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Roses and rabbits!!!

15 years ago

Does anyone have a good way to keep rabbits off roses? They were doing great and the next morning the rabbits had cleaned off all the leaves right down to the branches!!!! I hate placing chicken wire around them, so does anyone out there have some good ideas????

THANKS ~ I remain desperate!!!!

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Comments (8)

zack_lau z6 CT ARS Consulting Rosarian
15 years ago
You want a fence that is 2 feet high. Small bunnies can fit through a 2" wide gap with ease--so we needed to back up our with chicken wire.
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karl_bapst_rosenut
15 years ago
Rabbits are persistant little devils. They'll pick certain roses and keep them trimmed back as long as new foliage keeps growing. I've tried all the various urines and bad tasting stuff to no avail. When I find a bush they keep eating, I place a bottomless 5 gallon bucket over it until it grows tough canes.
Aside from chicken wire or a pellet gun, you don't have much choice.
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I'm not exactly sure what you want your roses to do (cutting for the house? Attractive in a flower bed? Cover an ugly view?) If you would like a hardy rose that will get through the winter and bloom nicely in your garden, but not be the greatest in a vase in the house, what about Golden Unicorn? Golden Unicorn is a Griffith Buck rose. Mine was a good performer, especially in the fall. It was planted outside our sunroom window and people always admired it when it bloomed. Sometimes it was in bloom at Christmas time, depending on the year- but notice that my zone is much warmer than yours. The 2014 winter, coldest in the nearly 25 yrs. I've been here (several days of below 0), didn't phase it. Neither did a sudden freeze after a couple weeks of warm weather. It was lightly fragrant. Its flowers took on an apricot color during cooler weather but during the summer it was sunny yellow. The flowers tended to fade and go past quickly so it wasn't great for vase life. It was a heavy bloomer for me that bloomed in flushes. It was healthy in an unsprayed garden. It got quite a bit bigger for me than the 2-3 feet that the catalogue stated, over 6 ft. tall and about 4 ft. wide, before I lost it to rose rosette disease this year. Not an expert, just an ordinary gardener. YMMV
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dan_keil_cr Keil
15 years ago
I have a Beagle that patrols my yard, and chases away any kind of animal.
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catsrose
15 years ago
Cats.
0
elgrillo
15 years ago
Frequent dusting of blood meal on the leaves works, but has to be repeated every time there is dew or rain. I have planted verbena and snapdragons around my out-front roses - the rabbits prefer them to rose foliage, but early in the season the rabbits eat whatever is available, so the blood meal dusting lasts a few weeks. The blood meal attracts snails, too, so new bedding plants are at risk.
Gary
0
pauline-vi-8
15 years ago
Pellet Gun. Sorry I love animals, but interfere, even kill my roses, then your dead. But I would not shoot a DEER. I moved my roses for them! But those horrible wild jack rabbits are as much damaging as a deer....and when you go to the trouble of putting up a deer fence only to get the rabits destroying the roses, then, boy Action stations!
We are on watch, we do not allow them in our deer fenced garden, if they slip in there, it is at their own risk. The smart ones know not to come back!
Pauline
0
prairielaura
15 years ago
Pauline I like your straightforward attitude. As to the rabbits, you could do what we do about the blank-blank armadillos. Picture a couple of older persons in our nightwear, creeping around the yard in the middle of the night. (We set an alarm.) Husband carries the shotgun, and I carry the big flashlight. We actually manage to kill one now and then, and the rest die laughing.
Laura
0
kentucky_rose zone 6
15 years ago
I make individual chicken wire cages and use 3 wooden stakes on the inside to support the cage.
0

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