Gardening question - How do you keep the rabbits from eating your orchids?

TPP over summers most of our house plants outside.  In gratitude most of the ones that can or should flower, do so over their indoor winter.  But problems do arise.  Mostly these tropical plants have no serious problems summering outside.  Some things get gnawed by the stinking fluffy-tailed tree rats, but they usually grow back.  This year TPP discovered that a young cottontail had taken a liking to the broad, semi-succulent leaves of our Phalenopsis (moth) orchids.  They generally occupy some caged shelves, but the caging material apparently still allowed a young rabbit access so, chomp, chomp, chomp.  The solution was simple enough, augment the cage with smaller mesh.  Simple enough but TPP just didn't think about rabbits eating your orchids as a problem.  Not quite certain what kind of animal the jeep was in Popeye cartoons, but must have been part rabbit.  In a couple of really shady gardens, Stephanandra shrubs must be permanently caged or they get eaten to the ground.  These shade-loving relatives of Spirea are basically rabbit candy.  Doubtful the shrubs will ever get big enough for the cages to be removed.  Saw three foxes in our garden last week, wish they would get busy and catch some rabbits.  

Cagey response for a wildlife friendly garden

The Phactors have a large, urban garden that contains not only a surpising amount of plant diversity, but also the sort of food, shelter, and water that attracts wildlife. For the most part things are amicable. Just 10 days ago, winterberry was a featured plant showing fall color; the berries are now all gone having been transformed into wildlife fodder. Fine, although if the display had lasted longer that would have been fine too. Sigh. In another quick change, a witch hazel went from fall color to flowering in 2 weeks. However one component of our garden's wildlife does not really play well with our plants during the winter: bunnies. In the dead of winter, the bunnies turn to browsing, and our shrubs' and trees' bark bear the evidence. When heavy snow filled the privet hedge, the bunnies gnawed all the bark off the stems from 18 to 24 inches and up, and yes, girdling stems did kill the plant above. Without the snow pack shoveled from the driveway to clamber on, bunnies can't reach the younger, gnawable bark. The bunnies also crop the beauty berry bushes back to 12-18 inches every year. In these cases the hedge needed re-juvenating and a heavy pruning back to 12-16 inches did the trick, and the beautyberry flowers and fruits on new wood, so it should be pruned back each spring anyways. However, in many other cases the outcome is not so good when you find a pricey new shrub gnawed back to the ground. Last winter a cage tipped over and a Korean azalea, a very hardy and most excellent plant (R. mucronulatum) got eaten back to the ground, but fortunately their ability to recover is quite amazing and it may even flower a little if the cage stays in place this winter. So yesterday, the Phactors spent a most excellent November afternoon moving relatively unabtrusive wire cages from herbaceous perennials to trees and shrubs for the winter. And so the cycle of cages goes from herbaceous perennials in the spring and summer to trees and shrubs for the winter. Also for some reason the cost and desireability of any particular plant is directly correlated with its tastiness to bunnies, or so it seems. Eventually most trees develop heavy enough bark as the get larger, but shrubs remain more vulnerable. Run-of-the-garden hostas, meh, but fancy new variety of hosta and it'll be rabbit salad by morning. Just wish the top predator component of wildlife were a bit more common to balance out the herbivores. Great opportunity for red fox, and the year our garden was visited regularly, the bunny problem was minimal although a few partial corpses had to be disposed of.

Neighborhood vandalism

Vandalism just about tops the list of urban dwellers pet peeves, so when a neighbor reports being the target of vandalism, everyone gets concerned. When the vandalism kept occurring they called the cops. Someone was cutting branches off their little newly-planted redbud at night. Sigh. How well TPP knows the repeated and wanton vandalism the neighbors were talking about because you would not believe how many shrubs and small trees have to be fenced in our gardens to protect them from vandalism in the winter. Bunnies. Cute, fuzzy, little vandals. At times it's a toss up about whether squirrels or rabbits are the biggest yard/garden vandals. Still glad it wasn't TPP who had to apologize to the police. Fortunately the predator police, red-tailed hawks and/or red fox, have been keeping the bunny population down a little bit this year. But the fences went up anyways by force of habit. 

This is war! Seriously! Bunnies beware!

"You don't tug on superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask from the old long ranger" and you don't mess around with Mrs. Phactor by sitting there outside the breakfast nook window and eating her fancy tulips.  So let this be a warning to all lagomorph rodents, Mrs. Phactor all riled up is not someone to be trifled with.  By the time you had finished your tulip entree she was looking in the adverts to see if any "retired" greyhounds were available, you know, dogs with a name like Zap, or Flash, or Zip, or Bullet, or Death to Rabbits.  Yes, it's bad enough that you consume her flowers in her absence, but to sit there in full view and eat a bouquet of her tulips for breakfast, oh, that's a brazen bunny.  It's hard to get higher on the garden hit list than squirrels, but the bunnies this year are giving it a real go.  And TPP hasn't told her about the row of tulips you polished off behind the garden shed yet.  That could be the last straw.  Our wildlife friendly garden might become a bit less friendly.  Obviously the top predators are not doing their job, and need some help.  The joys of seeing a fox in the yard almost daily seem like such distant history (3 years ago), and the red-tailed hawks have not been seen now for a week.  Is someone out there offering them a better deal?  Nothing, nothing is better than tulip-fattened rabbit.  Top predators may send their applications to TPP.  We have immediate openings. 

