Here's two things I've observed that make me think your plan may work.

My beet tops were eaten repeatedly even though they were inside an 18" tall brick planter. I finally gave up on them and planted the whole bed with onion sets spaced about 4 inches apart....never tilled or did anything to remove the pretty much unseen beets. A few weeks later the bed had good green onion growth AND beet greens. By the end of the season I was able to harvest beets and green onions from the area. I think the beet greens were originally being eaten by thirteen line ground squirrels or voles, not rabbits, but I never saw them.

One plot at a nearby community garden was edged completely with closely spaced marigolds. They grew to about 18 inches tall and were a dense hedge. It was the only garden that did not suffer damage from rabbits or groundhogs. I'm not sure if it would have been effective if the other gardens nearby had not had goodies for the critters to choose instead.

On a perhaps related note:
I thought a bulb planting I saw was done by people who had no clue what they were doing. It looked like they planted tulips and daffadils in the exact same spots as if they thought all bulbs were the same and did not need a bit of room to grow. However, I never saw rabbit damage on the tulip leaves even though most nearby gardens had fenced their tulips or had badly damaged tulip leaves. Perhaps the planters knew exactly what they were doing. I may try the same thing next fall. I know the rabbits have never bothered by daffadils but they love the early tulip and crocus shoots.

Wow. This is a super thread! I have been wondering myself how to keep the baby bunnies out of a new raised bed garden we're installing as soon as this blasted snow melts. The last time I did a large veg garden was 3 years ago and the bunnies had a field day, pun intended.
I had been planning to sort of see how it went with 15" high raised beds, hoping they were too tall for the smallest of rabbits, but I love the idea of edging with onions and/or marigolds around each bed. I was going to do the marigolds only in a few squares (this is a square foot garden) and have a separate set of squares for onions, but hmmm. Great food for thought!

Rabbits are going right through my row of garlic but the onions are really small still and so that may be the reason. I planted garlic and onions around my winter garden where rabbits are a big problem. Have resorted to a net. This week they discovered a way in and have eaten all the salad greens.
I'm thinking about getting a motion sensor sprinkler.

Well, that's more positive feedback than I expected! :) I did a little further searching and there seems to be some indication that onions can sometimes repel rabbits. I really want to try this as a defense against the little ones that squeeze through my fence, not as my only means of keeping all rabbits at bay. My yard is rather "natural" so I have large swathes of clover, so I'm hoping that the onions make the garden seem less inviting to the little guys (who I think see it a a great place to shelter). If it doesn't work, I suppose I can console myself with a bunch of grilled scallions!

Tracydr, I feel your pain! Nothing can reduce a grown woman (or man for that matter) to a slobbering maniac like rabbits eating the salad greens! I don't know what my neighbors would have thought if they had seen me last September trying to chase a rabbit smaller than my foot back OUT through the fence while trying to not squish any of my plants! Good thing they don't seem to be out in their yards or looking out the window too often. Probably looked like some wierd rain dance.

Sunni

Perhaps an electric fence? This has worked well for us with raccoons, opossums, squirrels, and our own cat.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fence Charger Example

Grandad, I don't know why, but that last one about "our own cat" made me about spit out my soda laughing.

I think if I get to a point where there's real heavy animal action in the garden, that might be a solution. So far it's just the baby bunnies and the occasional bird-pecked tomato. Since I hope to move out of here soon and someplace where there's more wildlife, I'll file that away in my folder of "things to consider for the garden in the future"!

Cheers!

Well, I have a few suggestions worth a couple of pennies:

1-When you see them rabbits yell at them, throw rocks at them, and chase them as far away as you can, while yelling.
Belive me, they will be scared off and may even get a heart attck.

2- the second thing is to fence your garden area and instal a gate. They have this nice green plastic mesh that is so dandy and easy to install. In the meantime as a backup plan, plant onions just behind the fence(inside)

3- Get a dog and train it to chase and scare the hell out of rabbits(and squirrels too)

4- make a real hot pepper liquid and spray your veggies with. I don't think that rabbits will ever come back for more. But with this solution you have to do it after each rain and should not water your plants by sprinklers.

5- get some live-traps and catch them.

6- Any combination of 1 through 5 will also work fine.

Sunnibel7, your follow-up got me chuckling also. But I obviously need a bit of clarification... Our electric fence was purchased and installed to keep raccoons out of the garden. They were destroying 2 to 4 dozen ears per night. However, it has had the added benefit of keeping out rabbits and other small animals, including our cat, or neighbor's dogs. More often than not, our cat has free reign of the garden. Not long ago he was sleeping on the soft carrot tops. However, when the fence is active he stays clear. Incidently, the cat moves his nose close to the wire to determine when/if the fence is active. So he knows when it's OK to venture into the garden.

Grandad- Not to worry, I wasn't imagining you out in the middle of the garden going "here, kitty kitty kitty." *zap* *meow* At least not for more than a second. :)

Anyway, thanks for all the input, everyone. I DO have a fence. It's just more like a bunny filter, keeping out the large ones, but the occassional small one passes through. (Now how's THAT for a mental image?) And yelling doesn't work- there's really nowhere else for them to go. When I say I'm in suburbia, I'm talking the heart of the sprawl around our nation's capital, not some place where you can drive out to open fields in 15 minutes. So, the same problem is there for live traps- where the heck would I take them? The parking lot behind the Safeway? :) Just one of the many many reasons I want to move out of here! Way, way waaaay out... And then I could get that dog, too!

Cheers!

It will work! Last summer, we had a bunny munching on our things very early on. We shooed him off, and decided to plant a VERY tight border of marigolds around the bed instead. They grew to be hedge-like (as someone above described). No bunny or other critter problems after that! Added bonus of them being pretty!

