The Straw Gate

by Ruth Ann M
(Kalamazoo, Michigan)

The back yard at our previous house had a woods behind it and a trail going along the back end of the houses on our street. I had several flower gardens and a large vegetable garden.

The first year was just cleaning up what the elderly man had left in the veg garden to become overgrown.

So the second year I was looking forward to start my veg garden. I planted asparagus, strawberries, and the normal vegetables including a herb garden. We actually added onto the west end of the garden and planted a bunch of peppers - why I don't know except we just wanted to - as we don't eat peppers. All was going well.

The plants were doing well. I worked days so did my gardening in the evening and on the weekends.

One day my son came running in and said something is eating our plants. Well it didn't take us long to decide it was bunnies. Having a dog didn't help as he didn't know what a bunny was and he wasn't fast enough to catch one if he did know.

We tried several cures but none of them worked and our plants were disappearing. We finally decided we had to get a fence. My husband bought 2 rolls of 48" fencing with small enough holes that a rabbit couldn't get through.

We didn't have a gate so put up a bale of straw to close the opening. The rabbits jumped right over the straw bale and continued munching. So we got another bale of straw and made a 2 bale high gate.

That did the trick.

No more rabbits in the garden until they learned how to get under the fence.

Well we fixed that too and then we were finally home free. The garden took off and we had a great harvest later that summer.

Gardening takes persistence - persistence that is to beat those critters that would eat your plants for an easy dinner.