I had a lot of wild rabbits. At any given time, I could see 20 or so in the back yard. I tried "Shake Away," the powder made of bobcat urine (or maybe it's coyote...it's somebody's urine dried up). WORKS GREAT! In fact it worked so well I pretty much ran off the rabbits completely. That saddened me, because I did enjoy watching them frolic in the yard. Even though my local nurseries are anti organic it seems, they do all have Shake Away. (There are similar products) It's under ten dollars, you just sprinkle around the perimeter. It doesn't smell unless you stick your face in it. I really believe in this stuff. BTW, I had a neighbor (they've moved now) with some dogs behind a fence. One baby wild bunny got in the yard and was killed. My neighbor buried the poor thing in MY GARDEN. His wife found out and made him confess. His reason? He figured my soil was softer. Um yeah, because IT'S A GARDEN. I've never really recovered from the bizarro factor of a neighbor burying a dead animal IN MY GARDEN. But get some Shake Away and try it...it works too well, at least on my many cute bunnies.

Hi, I moved out into the country in NW Iowa two years ago, and excitedly bought "wildlife" bundles from my state forestry department. Dh and I planted over 200 little shrubs, trees, etc...we were so hopeful (and soooo naive!) By Spring the rabbits had decimated nearly every little tree, eaten my rosebushes to nubs, and so forth. Well, not learning my lesson, I spent a small fortune on larger shrubs and trees the next year; they were chomped on, too. You should have seen my "mad and angry dance" last Spring, as I discovered the damage. :-) Well, I'm older and wiser, now. My shrubs nearly all live in their *rabbit wire* cages (it's sooo ugly but a lot less infuriating) and I'm not sure when I'll have the courage to remove them. Rabbit wire--sold at my local hardware store--is a bit more expensive than regular chicken wire, but it's sturdier and makes tidier cylinders. It's heavier gauge, has small openings in the botton and larger openings toward the top (so the shrubs can grow through the wire) and I'll never plant without it, again! By the way, I have EIGHT cats and even though we've hardened our hearts and stopped rescuing the screaming, pitiful baby rabbits that they cull in the Spring (my daughters still scream in horror, though.) it doesn't seem to have cut down the rabbit population very much. My husband *does* go out in the dark of night and "mark his territory" (need I explain further? ;-) around the perimeter of our vegetable garden, and that seems to cut down on the predation in there...However, unless I force-fed him a keg of beer every night, I doubt he could do the same for all the shrubs, trees, and flowers on the property. LOL!

Well in general ground hogs don't leave parts uneaten but squirrels do. So do gophers and rats. I tend to bet on squirrels simply because I have so many of them. That is one reason why many pick at color break and finish ripening indoors rather than leaving ripening fruit on the vine. Once color break happens the fruit gets nothing else from the plant so nothing is gained by leaving it on the plant. Dave

I just planted a 3 ft Japanese tree lilac that came in a 3 gal pot from a local nursery. The planting media was a bark based compost mixture that basically fell apart, exposing the entire root system, when I tried to get it out of the pot. These types of plants are root pruned and potted for commercial sale. They basically dig the tree, place it in a half filled pot and put more dirt on top, before it goes on the truck. There's no real science to how this is done. Mine had at least 2" of extra potting media on top of what would have been the correct planting depth in the pot. It was actually nice that the media was so loose of material. It allowed me to bare root the tree and do some untangling of the roots before planting in my native soil (at the correct depth). :-)