I’ve potted up a lot of perennials raised via the winter-sown method. Have lots of lavendar, rosemary, parsley, and other things in pots. In addition, I’m still starting more seed. And then there are the extras of various peppers and tomatoes that I have sitting among the collection. I keep hoping I’ll find a place for them.
Some days ago I noticed some tiny seedlings in 3 different pots had disappeared. Sometimes that happens. I figured some kind of bug got them.
The last few days I noticed the pepper seedlings looked a little funny. A leave missing. A leaf broken. All else looked ok.
Tonight as I started to remove the tops of the jugs on other pepper varieties, I noticed two nice size tomato plants in pots had been “cut” off. All that remained was a stem sticking up. No leafy growth.
That told me the rest of the story. Rabbits.
We got the numbers down about 3 years back, so the last two years haven’t been too bad. Now they’re back.
Based on rabbits of the past, I figure the rabbits doing the damange are living in my front borders and are coming to the back in the early morning hours. They’re certainly not eating anything — but like all rodents they need to use those teeth — so they just cut stuff off.
I plan on planting lot of pepper seedlings tomorrow. So I re-thought that decision to take the tops off — and left them on to make sure they’re still in one piece in the morning.
Bottom line — another plus for the wintersown method is that the jugs (or whatever container you use with a top and bottom) protect your seedlings from critters!
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Related Posts
Seed Starting-Another Variation of Wintersown
Warm Weather Crops and the Winter Sown Method
Seed Starting – Peppers – An Observation
Early Hakurei Turnips – Compliments of the Wintersown Method
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Organic Gardening is easy, effective, efficient — and it’s a lot healthier.
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Do you have a plan to deal with the rabbits, Theresa?
We have a long history with rabbits —- I think I’ve told some stories on other posts.
Here – we have a fence — and rabbit screen buried into the ground a couple of feet at the bottom of the tall fence. We’ve had baby rabbits get in once — other than that it’s been effective so far.
If you become overrun with rabbits it’s best to get the population down especially if you don’t have predators to do the job.