For those of you who deal with rabbits, winter shrub protection ?
ilovemytrees
10 years ago
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shadeyplace
10 years agoken_adrian Adrian MI cold Z5
10 years agoRelated Discussions
What caused this damage to my shrub: voles, rabbits, weed-eater?
Comments (8)"It's a Chicago Fire Burning Bush. Please don't throw tomatoes, because EVERYONE has at least one fat and tall burning bush in their front yard within a 10 mile radius of my house..." It's your property and your decision, but think of it this way...If you saw many of your fellow motorists throwing out trash, would you also throw yours out? Having a Euonymus alatus in your yard is actually a little worse than throwing out litter, because litter doesn't exponentially reproduce, but, like littering on an already heavily littered highway, I guess one could make the excuse. Your state's Department of Environmental Conservation has given that plant a rating of "Very High" for its invasiveness (environmental damage) rating. I agree with Ken, your little dead voles didn't do that damage. Maybe you should club your rabbits. I can't tell if the damaged branches are coming from the main trunk or from ground level. If from the trunk, yes, I'd prune at the trunk (just outside the branch collar). If from the ground, I'd prune at or just slightly above ground level (IF I was going to keep the plant)....See MorePrinciples of rose winter protection in cold zones
Comments (9)Glad this post has been helpful and thanks to folks for filling in points that I'd missed. Michael and Kate are right that burying the graft (the knobby part) of a rose is one of the better winter survival strategies for a rose, since the couple of inches that need to survive are under the ground, and the ground protects that graft. A little leaf coverage around the base, including well-shredded miscellaneous leaves as Seil says, can add all the protection many of us need. Since that leaf coverage also provides spring mulch around the rose, it's a terrific strategy for lazy gardeners like me! Jim, you are indeed cruel, but not necessarily too early in your post. We had 3 feet of snow in western Nebraska last week, and parts of the Dakotas and Colorado are still digging out. Toolbelt - don't waste any time kicking yourself over missed insights in past years of not knowing about GW. Just keep joining in the fun of the discussions, and sharing what you've learned with your friends and neighbors, so they get hooked on the rose bug too! Zaphod, all of these principles apply to band roses as much as any other type of rose, with the added caution that the tender canes are more susceptible to things like moisture and critter gnawing. I plant all my bands in the ground too, though I try not to buy them too late in the summer, and any relatively scrawny plant is going to benefit more from winter protection than a well-established rooted plant. However, even a little canker or squashing from your protection methods can be enough to make it give up, if it doesn't have much of a root system. My method stays the same, to put protection around but not touching the rose, and one-twig wonders, I may make that protection as high as the rose (not usually a problem for scrawny runts) but make sure nothing is touching the base. Beyond that, I keep track of how poor the growth is in its first year, and I might try a more substantial plant (or heaven help me, keeping in a pot over winter like Seil suggests) if it doesn't grow fast enough to survive as a band. Bottom line is give some basic protection a try, but don't kill baby bands with too much material over their little heads. Cynthia...See MoreShrubs rabbits don't like?!
Comments (7)Ah the suburban nemisis strikes again! Sorry to hear that. As the previous post suggested rabbits will eat anything if they are hungry enough and similarly what they choose to eat depends on the time of year. The worst problems I have with bunnies is in the winter. They will strip the bark of anything to get a source of water which is why they do it. Poor devils are basically really thirsty. There is really nothing safe. Nurseries sell bunny resistent plants but these are not normally shrubs... that said they do not eat holly or juniper. My solution to this problem is putting up a temporary fence around them which I take down when the weather gets warmer.... or.... Usually this problem is really bad when the snow is really high.... why they do not eat the snow is a mystery... seriously. Anyway this is usually from Jan onwards and the answer to the problem lies in Christmas. Buy a real tree and after you are done with it, cut it up and put the branches around some of the more sensitive plants. This is enough to distract them and hopefully they'll go and chew something in the neighbors yard....See Moreprotecting the garden from rabbits.
Comments (15)Larry, I thought of you this morning when I went outside early and there were 4 or 5 bunnies hopping around the yard. Once the bunnies see our rabbit-hunting cat, Tiny Baby (no longer Tiny and no longer a Baby either) with me, they run off. He'll catch a rabbit and carry it around and play with it, but he won't kill it, so I usually can grab him and set a rabbit free if he is just carrying it in his mouth. It hasn't been too bad of a snake year this year so far. I think all our copperheads are someplace else this year because I've barely seen any at all, but we have lots of garter snakes. Tim sees them more than I do. I think he sees them mostly when he is out jogging or when he's mowing. I see them in the yard and in the garden when I see them. Today a timber rattler could have bitten me if it had wanted. I had just closed the garden gate around 10:20 a.m. and was going to pick up an item off the ground before heading inside. I heard a rattle and froze in my tracks. I quickly located the snake and backed away a safe distance. (Now, yesterday a little voice in my head told me to carry a gun when I went outside, so I did. Today there was no voice in my head, so I didn't carry my gun out there....). If there is one thing I've learned about snakes it is that after you see them, if you leave them to go inside and get a gun, they will not be sitting there waiting for you to come back out and shoot them. I did have my cell phone with me, and Tim was at home, so I called him. I called him 6 times and sent him 3 text messages. No response. I knew if I left to come inside the snake would disappear into the garden, so I waited and watched the snake. I knew Tim had to leave the house within 20 or 30 minutes to go to work, so figured eventually he'd either check his phone or come outside to leave for work. Finally I heard a banging sound in the garage and started yelling his name. Eventually he came down the driveway to see what was wrong. He got a gun and killed the rattlesnake. I was shaking. That probably is the closest I've come to being bitten in a good 10 years. It was less than a foot from me when it rattled and I froze, located it and backed away. It was coiled up against the garden fence and just drew its head back and rattled, and that saved me. It just as easily could have bitten me. After it all was over and Tim had disposed of the snake, he told me how lucky I was that it was a timber rattler (they are rather shy and non-aggressive) and not a western diamondback rattler, because a more aggressive rattlesnake likely would have bitten me. Timber rattlers are supposed to be somewhat endangered, but we have them all over the place here and I normally see several a year, but not all close up and personal like this one was. The venom can be pretty toxic. He also promised me he'd carry his phone with him at all times now whether he is in the house or going in and out from the garage to the house or whatever. I thought we had settled that issue back in the year of the cougar sightings, but so many years have passed now and he's gotten bad about leaving his phone lying around in the house. Often it is upstairs and he is downstairs. I generally keep my phone with me all the time, having learned an important lesson about that when one of our neighbors fell and broke her hip on their seldom-traveled private road and laid out there, helpless, by the mailbox for several hours until someone arrived home and found her. I hate snakes, and I've learned that if I am not carrying a gun, I'd sure better have the phone with me or the venomous snake will get away. They can roam all they want on at least 11 of our 14+ acres, but if they are in the garden, driveway, garage, potting shed, chicken coops or yard, we shoot them. Dorothy, We had a rough green tree snake that used to hang out in the garden and eat stuff. For some reason, seeing the green ones doesn't freak me out as much as seeing other snakes, so I tolerated his or her presence. Its' favorite place was the top of the shade cloth over the peppers, putting it at just about my eye level. I didn't see it last year or this year, so guess something happened to it and it no longer is here. Lots of the ranchers here like having a rat snake in their barns to keep the rodents down, but if I knew we had a snake in a building, I'd never step foot in that buildlng. In an average year, I'll have one or two scary rattlesnake encounters, so I guess that for 2013 this is one down, one to go. Dawn...See Morelaceyvail 6A, WV
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