This winter season 2022/23 has been one for the books. And for the bunnies. One local television station’s headline was “Twin Cities sees snowiest start to winter in 30 years”! And let’s not forget the cold!
The temps combined with all that snowfall has prompted the bunnies living under my porch to search for easy food. My Dwarf Burning Bush is now a dwarfed dwarf!
My poor Dwarf Burning Bush
The rabbits have literally eaten half this shrub and my cotoneaster, which they’re not supposed to like. Apparently, they don’t know that! I’m not alone as I’ve heard from many of you in the same predicament. Rabbits are really chowing down.
So, what can we do right now? We can try to place protection around what’s left using hardware cloth or some type of fencing. The issue is that rabbits will burrow under the snow to get at your shrubs so you’ll need to push it down as far as you can.
Ideally this would have been done BEFORE snowfall!
There are also repellents. Plantskydd has always worked well for me in my vegetable garden but I wondered how well it does in winter. Turns out, it comes recommended. Their suggestion is to use the liquid spray on bark and the granules around the plant. With all the snow and likely more to come, I’m thinking that spraying a repellent would be better than doing nothing. At this point I’m just disappointed in myself for not being more proactive!
Simple but more effective than nothing
If you can’t get a fence around your shrubs or don’t want to use a product, then consider giving the rabbits another food source! Lure them away from your prized plants with tree prunings and/or clover hay.
Now through early spring is a good time to prune most shrubs and trees. The exception being any spring flowering shrub such as lilac, forsythia, etc. Use those pruned twigs to lure the bunnies away from your other plants. At least give them a moment to chew on something else!
This was pruned AFTER it thawed – the twigs would have been something for the bunnies
Chew on this one,
