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There is one familiar furry resident in your home landscape which does tremendous damage in the upcoming winter months. While rabbits live year-round in your garden, their behavior is more pronounced now. Protecting the trees, shrubs, and perennials from these varmints will help them cope with the seasonal struggles better.
Rabbits chew off buds and stems of shrubs and other low-growing plants. Rabbits harm the bark of young trees, especially fruit trees. Damage is usually confined to 18 to 24 inches above ground or snow level. Stems are cut off cleanly, leaving a sharp 45-degree angle cut. Other tell-tale, or maybe bunny-tail, signs of a rabbit visit include elongated tracks in the snow and little piles of round brown droppings.
Control rabbits by:
- Eliminating hiding places such as brush, tall grass, and weeds. Remember crawl spaces, under decks and sheds.
- Protecting gardens with fencing. A chicken wire fence, with a one-inch or finer mesh at least two feet high, provides adequate protection.
- Extend the bottom of the fence at least six inches below the soil line.
- Using tree guards, wraps or hardware cloth around the trunks of young trees. Dig hardware cloth into the ground at least six inches and extend it well above the anticipated snow level. As the tree grows, the barrier must be loosened.
- Using repellants. These are available at local garden supply stores. By law, all commercial repellents must be used according to instructions on the product label.
- Trapping. Rabbits are protected species in Pennsylvania so when done out of season, it should only be done when they are causing damage to private property and in accordance to PA laws.
The Penn State Master Gardeners in Lackawanna County have a free publication on the control of rabbits. Please contact us at 570-963-6842 or email LackawannaMG@psu.edu for a copy.
Steve Ward
Master Gardener Coordinator
Penn State Cooperative Extension in Lackawanna County
While the attention this week will be on our friend Phil, the rest of his kin will still be hibernating well into the month of March. The groundhog is notorious for doing quite a bit of damage around the home landscape. Who hasn’t lost a tomato in its prime or noticed gnawed ornamentals in their yard? This time of year, in the dead of winter the groundhog is not to blame. A fair amount of landscape injury comes from 'A Tail of Two Critters'. The whitetail deer and the cottontail rabbit can do extensive damage in winter around your home.
Whitetail deer are selective and adaptive eaters. Their eating habits change with the seasons and availability of a food source. They may ignore a planting in summer but turn to it when nothing else is around to sustain them. Often deer will try plants for taste, so you may notice a plant ripped and left behind as it did not please the animal’s pallet. Signs of deer damage are jagged or torn stem ends, bark that seems to have been rubbed off and of course their droppings.
Cottontail rabbits are active all year round and can usually be seen dawn to dusk. As they need cover to protect themselves from predators, they are often seen around brush piles, field edges, and landscaped backyards. There they find suitable food as well. Rabbits can do a serve amount of damage in the winter when other food supplies have dwindled to the point of actually killing some trees and shrubs. Telltale signs are patches of gnawed bark within two and half feet of the ground. Distinctive to the rabbit is their clipping of stems which resembles a knife cut.
Exclusion is the first step to protect your landscape from damage. Most people like the bucolic scene of deer roaming in nature so fencing around individual plantings is usually the choice. Remember, deer are hungry and can reach over to eat so height is a consideration. For the cottontail, two to four foot of chicken wire tight to the ground is a hindrance. Wire-hardware cloth and tree guards will offer some protection to the trunks too.
Repellants have been shown to be successful in conjunction with other means of control. If you choose to use such a product, please follow the labeled directions. There are a lot variables to consider when using repellents as the animals’ eating habits change with availability. They are best used at the onset of visible damage.
Both rabbits and deer are protected and cannot be harmed outside of the established hunting times. Because of the prolific nature of the rabbit’s reproduction, trapping is generally not effective. For more information on controlling the damage these two tails can do, contact the Penn State Master Gardeners in Lackawanna County at 570-963-6842 or email LackawannaMG@psu.edu and request the Winter Wildlife Packet. In addition, there is a new Master Gardener training class scheduled to begin in March, contact us for more information.
Steve Ward
Master Gardener Coordinator
Penn State Cooperative Extension in Lackawanna County
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