Damn rabbits!

Mine is 1/2" mesh. No problems with voles.

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Do you happen to have any pictures of this that you could post?

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I just watched a video on bridge grafting, it’s very interesting and makes sense. I think my bark has been destroyed too low to do this on a few.

John- I scrapped away about four inches of dirt at base of tree to find intact bark so my bottom graft points were below ground.

VOHD- I sold the farm with the ten year old trees I saved with bridge grafts so no photos of them. The grafts eventually grew in size to create a new trunk.

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I’ll have to see what I get once spring comes. The only lucky thing about this is it attacked five trees that I was losing interest in because of their location.

The square of the mesh is a little over a quarter of an inch. No voles get in,

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I use the 1/4 or 1/2" mesh wire that I form into a loose tube around the trunk, up to the lowest branches. Depending on the situation and type of varmints, wider can be better. Then I take my wire snips and cut DOWN from the top 4 to 6 inches, approximately every 6 to 8 inches (depending on the circumfrence) AROUND it. It is sort of hard to describe, but what you are doing is cutting “flaps” around the top to bend outward, making a lip that keeps rabbits from standing up and nibbling above it, and also keeping ground squirrels and rats from climbing up and over. Hope this makes sense. I have a picture, but don’t see how to upload it with this post.

I figured out how to do the picture. This one happens to be of my newly planted yardlong beans, but I do the same around my trees.

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Well last year I surrounded my whole vegetable garden with fencing because of deer. Now I think I’ll have to dig a trench and bury some type of fencing to stop the new pest. My plantings are to numerous to individually surround.

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I’m going to use that cloth you use and surround each tree.

John,

I think the 3 feet chicken wires all around your garden will take care of the rabbits issue since you already took care of the deer.

Tomy

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A shotgun works wonders on rabbits.

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I struggle with rabbits continuously. Seems as soon as I ‘eliminate’ one, another one shows up to replace it. I blame cities for over enforcing outdoor cat rules. Back in the day there were always neighborhood cats that would wander around and help keep rabbits and voles in check. Now they pick them up and eliminate any animal that is not kept on a leash, around here at least.

Ive had the best look with a pellet gun, removing rabbits, but that is not always practical or LEGAL. Another option I have had luck with is rat traps, the old fashioned wooden ones with stiff metal spring. Set them wherever the rabbit is entering your yard, this is easiest to do if you have a fence obviously. I put 2 facing each other, so it makes like a gate they have to go through, using rocks or wooden boards to block the area around it. Killed a couple last summer like this, but they will also get away occasionally, if they arent hit in the head when it closes.

Working on snaring a rabbit in my back yard right now, should be interesting to see if it works.

What do you bait the rat traps with?

If I set them up in a location where they HAVE to go across them to enter my yard, I dont use any bait. I have caught rabbits in rat traps placed in other locations in my yard tho using bird seed as bait. This works best in the winter when they are hungry and scavenging for food, with snow on the ground. One problem with this method is you might catch a bird unintentionally. What I would do in that scenario is put out some bird seed in an area where the rabbits are active, for a couple days in a row. Wait until they get used to eating it. Then put out a trap right at sunset (rabbits in my yard are mostly nocturnal) with some birdseed sprinkled just on/over the trigger mechanism. I killed 2 rabbits last winter like this, neither were caught in the trap, but it hit their head hard enough to fracture their skull I guess, both were laying dead within a couple feet of the traps in the morning.

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I’ll try it. Outside of my fence I threw pruned apple tree limbs and it’s been feasting on them so I know where to put them.

That kind of damage just about makes you sick. We had some little goat’s squeeze through the fence we made to protect our trees from our sheep. They girdled a large (for our orchard) Gala apple about 75% and they claim rhat is enough to kill the tree. So I did some research, we cut some long first year growth scions, and stored them wrapped in plastic film in the fridge. When the tree had new leaves and the bark was slipping, we grafted one about every two inches around the damaged area. It seems to have worked very well, with the scions sizing up nicely this year. By the look of it, they will be closing in, and growing together in another year or so.
I’d suggest you do the grafting for practice, even if you don’t love those particular trees. Cause ya never know when something will get your favorite!

This was after they had grown some. The parafilm is splitting.

This was toward the end of the growing season.

There are two shorter scions to the right of these two long ones.
The tree grew this year, though we did pull the fruit off it, to encourage it to put it’s energy elsewhere.

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I have good news and bad news… Good news is the snare worked!!! Bad news is I didnt secure it well enough and it came off the wire panel I had it tied to. :confused:

Looks great!

Jolene, those are excellent examples of bridge grafting. Would you mind if I used the images in a spring grafting class?

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2nd times the charm! Still had first wire snare around its neck even…

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