Damn rabbit. He got two of my espalier apple trees last night. The Burgundy may recover but Williams Pride is toast. It does not pay to procrastinate. I may be doing some grafting after all this year. It is the scions that are affected so if I cut off at the rootstock can I graft to it or should I pull it?
That stinks! I hate rabbits in the yard, I sure would try to graft if you have enough trunk to work with. A good set of roots can push lots of growth.
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I got one, once, but they mostly avoid them
Rabbits haven’t been an issue (yet)… i hope this is a light year for them. About a month ago my kids were yelling that a cat walked past the backdoor very early one morning…so maybe that is helping (it isn’t mine!—oh well…keep coming back).
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I saw another rabbit just out behind the back fence. This one got away.
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I usually go through the orchard in December and make some larger pruning cuts, and leave the branches lay there for the winter.
This is rabbit food ,deer food ,usually they eat the buds ,twigs ,on those trimmed branches that are laying on the ground.
The idea is to give them something better to eat than the bark at the bottom of the tree.
Lately my dogs have whooped most of the rabbits.
Most all the deer died this year from blue tongue disease (? )
Used to be “a lot” of deer here, only saw one since late fall. He is in the freezer.
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Crap! I forgot to put guards on my new trees. Six of them totally girdled for up to four inches most are only two inches. I taped with flagging tape and then guarded quick with tyvek. Three cherries, Sweet Treat, Candy Heart, and a Three year old peach with two grafts on it. The peach still has some brown on the wood, but it has the longest girdle. My candy Heart didn’t grow well last year, It’s only got new growth of a few inches on the branches. I 'll save scions but what a bummer. Can a girdled tree survive at all if wrapped. I’ll try bridge too but I’m thinking they will all die before the grafting takes.
all chewing animals seem to love cherry but funny that they don’t touch the native pin and chokecherry! i lost 6 nanking cherries just as they were starting to produce a good crop! i covered them 20in up but we had deep snow that year so the voles climbed up the barrier and completely girdled them all above and dug under the tyvek! maddening!
That’s a shame. I went immediately to check on my romance cherries and they are all okay. I have them fenced up good enough.
There is more time than you might think. Girdling apparently starves the roots, it stops the flow down, not up. I did some inarching last spring. I wish I’d waited until the bark was slipping. I got some takes and some not with my seat of the pants technique.
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Best solution to rabbits is to not have rabbits… In the winter when they are hungry, rat poison bars seem to work good around my house. Lead pellets work ok also.
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Well, I thought the deer were gone for the most part. Until Sunday night. We had a quick skiff of snow that evening, and right before I went to bed, I took a look outside my kitchen window. There I saw 4 deer grazing not 100ft from the house. I opened the door to scare them off, and in the process saw another 3 run down the hill with them. Looked like mostly does, and some smaller ones.
That was very surprising to see that many already. Our local farm and garden guy on the TV said that now that they’ve eaten up all the acorns, they’ll be grazing. I didn’t get a chance yesterday to see if they messed with any of my trees or plants.
So, perhaps the hope of reprieves from deer raids this year was just a pipe dream.
Yesterday I set out my vegetable transplants in the garden
This morning, I wondered where they’d gone
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Oh no! Say it’s not so.
So sorry to hear about this.
A zillion unlikes.
I find that rabbits are easily redirected by chicken wire; squirrels, not so much.
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No, squirrels just climb it. This is why I’ve not bothered to fence my garden
My rows are 24’ and I have 25’ lengths of chicken wire that I bend into tents and put over the rows. They went for the brassicas, the lettuce is still OK
Wish I’d done that yesterday but I didn’t know the varmints were active
This year is not starting auspiciously
I’m sorry to hear that. I know that feeling all to well, except it’s usually wood chucks!
I recall reading a paper somewhere that stated the researchers could not find any spray or chemical to put on brassicas which would keep rabbits from eating them.
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They sell capsicum stuff, but I have no confidence in it
Gonna have to trap them
The black cat was seen in the yard again a few days back…rabbits still non existent. I’ve seen ZERO tree damage this winter. Nice.
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I wish I could have cloned my rabbit-hunting cat
In the meantime, where are the coyotes?