Rabbits might be the cutest thing on four legs. Admit it: those long ears, the little noses, and those cute little cottontails. Nothing tops ’em! But as cute as they are, rabbits can be a real menace, and if you’re a gardener they can even be public enemy number one. They are hard to stop, they have enormous appetites, and they multiply like, well, like rabbits. A rabbit invasion can devastate even a large garden that you’ve worked all year for.
That won’t fly for me, and I’m betting it won’t fly for you, so we’ve got to keep these fuzzy little freaks away from our veggies and other plants. Keep reading and I’ll give you ten surefire ways to do that without hurting them.
Commercial Rabbit Repelling Spray
If you’re only dealing with one or two rabbits, or if you need a solution right this second, one of the best things you can do is head out to your local hardware or farm store and get a spray bottle of commercial rabbit repellent such as Rabbit Scram.
Whatever they put in this stuff, it works, and it’s very easy to use. Simply spray it all around the perimeter of your garden and, on hardy plants, right on the plants themselves.
One downside with this stuff is that it tends to be pricey and you’ve got to reapply it regularly, so it gets expensive fast. The other issue is that some are toxic for your plants and other animals, though capsaicin-based products like the one above are perfectly fine.
Another issue is that these products, each containing different active ingredients and combinations thereof, can show variable effectiveness on different animal populations. Sometimes it seems like there is no rhyme or reason to it, but if your product doesn’t work, don’t give up; just try another one. This study has some great info on just how herbivores, like rabbits, are repulsed using these sprays.
DIY Red Pepper Repellent
One of my favorite methods for repelling rabbits is both convenient and highly affordable. You can mix up a shockingly effective DIY repellent in your kitchen using some stuff you probably have in your pantry right this second.
First, grab yourself an old, rinsed 2-liter bottle or milk jug and pour in one teaspoon each of ground cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, and any hot sauce of your choice, the hotter the better. Fill the bottle up with warm water, add four or five generous drops of dish soap, cap it, and shake everything up.
Leave the bottle outside in the sun for a few hours to fully incorporate the ingredients, and after that you can strain off any solids and transfer it to a spray bottle for application. The stuff is totally safe for plants but not so much for bees and other insects. But it WILL send rabbits running when they take a bite!
Plant Repelling Herbs
If you prefer a more holistic approach to repelling rabbits, consider planting rabbit-repelling herbs at the perimeter of your garden. Believe it or not, there are many aromatic and attractive herbs that can do a good job, including lavender, many species of mint, sage, rosemary, and bee balm. And to be clear, these plants repel bunnies while they are growing, so you can enjoy a few new additions to your garden, too.
Use Shaved Soap
Here’s an old-timer’s trick that, unbelievably, works really well! Many animals are disturbed, or even outright repelled, by the smell of common bar soap. Specifically, Irish Spring seems to have been the choice of my grandfather’s generation – they swear by that brand specifically – but any scented bar soap should work fine.
All you need to do is shave a bar of soap using a cheese grater. You want to make larger slivers, not little bitty flakes. Then pack a small quantity of the soap shavings into a sock, tea bag, or coarse rag and hang them up or lay them around the perimeter of your garden.
I like to place one every four to six feet to “blanket” the area with the aroma. Your rabbit problems should be over! Don’t forget to replace them periodically, and especially after they get rained on a few times.
Install Good Fencing
Good fences make for safe veggies. It’s possible to keep rabbits away using fencing alone, but it’s got to be stuff that’s fairly tall and of a type that leaves no opening for rabbits to get through. Chicken wire or equivalent hardware cloth is generally adequate, but you’ll want it to be at least 2 feet tall, and 3 feet if you’re dealing with jackrabbits, and preferably taller, to ensure rabbits can’t just hop over it.
Also, consider sinking the fence or installing a sheet metal barrier going down at least half a foot to help prevent them from digging under it.
Cage Individual Plants
If you’re worried only about a few choice plants in your garden, you can save yourself some grief and time by protecting only those plants with individual cages.
Just like with fencing, the gaps have to be very small so rabbits can’t slink through, and the cage also needs to go underground a little bit; otherwise rabbits will just dig under and sit inside it, the little punks.
Motion-Activated Sprinklers
One of my favorite rabbit deterrents is also one of the safest and, frankly, the funniest. Motion-activated sprinklers typically kick on using infrared sensors, though some are more sophisticated. Basically, once these things have your hose connected and are powered up, any rabbit that sets them off gets suddenly squirted with a deluge of water.
Rabbits tend to hate this, as you might imagine, and if it keeps happening they are unlikely to return! However, some bunnies seem to get used to it, especially if that is the only thing between them and your delicious veggies. Worst case, though, your plants get a little extra water.
Loud Noises
There’s almost no mammal farther down on the food chain than rabbits. Every carnivore loves to kill and eat them. Accordingly, rabbits live in constant fear of predators.
You can typically trigger their prey instincts by startling them with loud noises, especially in conjunction with sudden, charging movements. It might seem mean, but you shouldn’t hesitate to rush or startle a rabbit sitting in your lawn in an attempt to drive it off.
Get a Dog
Dogs are natural predators of rabbits, and rabbits in the wild show considerable fear of canines, including domestic ones.
If you have an outside dog, or just let your dog roam outside during the day, that will go a long way toward keeping rabbits at bay. However, be warned if you’ve got skittish family members or little kids: there is a non-zero chance that your faithful family pooch might actually catch a rabbit, and when that happens you’re going to have a mess on your hands to clean up. That could make for some traumatic core memories!
Live-Trap and Relocate or Kill
If all else fails and the little furball just keeps getting to your precious pepper plants, it’s time to take drastic action. Don’t hesitate to set up a live-catch or cage trap to snag the little rascal.
May rabbits are cautious, and jackrabbits especially if you live out west, but many will enter a trap to get choice food after they get comfortable with it, so set it out and be patient. Once you have the offender in hand, you can humanely dispatch them or load them into your car or truck, take them a long way from your home, and turn them loose on approved land.
Caution: Trapping and relocation of wildlife, including pest species, is illegal or heavily regulated in some states and municipalities, so be sure to check your state and local laws before you choose to use traps or relocate.
Tim is a farm boy with vast experience on homesteads, and with survival and prepping. He lives a self-reliant lifestyle along with his aging mother in a quiet and very conservative little town in Ohio. He teaches folks about security, prepping and self-sufficiency not just through his witty writing, but also in person.
Find out more about Tim and the rest of the crew here.