The Rabbit, My “New” Horticultural Challenge!

Two years ago, I began my glorious spring with a grand project in mind: experimenting with organic soybean varieties for gardeners. I obtained samples of every variety available to vegetable gardeners, including some chickpeas. My intention was to compare the varieties, study their ease of cultivation, productivity, and more. However, this project was a total flop… because of a rabbit.

My Perfect Harmony… Broken

As you already know, I like to garden in harmony with all the living organisms that visit my little paradise. I’m at peace with squirrels. I don’t resent the Japanese beetles that devour my grape leaves. And now that cleverly placed perennials hide the bases of my lilies, I no longer worry about lily leaf beetles.

In this most innocent bliss, I sowed a whole bed with beautiful varieties of soybeans and a few chickpeas. A few days later, they sprouted! Everything was fine! I was already noting down the less vigorous varieties. It’s at the development stage of two or four true leaves that the worst-case scenario began to take shape.

About ten plants lost their leaves. Only a small piece of stem remained. My first diagnosis: a cutworm. This little lumberjack of bean rows is an expert at topping. I look for its lair, near the scalped plants. I dug a little to unearth it… nothing.

This Isn’t My First Rodeo. I’m Taking Action!

Quickly, I gathered up pieces of cardboard and created small physical barriers around a few plants. It’s a very effective technique for preventing cutworms from mowing down young seedlings.

But in the following days, the carnage continued, and in barely a week… there was nothing left. Nothing but a forest of green naked stems. That’s when my world turned upside down… It’s a new newbie. A mysterious critter visiting my garden, for the first time in 25 years! But who is it?

Detective Julie in Pursuit of the Mysterious Incomer

That’s when I pulled out of my information packed brain the whole list of plant eaters: various caterpillars, beetles, sawflies, mice, squirrels… oh! And Virginia opossums? Does an opossum eat plants? Not quite. That’s not my culprit. A hare? Impossible. I don’t live in a forest environment. But a rabbit?

How odd. In all these years, I’ve never seen this animal in my area, and I live outdoors a lot! That’s when it all came together. I live near a wooded river, adjacent to a large urban park. It’s a perfect habitat for rabbits! (And for foxes, too. I’ve seen them!)

Then again, my garden is a very nice pantry for rabbits, given the great diversity of plants and my lawn full of white clover and red clover. Clover is one of the rabbits’ favorite foods. Eating through plants of the Fabaceae family, which includes clovers (Trifolium spp.), beans (Phaseolus spp.), but also MY soybeans (Glycine max) and MY chickpeas (Cicer arietinum) is quite plausible for a rabbit. Rabbits also like to feast on all those seeds that have fallen to the ground, under bird feeders.

Finally, looking closely at the damage, I noticed that everything has been nibbled away. There were no “crumbs” left on the ground, which would be typical of a cutworm. Only a gluttonous rabbit would be capable of such a clean slate!

To confirm without a shadow of a doubt that it’s a rabbit. I’d have to see it! And to do that, well, I’d have to become a night owl, because rabbits are active from sunset to sunrise. And staying up all night just to see a rabbit eat my soybean plants wasn’t on my bucket list for the week or even the year. (But setting my alarm clock at 3 a.m. to see a blood moon is!)

Rabbit… but Which Rabbit?

So, I think it’s a rabbit.  And I now face two probabilities. Do I have a neighbor who decided to raise rabbits, because they’re so cute, and whoops, one or two rabbits (let’s hope it’s only one) escaped into the wild? Or, is it our native rabbit, the Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) who would have decided to settle in the region?

I’ve observed this little wild rabbit dozens of times at the Laval Nature Center, where it’s ubiquitous. It’s a little smaller than a hare. Its ears are shorter. So are its legs. And of course, the underside of its tail is white, much like the tail of a white-tailed deer. The most distinctive feature of our rabbit is that its fur remains brown year-round, whereas a hare’s fur turns white in winter.

This cute little bunny has a keen interest in clover, dandelion, plantain, and goldenrod, all plants found in my garden. And they also love vegetables from the garden! I can confirm his unconditional love for soybeans and chickpeas!

Also active in winter, they then turn to the tender stems or bark of maples, birches, apple trees, honeysuckle, viburnum, and plum trees. What a wonderful coincidence! Because, just above the snow, someone has been nibbling the bark of my little cherry tree.

What if I Didn’t Want to Share With This Rabbit?

For my part, the mystery is solved, and I’ll have to learn to share my garden with this newcomer. I’ll sow fewer beens in the vegetable patch and more in pots on the patio. I’ll continue to encourage the growth of my clover beds, just to provide him with a more enticing menu choice than my vegetables. And life will go on in my little suburban ecosystem.

But, if I had to intervene, I would start by erecting a physical barrier, made of wire mesh that would go all the way around the vegetable garden. This is the best way to keep them away. In general, a barrier about 60 cm (2 feet) high is effective, but I have read in some books a recommendation of 1.2 meters (4 feet) high. I find this quite excessive and I know from experimentation that a simple piece of chicken wire placed on my young soybean shoots has managed to limit the damage. Trunk protectors around the most sensitive young trees can also protect against irreversible damage.

In the Old Wives’ Tales department, cayenne pepper would seem to be effective. But it was in George H. Harrison’s (not THAT George, the other one) book “Squirrel Wars” that I found the most unlikely trick: surrounding your garden with mason jars filled with red-dyed water!

Finding the Positive in All Situations

In the end I don’t regret anything! Because my new guest taught me a lot. First, the resilience of soybeans and chickpeas. While a bean that you cut cleanly at leaf height is almost doomed to certain death, this was not the case with the soybean and chickpea plants. From these little green sticks eventually emerged new leaves and eventually new plants! It also taught me that rabbits are clever foxes: they know that if they kill the plant, they deprive themselves of food. So, they eat just enough. Just enough for the plant to grow back and form new, succulent leaves.

In my garden, for now, rabbits don’t pose a real threat, but I’d be curious to hear your rabbit horror stories. Also, share your best tips for keeping them away. It might come in handy, one day!