we're hunting wabbits!

Saw my first enemy of the state today investigating my peas. Freakin' lil' hossenfeffer. The cat has taken to chasing them - good boy Archaemeades! The only thing up in the garden right now are peas and radishes, and I've sprayed them with that liquid fence stuff. Perhaps that and the cat will act as a sufficient deterrent. I sure don't want to loose several crops to those little lawnmowers like I did last year!

I don't know how big your garden is Char ,but have you considered making a frame and covering it with chicken wire?I don't know what challanges I'll come up against this year,I think CATS.So to the chicken wire store I go.
Mavis

LOLOLOLOLOL!
I'm splitting my sides laughing! Sorry about your wabbit problem. We like your cat's name-we have 4 and one of them may get renamed.
Dusty

try building a simple fence 5ft high cheaper in long run then liquid fence and lastd longer.

You have your own, um, liquid fence if you can handling peeing in a big plastic cup!! I wouldn't actually sprinkle it ON plants, though.

Whenever our friendly neighborhood skunks, racoons and possums start digging up my precious baby veggie seedlings in search of grubs, I pee in an old plastic cup, dilute it by half with water and sprinkle it around the perimeter of all the beds. They don't come back for a long long time!!

They have dug under, around and crawled over chicken wire, and we've actually SEEN the skunks slide under the electric fence (in 2" of air space). X-(

Just a thought...

-nita

My son is becoming a pretty good shot and is helping to keep the wabbit population down. I realize you can't do that in town. Chicken wire and a BFD (big freakin' dog) are my defenses.

But I have had a rabbit nest in the garden before and they really didn't seem to bother anything, probably because between my 5x50 ft sections there is grass with plenty of clover.

My own wascals are groundhogs. They're interesting to watch for awhile, but the voracious appetites are hard to accomodate. Then they get territorial and quite bold, especially with kids. I've resorted to live-trapping them. I know they get flushed out whenever a field is turned into a new subdivision, and setting them loose in another open field gives them only a 50/50 shot at living, but I can't shoot them. Its not their fault people keep taking over their home turf, but the danger to the children makes me take action.
You wouldn't beleive the other creatures I've caught by mistake, even though my bait is vegetables! I think I've collared every cat in the neighbourhood - they look so sorry when they see me coming to let them out.
As for rabbits, I think this year, with the first veggie patch going in, I might have a problem. On New Year's Eve I was walking home from the hospital (Mom was in), and I counted over 30 domestic, turned-loose varmits. I think that live trap is going to come in handy again this year.
On another note, DH is in the construction trade and often has to clear rodents (raccoons, skunks and squirrels) out of roofs and basements. He has used with great success 'Critter Ridder'. It is made of various hot pepper ingredients that work on them the same way it works on us. I thought of it when I read the pee cup idea. My Dad used the pee technique to ward off deer up in Sudbury...it works.

Ya'll have been talking to the Capatin too much! That would send my prissy neighbors over the freakin' edge. Hey, wait a minute........that might not be a bad thing.

littlefrog: I've thought about fencing, but what a pain in the keastor. Besides, I'm always "fudging" the margins of the garden for one readson or another so I don't want to be fenced in.

I try to coexhist, and I really don't mind them taking the occasional nibble or youngins taking refuge under the pumpkin leaves. But they were horrible last year. I lost so many crops to them - whole crops, nibbled to nothing overnight!

Our cat is doing a good job for now. The neighbors who abandoned him called him louey (ick). My husband called him dumb ass. Both of those I thought were terribly undignified names for a feline, and the name Archaemeades just popped into my head. He's an all black cat with the occasional single white hair here and there. But in bright sunlight you can see the outline of black-on-black tiger stripes in his fur. It's pretty cool.

I'm sure I'll have many tales (or is that tails....) to tell of me playing Elmur Fud. Stay tooned.......

:^O

I have GOT to get some sleep! I just read about peeing in a cup, and now you're talking about "fudging" your garden's boundaries...

I hear you need to use carnivore pee, not vegetarian pee, in order for that urine thing to work. I believe the message is: "Big Carnivore Lives Here." Herbivores avoid the Big Carnivore's urine because they are usually the prey, and other carnivores tend to circumvent the area because the territory has been claimed by some other of their kind.

That's how I keep the two neighbourhood cats out, anyway -- they're welcome to hunt the voles living under my composter, but those voles seem to have vacated, as well. I also plant lots of bamboo skewers inthe spaces between the seedlings -- I wonder if bunnies avoid the IRon MAiden garden, too.

i live on a ravine and every year we have groundhogs visiting the garden . I cover the vulnerable plants, i notice they like the shasta daisies, and canpanulas. I was told they that the mother groundhogs needs the nutrients in these plants to bring on their milk. I also have used the urine trick but it did not work , my husband was the donor and he is a vegetarian so may be that is why. I guess i will have to do the deed! zone 5b canada

Well, my hubby is the carnivore to beat all homo spaien carnivores, so maybe I can convince him to go take a leak around the garden. I can just hear those stuck up neighbors now (tee hee hee.....)

Saw the bunny yesterday (notice I didn't call it a freakin' 'lil hossenfeffer). It hopped up to the edge, sniffed, and went around. Maybe its is getting the message!!!

Elfie's right on. It HAS to be carnivore pee. LOL!!!

-nita

Well, you could always turn them into hasenpfeffer...yum!

LOL Mumsey...I read your post about your son being a pretty good shot right after I read the one about peeing on the fence, and had a sudden mental image of your son peeing on the rabbits to keep them down! LOL...