Here's a pic from July, before the garden really got going good. We had SO much rain last summer and such a slow grow. No laughing at my tiny garden, ok? Most of you have gardens bigger than my entire yard!
{{gwi:23989}}

I tried corn as a border, but you have to pollinate them because they are supposed to grow in bunches of rows to pollinate each other.

The corn will die off in some places if not a lot, so you have to plant new ones next to the ones growing, I'll guess at 6 weeks. All it takes is a gap and they will come in.

What about a tall growing flower like the sunflower, not for food, but the shorter growing sunflower?

The corn was planted 6 inches apart, did horrible, but it worked until some of them died. Then it really was a waste of time.

There are taller varieties of marigolds and maybe you can prune them to not be so bushy to the inside of the garden. I'm looking into the flower thing as well this year because I can't make a fence with both corn and castor plants because the castor plants have to be about 5 feet away from everthing. They chase away a lot of animals. You can also collect the castor bean and make homemade soap that is good for circulatory problems.

A bunny fence it about 4 feet tall normally, a deer 6 feet.

Here's an even crazier idea. Overseed your grass with clover and avoid the weed killers. We make no effort to keep the bunnies out of our garden. We even found a nest where one had been living under our staked vines. But they don't eat our veggies... they prefer the clover that's growing in abundance all over our yard.

I spray my ornamentals with dilute fish emulsion to repel rabbits and deer. I think the smell is offensive to them- I know it is to me!. Works pretty well here on the Wyoming prairie, though it does have to be reapplied after a rain.
My veggies are fenced, so I don't know if it would work on them.
I too have a clover patch to lure the bunnies from the other things.
Funny thing, one year I had one marigold plant. It was the ONLY ornamental the rabbits ate!

Hi Guys,
Nobody has mentioned the surefire ,most obvious solution...
Have you ever gone hunting for any animal ???
If you get all dressed up (camouflaged), and grab your rifle,and get into the woods....you will.....8 out of ten times.... never even see a critter of any sort...but if you put on shorts and a tank top shirt,and throw a camera around your neck,you will see all sorts of wildlife....
The point being,if you make a decision to have baby rabbit stew with every rabbit you catch,you will starve to death,you will never see another rabbit... just the way it works ;-)

You will always see a rabbit when the greenbeans are just about a foot high, but the beans will never reach any higher because of them.

I've heard you can't kill a rabbit to eat in the summer because they have a worm that lives under the skin at that time, but not in spring or winter. Don't know if that is true.

I'm getting into this thing pretty late but I do have some experience that could be very helpful.

Yes, I very often edge around the outside of my garden with onions or garlic--yellow sweet spanish seems to work the best for me so far as onions go.

But the real tricks for me in keeping critters out--this learned after trying everything from fences to rock music from a battery powered radio to lion poop(yep!)to etc.,etc.--a)dogs allowed to sleep out at night but restrained within a fence and b)several pneumatic scare
snakes placed around the garden and moved to new spots every couple of days.

Our dog has grown too old to be much of a threat to the varmints. We have moved and the new yard and garden is no longer surrounded by a fence. The new location swarms with squirrels, rabbits, groundhogs, crows, dear, and grinnies
but the scare snakes rule! Occasionally I will stage a
loud battle with one of the snakes, and retreat with moans and a severe limp up to the house.

Google them up, they work just fine!

The internet and a book I have says the best is to put a bad taste on the food they like, like red pepper seeds or soap or both. Garlic, pepper seeds, soap, and tobacco in a bucket of water seeping for a day or two is most likely to work.

I had one experience where I shredded a bar of soap, sprinkled it around the edges of the garden, it worked for a day or two. I don't think my row of soap was wide enough.

I would forget they are not real and it may attract a real mate, but it might work. My nephew is armed with the right equipment. He loves snakes and animal figurines.

Oh, lordy, what have I started?? I swear, this thread is lurching off-course like Frankenstien's monster! ;) Larryw, thanks for letting me know your positive experience! I so did not mean for this to turn into a "how to keep rabbits out of my garden, I hate the little buggers" thread! Also, I can't help but feel that sometimes people don't read too closely! :)

I mentioned this before, but I have a fence, the edge is buried properly. The mesh used for the fence is too large. Very small (like the size of a soda can to the size of a lady's 8 sneaker) rabbits squeeze through. They eat the veggies, notably the beans. I didn't like putting up the fence enough to want to re-fence with smaller gauge mesh. I made the fence because all the spraying, peppering, soaping needs frequent re-application. I'd rather be weeding, mulching, picking, and enjoying!

There is a ton of clover in my yard. They still prefer to snip my beans if they can reach them. I live less than 4 miles from the White House- although I am free to bear arms, should I discharge one this close to this many houses, I will be locked up and unable to garden. (I don't think we have thought police yet, though, so maybe I can just decide like john suggested?) We do not have room for a dog (where's he going to roam? In the garden? No. Bad dog! Out of the Garden!)... and I have a ton of bunching onion seeds which I have no trouble sprouting. And thus, my brilliant(ish) idea!!! (Please note that all of the preceding was meant in a light, humorous tone... if I have missed the mark, I can only say that my power finally just came back on after being out for 7 hours and I'm freezing my buns off here.)

Thank you, though, everyone for all of your input! Oh, and scarletdaisies- I don't know about the parasite thing, but I do know that generally speaking hunting season is only in the fall/early winter months. I thought it had more to do with letting animals have a chance to raise their young, but I don't really know. Cheers, all y'all!

Sunni