This morning I came out to find my two foot high passion fruit vine stripped of every leaf, branch and the main stem gnawed half off. I am steamed! Is this a rat? An entire rat rugby team? Rarely I’ve also seen raccoons in the yard but that’s all I can think of. This means war.
Rat , vole, or rabbit definitely a rodent. They have done that to my trees on occasion. Never know which one they will pick on but I do know they will be back and I would have traps set all around there.
Golden Retriever (my dog).
Happened to me one year in Rancho Penasquitos.
Is this the face of a criminal? I’d rather it wasn’t rats but tonight I’m baiting the traps with my secret weapon…guava paste.
weed wacker? nothing ever touches my passionfruit although squirrels and rats love the fruit
Actually I’d put my money on rabbits.
On a potentially-related topic, do members have trouble with deer eating the vine or fruit?
Wow. When I lived in Ithaca, NY, deer ate practically everything else, but didn’t touch my maypops. Maybe maypop plants taste worse than other passionfruits? Or they were just lucky not to have that pest around, whatever it is.
Heck yes those deer and rabbits eat at my apple trees like crazy. Once in awhile they bite a few leaves off a pear by accident. This year the damage was different. The thing that messed with my apples recently was more like cows or people because it was something very destructive more so than deer! No angled bites like deer damage, the leaves looked chewed on but a lot of tops were broken and deer simply never do that without leaving rubs or angled bites.
I will shortly be putting in a Passiflora edulis in deer territory and will report back on how it fares.