In early Spring some of my tulips got decapitated. What was happening to the neighborhood? NIMBY! I quickly treated the remaining tulips with a concoction of garlic and habanero peppers and enjoyed their intact blooms. The plot for a take-over by furry residents was foiled!
Now I have peas growing. The concoction is keeping the leaves intact so far. However, I am worried that the garlicky- peppery flavor (more like a stench assault) will be transmitted to the plants and affect the taste of the peas.
- Should I spray the soil only?
- Keep spraying the leaves but stop when the pods form?
- Does anyone have a suggestion?
- Try to change the zoning to bipeds only?
Isabelle: According to National Geographic “…They browse at night on grasses and herbs and are fond of garden fare such as peas and, of course, lettuce…Females give birth in shallow ground nests, to young so helpless that perhaps only 15 percent survive their first year. Fortunately, rabbits breed three or four times every year and produce three to eight young each time. Young rabbits mature quickly and are self-sufficient after only four or five weeks. They are sexually mature after only two or three months, so populations are able to grow with staggering speed. Cottontails are plentiful and can be problematic for farmers; they are also a popular game animal.”
How about a recipe for garlic-pepper peas?
or a recipe for hasenpfeffer.
Maybe use Sriracha? And if that fails, go for Adam’s suggestion, which will no doubt be an improvement thanks due to the Sriracha-diet.
Adam, I wish the Village 14 had a “like” button for your post.
We have a 23-pound rabbit deterrent in our garden. Every couple of days he decides to, shall we say, “make an example” of one of the miscreants to keep the rabbit population in line.
I have noticed a lot more rabbits around lately (I live in Newton Corner). They’re breeding like…you know.
@Doug: Is your 23-pound deterrent available for rent?
I have a woodchuck with 3 babies under my backyard shed. They eat many garden flowers and veges. Also the raccoons visit regularly. Rabbits aren’t as big a nuisance as these larger animals.
We have at least two rabbits who live under our deck, which we have affectionately named “Hasenpfeffer” for reasons to which Adam alluded, and “Hoover” who is named for his/her ability to vacuum up bulbs, perennials, annuals, bird seed and whatever else is close to the ground. They devoured my neighbor’s lettuce and strawberries, so my neighbor has taken to putting netting over the vegetable garden.
We would not dream of harming these furry little critters (well, maybe sometimes) but they can be quite destructive. Which is why we are grateful for the occasional raccoon or possum that likes to visit our yard, as well as the neighbors’ cats. The rabbits usually disappear for a few days and then return (we have one of the few yards that is not treated with herbicides and pesticides in our neighborhood.) However, I can do without the coyotes and the fisher cats that also make an occasional appearance.
Yosemite Sam has some hassenpfeffer tips.
Thank you, Jerry. That’s the clip I had in my head.
We keep a kosher home, so we won’t be serving rabbit anytime soon, but I lost my patience with the cute little creatures after they girdled a new pear tree over the winter. Anything important in my yard now needs to be wrapped in chicken wire.
There is also a Hasenpfeffer mashup.
I appreciate how those long board meeting give Aldermen Hess-Mahan countless hours to familiarize himself with what’s on YouTube.
We have a black and white cat in our neighborhood that we initially dubbed “Bad Cat” because it ambled through our yard at least once a day just to intimidate a black stray we brought back from Bermuda five years ago. We don’t let our Bermuda cat out of the house, at all. She goes ballistic every time she spots “Bad Cat” because she knows she can’t get out of the house to attack him and probably knows that “Bad Cat” knows that too. Anyhow “Bad Cat” also kills rabbits and deposits the remains at our back door. At first we were horrified, but after losing a good many flower bulbs to the bunnies, we are modifying out stand on all of this. It may be that “Bad Cat” has saved our garden this spring and summer and if she’s after rabbits, she can’t be snatching birds which is a big problem with other outdoor cats in our neighborhhood.
Circle of Life
Sorry Greg, Whoopie the Mass Bunny Murderer doesn’t travel well. If that changes, I will let you know.
Good points above on the woodchucks. We had problems with them in the past. We used a Havahart trap to relocate one woodchuck- the trial and error involved starting with bait that skunks prefer (lettuce) before settling on sweeter fare that the woodchuck preferred. That was an interesting weekend.
So I assume Doug that Whoopie has four legs…as opposed to being, say, a 23-pound bunny-antagonizing toddler?
@Ted. Have you actually seen a fisher cat? I’ve been on the lookout for years, but never saw one.
@Greg – Ted must have had a traditional education. He’s clearly steeped in the classics.
Bob, I have not seen one but my son’s description of the animal that killed our pet cat matches a fisher cat (and not as we previously concluded a coyote, which we have actually seen on several occasions in our back yard in West Newton). A lot of people say they have heard fisher cats at night in Newton. Growing up out in the sticks, we often heard what I was always told were fisher cats “screaming” at night. But, according to Nat Geo Wild, fisher cats don’t “scream” and the cries people hear at night are probably from a red fox.
@Greg and Jerry: I am a classically trained Looney Tunes aficionado. I also know how to Google “cook, bring me my hassenfeffer.”
Ted–There was an article about Fisher Cats in a past Old Farmer’s Almanac and how vicious they are. A cat was sleeping on a tightly screened porch somewhere in New Hampshire and a Fisher just broke through the heavy screening material, grabbed the cat and was gone. And unlike coyotes, cats can’t run up a tree to get away from them.
Bob, they are vicious and opportunistic. As I say, I have never seen one in Newton, but I remember seeing them in the woods when I was a kid and they are all over the place in Vermont. So I really don’t want to meet up with one here.