Tips for keeping bunnies out of gardens from the ThriftyFun community.
By Lisa Pfush
By Carol
By Rosebud
By kerra
By Siris
By Watinwood
By Diana
Wolf urine works too, but it's very inconvenient to chain a wolf in your yard and force him to drink coffee. I haven't tried it.
By Backyardigan
This page contains the following solutions.
They are cute and fuzzy, and only too eager to share the fruits of your gardening labor. Nothing is more frustrating than watching your hard work literally get nipped off at the bud.
Dried blood should be available at your local garden store. It is a biproduct of cattle beef processing. It comes in a powdered form and is effective for discouraging deer and rabbits from eating your plants.
If you have a cat or dog in the home then you are vacuuming their hair off everything all of the time. Empty your vacuum canister or bag each time around the perimeter of your gardens.
Grow lettuce, broccoli, and veggies in large containers on your sunny porch or in your yard to keep the rabbits from chewing them to a nub! :)
If you have a problem with rabbits munching on your flowers, try brushing your cat and then sprinkling the cat hair over the plants. This was the only solution that helped me after I had tried other remedies such as sprinkling cayenne pepper, human hair and blood meal over my plants.
Use empty gallon milk jugs for back yard planting season. The rabbits would eat all our new pepper plants. The only way to keep them away was to cut off the bottom and top of the milk jug and bury the wide bottom part in the ground a couple inches.
Here are the questions asked by community members. Read on to see the answers provided by the ThriftyFun community.
How do we keep the rabbits from eating the bulbs I plant for next year's growth?
Hardiness Zone: 5a
By rox from Champaign, IL
Try putting hot pepper sauce all over the plants,critters do not like hot stuff,good luck.
To protect the bulbs I have planted from the critters in my area I went to the hardware store and bought some chicken wire. I laid it over the flower bed and put some heavy rocks on the wire border.
Best Method Ever
All my friends and their parents use this method and not only do they have zero problems, but their plants are bigger and happier, too. First step -find someone with a pet rabbit. Go to rabbit.org for a state by state listing of rescue chapters. They would be happy to hook you up with someone in your city. Second - ask for a ziploc bag of poop. Don't worry, it does not smell. It's dry and crumbly and pellet shaped. Scatter these pellets around or through your veggie patch and voila, no more wild rabbits.
Why this works? Rabbits are very territorial and will fight to the death in many cases over land. Since domesticated rabbits are much larger than their wild cousins, a wild rabbit will see the poop (or smell it a long ways off) and give your plants a wide berth. The poop tells them a giant rabbit lives there and they will want nothing to do with your plants! Also, rabbit pellets make great fertilizer that will never, ever, burn your crops. It's a win-win situation.
I have a House Bunny who's litter box is just like a compost bin. He makes my yard happy and is the best companion I've ever had.
Wow, that is awesome info, thank you very much....I love to see the rabbits in our yard, but I do want it to stay pretty with flowers and shrubs and since my little dogs chase them the info on rabbits being territorial is very good to know.
What can I use to get rid of rabbits in my flower beds? They are eating my flowers. I have a sprinkler system that comes on every morning for 5 minutes in these beds so it has to be unhurt by water.
By Pat
Go to a nursery and get a rabbit repellent. There is a spray, which you do have to reapply after watering or raining. And, there is a wax thing on a twist tie that you can wrap around a plant stem, and wax pieces you just sprinkle. Those are good until they dissolve, several weeks.
Buy chicken wire and surround the area
What can I place in my vegetable garden and around my flowers to deter rabbits from eating them? I know I can fence in the garden, but what about flowers?
By Joe Burto
As the woman at the garden shop told me not much stops them but a fence. I have heard marigolds will deter them ~ they ate mine. I was also told bone meal, or coyote urine will work but has to be replenished when it rains or when your sprinklers go on as is the situation here in CA. I also heard just plain red cayenne pepper sprinkled on the leaves will deter them. This use to work for me when I lived in the northeast with my flowers but again has to be replenished often but I got bottles at the dollar store.Not so sure you want to put that on your vegetables though. Good luck I haven't found anything but a fence to work so far and then I had problems with the snails!
