Guest. Keep a couple of lively cats - or a terrier or two? I've fenced part of the garden with "rabbit fencing" - looks like chicken wire - from the local farmers store. It's about 4' high and you have to put up fence posts to hold it up and bury the bottom 1' of the wire fence in the ground. Where my soil was too rocky to bury it, I got it down as far as possible and piled rocks on top.

You need to keep an eye on the perimeter - I had a mole that burrowed under the fence and I had to block the hole it made before the rabbits could enlarge it and get in.

Outside the fence I try to grow things the rabbits don't eat - and they eat the most extraordinary things! I had some euphorbias (they have a sticky irritant sap) eaten down to stumps, they're supposed not to like herbs but they're having a good go at most of my thymes, I thought hardy geraniums would be safe - but they're not.

So far, I've found they don't touch -
lavender
schistostylis (Kaffir lilies)
mint
oregano
fuchsias
hebes
phygelius (Cape Fuchsia)
Daphne
sweet williams
saxifrages
gazanias
bluebells
michaelmas daisies

they eat the flowers, but not the leaves of -
pansies
oxalis "Iron Cross"

Even if you find plants the adults don't like, the babies have a go at anything. They take a few mouthfuls and spit them out if they don't like it - but it's still spoilt your plant. A friend watched them eat rhubarb leaves in her garden and thought that would finish them off, as they're poisonous - to humans anyway - but they came back for more.

If anyone has any tips for what to grow that the wretched bunnies don't like or how to keep them off, I'm very interested too.

3 Jun, 2010

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