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Well, one thing that works but is a pain to set up is chicken wire. You dig a trench around your garden, six inches deep and one foot wide, buy four-foot chicken wire, fold it into an L-shape, and bury the base in the trench. So they can't jump over and can't burrow under. Except if they do get in, they forget how to get out, so you see them looking at you from inside the fence early in the morning.
Unfortunately, the wire gets rusty and disgusting after a year. The plastic wire doesn't stand up on its own.
Yes, a dog like the barking idiot next door is a major deterrent. Clover, too, and rabbit fencing is easy if they have something to eat outside your cheesy little wires. I use cheap as heck wire fencing and rabbits are too lazy to dig six inches, so no trenches or any of that here. Stick it in, give them something else to chew on, and plant densely.
My wife makes a concoction out of chili powder which she sprays around her perennials. It seems to work, but you know, this summer has been kind of rainy.
I use a Hav-A-Hart trap, medium size, baited with apples. I relocate them at least 3 to 4 miles away. Put the trap where you see them. Some of the smaller rabbits will not trip the trap door, so add a little weight to it (either a flat rock or a magnet).
Relocating an animal is inhumane....what if the animals you are removing is a mother who has babies that will be left abandoned?
I never had a rabbit problem in my previous garden, because the house next door had a completely overgrown back yard that was a fox's favorite haunt. I'd see the fox coming and going across my yard regularly.
House was sold in 2011, new owners cleared the property down to the bare soil and turned it into a manicured landscape. Fox was gone, rabbits moved in, and all my favorite perennials because Rabbit Buffet. I never realized how effective a nearby resident fox was in keeping rabbits well away, lol
Rabbits aplenty in my current neighborhood. I'm in the process of re-doing the garden (prior owner planted tons of invasive perennials, all of which I dislike and will take at least 2 years to eradicate) and every perennial and shrub I am putting in will be on the "rabbit resistant" list.
Luckily there are enough of those that I like and are suitable for my conditions. For example I will be sad about not having lilies but glad that I will still have hardy geraniums; I'll miss the campanulas but will be happy to have epimediums; etc.
I have a rabbit that currently lives under our deck that's low to the ground and surrounds a big tree. It wintered over under there during the polar vortex. It killed three Azaleas and nearly killed a rose bush. I have a big garden and I had some fencing around some of the cages. It was a little foot high ornamental fence and I watched it jump over it and go thorough one of the small squares in a fence I was using somewhere else. It didn't eat any of the vegetables. I guess it doesn't like green peppers and it never touched the kale either. I had one eat my hostas one year but this one didn't touch any of them. I was going to trap it in the humane trap and re-locate it but our neighbor is attached to it and it isn't bothering anything. My Yorkie loves chasing it around the yard. I bought some carrots for it but it didn't eat them either. It's pretty picky and very friendly. I've been within a foot of it. If it survives the coyotes and stays the winter I'll just get some rabbit pellets and put some straw under the deck. I really enjoy having it as long as it behaves.
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