7 Sustainable Ways to Keep Rabbits Out of Your Garden

Keeping Rabbits Out of Your Garden

If you’ve identified your problem as rabbits, there are multiple ways to keep these critters at bay. The first step to take is to stay ahead of the problem by creating a rabbit-deterrent garden.

Place a Rabbit Fence

A fence is the best long-term method of keeping rabbits out of your entire property. It should be made of a heavy-duty, galvanized steel mesh at least four feet in height, with the bottom foot sunk below ground level and the lowest six inches bent outwards to prevent rabbits from tunneling under it. The mesh should be narrower than three inches.

Protect Garden Beds

To protect entire garden beds, place chicken netting over favorite rabbit foods. But remember that rabbits are consummate diggers. Bury hardware cloth around the base of your garden beds to prevent the animals from burrowing under the chicken netting.

Surround Young Trees and Shrubs

You can protect your young trees and shrubs with a half-inch mesh hardware cloth or one-inch chicken netting. Form the hardware cloth or chicken netting into a cylinder and force it into the ground to hold it upright.

Set Up Repellents

Repellents with putrescent whole-egg solids can reduce browsing by rabbits. You might, however, end up attracting other pests to the decaying organic matter.

Alternatively, distribute a pouch or spray a liquid mix of any combination of garlic, red pepper, strong-smelling soap, or other strong odors around your garden’s perimeter or at the base of trees and shrubs. Just keep in mind that you or your neighbors might smell the repellent as well.

Remove Potential Hiding Places

Rabbits don’t like exposed spaces where they are vulnerable to predators. Remove potential nesting and hiding places by clearing brush piles, weed patches, rock piles, and other debris. An open area surrounding your garden will give your plants some limited protection.

Create Disturbances

Rabbits are creatures of habit, so any novelty is a threat. Create harmless disturbances with any unfamiliar sound or sight likely to keep them at bay. Try low-maintenance solar-powered LED lights that flash or blink according to a timer, or a motion-activated sprayer to startle rabbits away from your yard. Noise-making garden ornaments, wind chimes, spinning pinwheels, and mobiles of pie tins or aluminum cans can deter rabbits—if the wind is blowing, that is.

Grow Food That Rabbits Don’t Eat

Rabbits are opportunistic feeders and especially enjoy the tender shoots of seedlings, including young trees and shrubs. The key is to grow what they don’t eat. Once rabbits discover a great source of food, they’ll return again and again until they’ve exhausted the food supply.

Removing any temptations early in the spring can prevent their habits from setting in. Rabbits love beans, carrots, lettuce, parsley, peas, and spinach, but will likely avoid plants with fuzzy leaves, milky sap, thorns, and strong scents, as well as any member of the nightshade family, due to their toxins. But when rabbits get hungry enough, they’ll eat just about anything.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you humanely trap a rabbit?

Trapping should be considered a last resort due to the risk of harming or traumatizing the rabbit. It’s also less effective than other methods of keeping rabbits our of your garden; trapping merely removes single rabbits instead of the source of the problem.

Which smells keep rabbits away?

Powerful odors will deter rabbits. Garlic, peppers, and strong herbs like ginger and mint tend to keep these animals away from a yard. A light mixture of water and strong-smelling liquid soap should also do the trick.

What repels rabbits from eating plants?

From planting foods that rabbits aren’t interested in eating to building a sustainable fence around your garden, there are plenty of ways to keep these critters away.

Read the original article on Treehugger.