Dear Crabby, How do you Keep Critters out of your Garden?

Dear Crabby, I have a Pesky Rabbit eating my Vegetables, How do you Keep Critters out of your Garden?

Sincerely, Hopping Mad

 

Dear Hopping Mad,

Ah, yes, the pesky rabbit of the garden. We all have them. They are the cute sidekick of the troublesome deer. Together, they try to rid the world of fruits and vegetables.

Normally, I would get on board with this plan, but without the green stuff around it may cause the price of meat to go up … and steaks cost enough already. But how to keep the critters out of the garden?

Dear Crabby sits infront of his laptop

Dear Crabby Gives Advice

I wrote about Crabby vs. Deer awhile back – we all but gave up on flowers. However, keeping a vegetable garden is another story. Mrs. Crabby loves salads. And our doctors say to “eat more leafy greens.” So, we try to keep a small vegetable garden – it’s no easy task.

All that turning the soil over, planting, weeding, watering, fertilizing … that’s the easy the stuff. Keeping the munching deer and nibbling rabbits out, is the hard part. None, and mean none of the tricks – soap, human hair, tin pans – work. And that urine smelly stuff only works until the next rain, or until the plants grow – they’re always growing, are you kidding me! The only for sure method is a fence … so I thought.

I’ve been wagging war against my own pesky rabbit (could be the same one, where do you live?). To keep Mrs. Crabby happy (my ongoing life goal she tells me) I built a fence around our small garden. I used something called Deer-X plastic fencing around the veggies. But the deer just reached over the fence to eat the plants. So the fence got higher. I thought, I’m good now. But no. Safe from the deer, yes; but not from that one – oh yes, it’s one evil rodent with a glare in it’s eyes when it sees me – pesky rabbit.

It was chewing it’s way through the plastic deer fencing and getting in to eat our swiss chard. Gone. All gone. Now, if you know me, you know I wasn’t too sad about having less swiss chard to eat. But I have to report to my commander and chief in this war to end all wars. So, I’m out there everyday for a week with fishing line sewing up the holes – I felt like fisherman fixing his nets (at least with working nets I could catch and eat fish, I mumbled under my breath) – I’m sure that rabbit was watching me.

Finally, I broke down and bought something called Hardware Cloth – it’s made from STEEL. I added it to the bottom 2-feet of the fence, all the way around the garden. So far, so good. Hopefully, the swiss chard comes back.

That pesky rabbit comes by everyday. It looks at the fence – it looks at me – it looks at the fence – it looks at me. Evil glares of a bunny. I’m not too worried, but lets just say when I take my nap in the lawn chair … I keep one eye open.

Good luck with your critter problems – you remember what General Sherman said about war.

Sincerely, Dear Crabby

About Dear Crabby

Stuck in a rut? Need some biased advice from a crabby old baby-boomer? Read regularly by thousands and loved by some, Dear Crabby answers questions weekly to life's challenges. Send him a note at editor@rochestermedia.com.

Comments

  1. Oh my, rabbits are the bane of my garden’s existence. We put a tall steel fence up after trying almost everything else and it seems to work so far. May both of our gardens be safe from critters!

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