Nature coming into balance

Small mammals sometimes have their highest populations in urban areas; human habitations provide food and shelter, and few of their predators do well in urban areas.  So it was with this in mind that the Phactors cheered the arrival of a pair of red-tailed hawks in the vicinity of our little part of urban nature.  Having been alerted to their presence, although they are bloody hard to miss, neighbors report seeing on one occasion a hawk dining on fox squirrel and from another direction, a bit of fresh rabbit.  For the time being these top predators, not usually urban dwellers, seem to be doing quite well for themselves, and in the process tipping nature back into balance.  This is just great!  The bunnies in particular are out of control and one of the ways you can tell is when they nibble on things that they usually leave completely alone: scilla, crocus, and the ever-green leaves of a rock garden pink.  On campus a wide array of shrubs have been quite thoroughly girdled where bunnies have gnawed the bark off.  The Phactors set up an elaborate gulag of fenced concentration camps through out the yard to keep the bunnies at bay.  Now of course if a great blue heron shows up in the lily pond, we'll be singing a different tune.

Bye, bye, bunnies!

Our wildlife friendly yard is so friendly it harbors a remarkable number of fox squirrels and rabbits.  Foxes do frequent the yard every so often, and so do Cooper's hawks, but they are primarily bird predators.  So while enjoying our lunch, it seemed as if rather few squirrels and birds were around.  Then our attention was drawn to activity high above in the crown of a large tulip tree, a mating pair of red-tailed hawks!  Nest making activities and mating were ongoing.  A couple of pairs of Cooper's hawks live not too far away and they often forage in our yard, but the red-tail is not a common urban hawk although quite common outside of town.  So how many rabbits does it take to feed a family of red-tailed hawks?  Oh, this is quite exciting, and a new bird record for our property.  Bye, bye, bunnies! 

A minor garden triumph over wildlife

The biggest problem with having a wildlife friendly property is that it is wild life friendly.  Sometime this spring a member of our native species of marmot, locally called a woodchuck (as in "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.")  These are nice attractive animals, quite like a large, voracious guinea pig.  So far this season, our lettuce and broccoli has been eaten to nubs three times.  Fortunately spinach is not in the woodchuck play list.  Parsley, cilantro, and especially bellflowers are favorites, and this fellow would pass through Mrs. Phactor's perennial garden like it was a cafeteria.  Ah, but that ended yesterday when the lure of a nice big chunk of apple (one of the best uses of red delicious taken out of storage). This was a very well-fed healthy young fellow of interdeterminate sex, and they were relocated to a woodchuck preserve maintained by our local municipality.  However, as the season is deep into May, our chances of getting very much more in the way of lettuce or broccoli are limited until fall.  Now if only something could be done to reduce the populations of squirrels and rabbits.  Part of the problem is that the local idiots go crazy everything they see a red fox, call the city, and their animal control people remove them from the area (usually permanently).  Here foxy, foxy, foxy!  Nice juicy bunnies!  This is how to stay friendly to wild life. 

Yard Smart or Bunny Banquet?

Yesterday in spite of the cold rain it was necessary to take advantage of a short break in the freezing weather to finish up fall gardening by putting cages and fences around various young trees and shrubs, and the reason why is simple, if this wasn't done by spring the bark could be girdled or the shrub reduced to nubbins by the local bunny population. The Phytophactor has enrolled his gardens in a Yard Smart program meaning that the gardening practices used have a minimal impact on wildlife. Since our estate provides shelter, food, and water, it harbors a considerable wildlife fauna, although at times that seems to be mostly fox squirrels who can materialize out of thin air within minutes after you spill bird seed on the ground. However a balance has to be struck, and the bunny barriers keep our yard smart friends from turning hundreds of dollars worth of shrubbery into a banquet. Indeed a new witchhazel has already been nicely pruned back, adding to the previous years bunny pruning that occurred when heavy snow provided access over some barriers. You have to take certain pride in having some of the best fed bunnies around, and if perhaps you think this violates the Yard Smart premise, the possibility of biological control presents itself when you happen to be visiting the local pet store and they have several grayhounds retired from the racing games, and a one with big sad eyes named Bolt, a quite nice name, licks your hand and you ask, "Does he know how to chase bunnies?" What a present for Mrs. Phactor! Bolt, the bunny buster.