We hope you'll join us this Thursday at the Village Commons from 2 to 5 p.m. for our next Pathfinder Produce market!
*******
Going to Cooperstown this morning, I noticed quite a few
lush, well-tended gardens, not without a touch of envy. My garden is producing – the kale and lettuce
are going strong, the beans and cukes are flowering. But to really make things take off, I really
need to go out and give my raised beds a good hoeing out.
Although persistent, the weeds aren’t necessarily pernicious. The real threat to the garden is a bumper
crop of bunnies! For the past few years,
our property has been overrun with Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail, and all their
kin. I can look out the window at any
time of day and usually see three or four, or at times six or seven, eating and
playing in the mowed areas around my house.
According to the web, our rabbits are Eastern Cottontails, Sylvilagus
floridanus, one of the most-common species of the rabbit family in North
America. They prefer living where there
is optimal food, and cover, typically with fields and fencerows that offer
places to hide from predators.
They do
not dig burrows, but use the abandoned dens of other wildlife; they also build
nests for their young in grassy areas, hay fields, scrubby woods or thickets. According Wikipedia, rabbits’
breeding habits are controlled by warmer temperatures, with litters being born
in New York State roughly from March through September. The gestation period is about 30 days, and the
young are fully independent by five weeks.
Some females breed during their first year, when they are two or three
months old. They typically have four
litters of five babies each in a season, but annual offspring can be as high as
35 babies. They are indeed prolific.
So, fighting these staggering odds, what is a part-time
farmer to do?
My first line of defense is “da’ fence,” which encircles the
garden beds that are not far from the house.
The rabbits are bold (they’ve been caught on the back steps), and are
also around when I’m not, so the layout isn’t fool proof. We’ve caught a few smaller kits getting
through the fence and have had to scare them away.
My second line of defense is our goofy, jet black Della, a
five-year old lab who lives to be outside. It’s quite something to watch this
happy-go-lucky nut transform into a hunter.
She moves ever so slowly toward a group of rabbits, making no sudden
moves … think of a lioness on the Serengeti.
At times, and I’m not sure how common this is, she’ll actually point at
her victim. (This just shows she is a
screwball … according to The
Labrador Retriever Club, “The clear and unarguable fact is that the
Labrador is a retriever, not a pointing dog." Go figure.)
She’ll continue to inch closer, and then when she’s about 15
yards away, she’ll spring her 80 lbs. forward in hot pursuit. She usually is foiled in her efforts due to
the presence of multiple bunnies, which of course scatter. She can’t follow more than one, gets
confused, and usually comes back to the house with a silly grin and her tail
wagging over having some fun.
According to other websites, like
HGTV Gardens and The Old
Farmers’ Almanac there are all kinds of “Maginot Lines” against the leporid
hordes: planting things they like away from
the garden (too much like work), planting things they hate in your garden
(tomatoes, cukes, peppers), planting bad smelling flowers or odiferous herbs
(chives, mint), caging or cuffing veggie plants, using humane-catch traps, and
spraying pepper or other noxious substances around the garden perimeter.
Other sites reference the roles that
predators – dogs, cats, coyotes, foxes, and even bobcats – play in keeping rabbits
under control. (It seems to me that the
coyotes, foxes and bobcats in the neighborhood must need some hunting lessons).
So until next time, enjoy your garden, be vigilant, and be
well!
Lori
