How many are you growing? I'm growing 3 in a raised bed surrounded with chicken wire to keep my 2 rat terrier dogs out of it. Bonnie and Clyde don't eat them but they love digging huge holes in the soft soil. They have many different sizes of the wire.

A good fence around the places you don't want the rabbits protects the plants and lets them live a full life in the open areas at the same time. Squirrels on the other hand can climb and get into anything.

Dave

Do rabbits eat the tomatoes or plant?

thanks all, was just grilling and taking more photos of plants and caught him/her and company lol

The yard is a mess but affraid to mow as I do not like to harm animals. Just wish I had my cat around. He was gentle and just chase them away when any varmit saw his presence. Thinking about abdopting another dog or another cat again. I love them rabbits but just don't want them to eat them maters. :)

As far as I know rabbits don't eat tomato plant/leaves. I am not sure about the fruits. Even then they don't climb . They will eat whatever is within their reach.
They loves my beans, fenugreek, carrot tops, some flowers, tulips, ...
Squirrels just dig and make a mess. They are not vegetarians. They can climb, jump, chew to get where they want, ... There is no way to keep them away, unless you trap them.

Sey

This area had tons of chipmunks 40 or 50 years ago. There range was taken over by the damn squirrels. I didn't even see a tree rat around here till about 1985 or so. Squirrels are just cute rats. I hate em.

What Vince said! ^^^^

I really love animals but the squirrels have just gotten up too close and personal. Their population is out of control. It's gray squirrels by day and flying squirrels by night.

I have not eaten a single strawberry from my 40 plants in two months since the squirrels will snatch the red ones and carefully eat around the green calyces when I'm spying and out of their sight, then drop the calyx like a feather or even in pieces. I work very hard tending my strawberries and don't find feeding the squirrels every last bit of my garden toil the slightest bit amusing.

They eat with their mouths full without ever closing them, and fibers and fragments of fruit get spit out all over the place. Cleaning up the deck after a squirrel pig-out is disgusting. When they are done eating the ripe strawberries, they start on the green ones, and eat one bite and then throw the whole strawberry detached, away with their bite and teeth marks. The discarded strawberries stink of squirrel breath, too. The only good squirrel is a dead one. There's compassion and then there's survival of the fittest. Just because the squirrel wins doesn't mean I'm going down without a fight.

Strawberries, unlike tomatoes, do not continue to ripen after being picked. Not a whole lot can be done. Squirrels are incredibly cunning and delight in stealing. No, I'm not imagining that! They learn by watching what I tend and stare from a distance. Then I come back and zap. It's eaten.

Squirrels have taken a bite or two from my tomatoes, but they haven't yet developed a taste for them. That's why I do tomatoes now and not strawberries so much anymore.

PC

I've seen squirrels robbing eggs out of nests with the parents going crazy but nothing they can do. They also eat baby birds right out of the nest. They are a true varmint but people feed them anyway because they are SO cute. I witnessed a near car wreck once when someone slammed on their brakes to avoid hitting a squirrel in the street.

It made a lot of sense when someone told me the Grey Squirrel was not native and doesn't really have predators. So PC, it's quite possible you never did see one before '85. I remember tons of chipmunks in the past now too, and you never see them anymore.

It really does drive me crazy that people feed them. I met a woman not long ago who feeds all the critters. Squirrels, skunks, possums... I don't get it.

I have bird feeders at the opposite side of my yard from my garden. I learned a few years back that if I kept the feeders full all summer, the birds, squirrels and rabbits wouldn't bother the garden. They love that seed, even the rabbits! They munch in the early morning on the seeds dropped to the ground. I don't intend to feed the squirrels, they can really go through the seed. But they find amazing ways to get past all the squirrel barriers. I do love the variety of birds in our yard all summer. And it has seemed to keep my garden safe.

Anecdotal fact from my next-door neighbor: squirrels that detach and/or bite into tomatoes are really just looking to get at the water (gel?) in the fruit. (Given that it was a hot dry summer when his tomatoes kept appearing in our yard with bite marks on them - seemed to make sense.)

If it looks like the squirrels are starting in on it again, he says he puts out a dish or shallow bowl of water near the plant bed and just hopes for the best. Sure was easier than my one project which was a big spiky chicken-wire contraption which the squirrels eventually breached anyway....

PC, a solution for your strawberry problem is simple: Get some nylon tulle from fabric store and just throw it over the berries. Rabbits/ squirrels won't bother getting tangled in the tulle. You can do that with bean an all other garden veggies.
YeaH ! leave dishes of water for the birds, rats, squirrels in the summer.
I might get/make a bird bath.

Sey

jennie, I used to be a big bird feeder and yeah the squirrels are just a casualty of that :) I just object when people are putting out the food FOR the squirrels on purpose... it's like fertilizing Kudzu or blackberries, right? :)

about 6-8 years back we had a family of squirrels that broke there way into our house and got into the drywall above our kitchen. It was kind of scary knowing that you heard them run up the drywall and then above cabinets. Was just waiting for one to come through the cabinet. So I contacted the human society and they told me to get havahart trap, we caught at least 6 or 7, just trying to remember. I wish I had my gopro then to film them getting trapped.

We added an apple and peanut butter as bait and in over a week of time with 2 traps running we caught them all. They said to drive them over 10 miles and if you can try to cross a river because they hate water. So we drove them to New Jersey which is about a 5 mile drive and released the traps one by one in a park. I felt bad for my mother the most, she was freaking out every day hearing them on top of the kitchen. We called exterminators and other people liek that but they wanted to charge like $300+ from what I remember. but the human society said just get these traps,

I still have one and if the rabbits become a problem, I will buy another and ship them off at least 5 miles away. I think there like $25-$30 a trap, I recommend 2 because of gas milege ect.

I think is the one I bought haveahart

but if the rabbits don't touch my tomatoes I won't put that one out yet or buy another.

Also below is the video from a couple of years ago when I saw another pesky squirrel that I filmed Squirrel Video