Doug's Rabbit Control
I've got it pegged down to a rabbit as the stems are quite cleanly cut off and there's no buds left lying around. No little chew marks like a chipmunk sometimes leaves behind - just clean, snipped off stems and the old budless stem left lying on the garden.
These critters have never bothered my garden before but I've noticed that we have a bumper crop of them this year and they've been all over the lawn when we drive in at night. Now, we have a good crop of clover in the lawn and I've got acres of good hay fields around the farm - why do these little rodents have to pick on my Regal Lilies when I'm perfectly willing to live and let live if they eat the turf?
You'd think the dogs would help out here but they seem more intent on finding skunks this year than rabbits, you'll remember I noted that our lab had found a skunk a few months ago. Well, she's a slow learner in the dark - she's now found three skunks and no rabbits.
All the researching in the world leaves me with the only foolproof option - to fence off my garden. I was fantasizing about something three feet tall, buried in the ground about a foot with laser controlled, night-sight machine gun turrets on the corners. Reality set in and there is no way that I can fence in our front garden to make it rabbit proof.
It is too late to spray with any of the taste deterrents - they need to be applied quite early in the season so that when pests take that first bite - they get a dose of terrible tasting stuff and leave the plants alone. It is certainly too late for the lemony scented repellents - I don't think they work very well anyway.
I'm going to do two things - the first is to put down some ground up hot peppers on the remaining buds and the second, well the second thing is to "mark" the territory.
I moved a bunch of groundhogs away from our vegetable garden doing this so perhaps I can convince a rabbit or two to stay away from my lilies. For the uninformed, "marking" a territory involves, how can I put this delicately, putting one's personal scent down around the plants to inform a potential grazer that there is one big, mean, predator around here.
Male urine is an excellent predator smell. So, if you happen to drive by my garden in the next evening or two, just look the other way - I may be out convincing the bunnies they do not want to mess with my lily buds.
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