How to Protect Your Trees and Garden from Rabbits

While good as soft and friendly pets for your children, wild rabbits can be a menace when it comes to your garden , trees, and shrubs in your yard. They can wreak havoc in your garden, especially if you are growing the vegetables they love. They will tear up your garden in their endless quest for food. In the wintertime, rabbits also will eat the bark from your trees and bushes, destroying the helpless vegetation, shoots and leaves. Sometimes they will even damage a tree so much that the tree will be killed in the process.

Luckily, there are ways to protect your garden and the trees in your yard from these adorable fluffy nightmares. This article will show you several of those ways .

Rabbit repellent can be used to deter rabbits from your trees and shrubs. This repellent, a mix of chemicals that rabbits find unpleasant enough to avoid, can be sprayed on your trees and shrubs in the fall, before winter sets in. Rabbits like to eat tree bark and shrubs in the winter when other vegetation is unavailable. After a heavy rain fall, you may want to spray the repellent again, as it can wash off. You can find rabbit repellent at the hardware store.

You can also protect trees and bushes by fastening a guard around the base of the trunk at rabbit height. You can use hardware cloth or a plastic guard. Set the guard a few inches into the soil. The guard should reach a couple of feet above the snow drift level as well.

Trapping and releasing the rabbits is another option. Use foods rabbits like, such as carrots or apple pieces for your bait. You can also sprinkle rabbit droppings around your trap, if you can find any. This will attract rabbits too. Ask an animal control expert for guidelines on trapping and releasing wild animals for your safety as well as the animal’s.

Pet cats and dogs are also useful in controlling rabbits. Rabbits are a relatively timid animal, and your favorite pet can go a long way in keeping rabbits at bay.

There are several ways to protect your vegetable garden from rabbit damage. Plant at least a double row of onions around the perimeter of the garden. They hate the smell of onions, and it may be enough to keep them away. You can also fence your vegetable garden in. Chicken wire is good enough to keep rabbits out of your garden. Set the wire at least six or seven inches beneath the top of the soil, so they can’t reach the vegetables by digging under the fence. The chicken wire should be at least 30 inches high off the ground.

Try using these methods separately, or a combination of methods to protect your garden and trees from rabbit damage.