Great Bunny Massacre of 2006

[flea]

BY bunnies, not OF bunnies. OF my pole beans, and to a lesser extent the beets. Damned bunnies. Casper said, "Tell those bunnies to not eat your beans. They should eat a carrot." (The carrots are blissfully untouched, in poitn of fact.)

I watered the garden some just now, ensuring that the approaching thunderstorm (it is dark and rumbly now) will produce actual rain. mr. flea mowed the lawn in great haste.

Last Sunday at the Kroger I scored a lot of Burpee seed packets for free - they had expired (though they're 2006) and they were giving them away. So I planted bush beans Tuesday AM, and started some canteloupes, and put some Burpee 7 inch carrots in a big pot, since there's no way to grow 7 inch carrots in my clayey soil. The beans and the cantelopes have begun to germinate already. I need to plant more canteloupes, some more of my Johnny's beets and beans, and some of the marigold seeds (3 packets) I scored. Saving the mesclun and arugula for a fall crop.

Ah, here's the rain. May it bring cool, too.

Comments

[casperflea.livejournal.com]

I am fairly certain I couldn't grow anything where you live. I don't even know what the growing season would BE. (Fall? "The rainy season"?) If you want to learn, aside from talking to your neighbors, this looks like a good place to start: http://www.cahe.nmsu.edu/ces/yard/

My father recommends chicken wire fencing for the bunnies, a foot of it buried to prevent digging, but I am not up to the effort. In rural areas, I think here as well as New England, and probably lots of other places I've never lived, 8 foot fencing is vital if you want to grow any vegetables, because of the deer.

[fatoudust.livejournal.com]

We've got field fencing up for the dog, but we should have buried a foot of it, 'cause the fence is just symbolic for him. And of course, the bunnies can walk right through it, which seemed like an okay idea when we bought the fence.

Anyway, thanks for the link, I bookmarked it.

[dxmachina.livejournal.com]

I attempted chicken wire once, but I couldn't find the 1" mesh, so I tried 2.5". Bad idea. The following spring when I went down to turn the garden over, I discovered that a bunny had tried to crawl through one of the openings. It got half way, but its hindquarters were too big, and it was apparently unable to back out either. Poor bunny.

I yanked out the fence after that. I never bothered with one around the current patch, because the only things ever in it are tomatoes and onions, neither of which seems to be much on the bunny menu. I do need to develop a strategy to protect the strawberries.