This winter the rabbits have eaten the phlox in my garden. I know they will attack my tulips the minute they bloom. Any suggestions to keep them away and send them back to the forest?
Use a fence, chicken wire or cover with netting or cheesecloth.
You could try bordering the bed with herbs they don't like, like sage plants or basil plants, but those can quickly take over a flower garden.
You can try getting rid of the places the like to live--so keep up with getting rid of piles of leaves and if you have low hanging trees, make sure they don't touch the ground. Patch up holes that lead to under sheds or walls. Sometimes just having fewer places for them to live makes them move on to someone else's house.
Do be careful if you are trying to do this now that you don't inadvertently kill a nest of baby bunnies. I would feel dreadful if that happened.
Having a dog out in the area (ON A LEASH, WITH YOU AT ALL TIMES) is also a good deterrent as they are prey for most dogs and will leave if they feel they will be food. Please DO NOT leave your dog out to eat bunnies, again, that would be awful AND dangerous for your dog to be ingesting bunnies or get hurt in a fight.
Some people swear by things like low posted owl figures (those realistic ones). That never worked for me and I am not much for garden decorations...but friends do it and love it and say it works.
Please DO NOT try the home remedies like hot pepper, hot pepper spray and ammonia that are recommended as "SURE PROOF" all over the internet. They are TERRIBLE AND CAN BE DANGEROUS for people and animals (not just the bunnies, but birds, stray dogs and cats, etc. Those "remedies" are a cruel and VERY dangerous thing to do so please be kind and not try these. I am sure they work but the damage they do is inhumane. Even if you don't care about hurting the animals if you have any kids around, and they touch the treated area, they can get these solutions in their eyes and mouth and it can be very painful and even blinding if they get it in their eyes. I am not being over reactive here...just very honest and realistic based on experience. I had hot pepper spray (from a hot pepper while canning salsa) get into my eye once and it was one of the most painful things I have ever experienced. It took weeks for my eye to heal.
Hope you find a good solution!! Happy Spring!
Plant trap crops away from garden, stuff the bunnies REALLY love, then plant plants they don't like around your favorites.
Three rabbits have eaten all 16 of my pepper plants. How can I keep them away next year? I tried deer scent, but that didn't work.
By Holly A. from Copley, OH
I cut up old garden hose (approximately 8-10 inches long) and place them around pepper plants and anything else the rabbits might eat. I have not had any problems with the rabbits in my garden since I started doing this and I have done this for several years. The reason that I heard that this works is because the rabbits think the cut-up garden hose are snakes and they are afraid of snakes. Good Luck! Hope this works as well for you as it does for me.
How do you get rid of rabbits in a garden?
By Ruth
I read that you can use crush red pepper sprinkled in your garden. That's fine, but does it harm you plants at all?
By Eric m.
How do you get rid of bunnies in a garden?
By RuthC.
Well you could put Irish spring Soap in bar form (keeps some animals out of gardens because of its smell.) Tie it to a stick about 2 ft off the ground and put it around your garden. The stronger the smell the better it keeps them away!
A friend plants comfrey. The bunnies would much rather eat it than anything you have in your garden.
Can someone tell me how to keep rabbits out of my garden safely?
By Sharon Rafferty from East Hampton
Place a rabbit fence around your garden, also if you dust with "Seven" a bug killer, that will also help.
Also, try buying children play snakes and place them around. See if that helps. It would keep me out. lol.
How do I naturally repel rabbits in a garden?
By john from MA
Go to your local feed store, such as an Agway, and purchase fox urine. Spray or drip it out where the rabbits appear. Do store it outside, in a garage or shed, as any drop of it inside will really smell up your home.
Mass home improvement stores such as Lowes and Home Depot will also have predator urine located in their garden pesticide section. Of course, if you or a neighbor has dogs, you could always walk them around the perimeter of the garden and let them do their business.
Although traditional fences are probably most effective in keeping wildlife out of your garden, there are other methods that can also work well. Commercial and homemade products utilizing certain odors are also effective. This is a page about using scent fences for repelling deer and rabbits.
ThriftyFun is one of the longest running frugal living communities on the Internet. These are archives of older discussions.
I'm having a lot of trouble with rabbits eating all our plants. Any ideas? Thanks. HeatherD
