I can totally relate to Mr. McGregor*
Oh, how I wish I could scold those bunnies. Or catch them by their jackets... sigh.
In reality, our garden (and lots of those arounds ours) has been ravaged by bunnies. They, the bunnies, have had no qualms about eating our edamame (soybeans), beans, peas, broccoli, and the occassional cherry tomatoes. However, even with this sna-fu, I am still hopeful and still enjoying the fruits of our labors.
Let me show you where we've been...
The above left is our garden upon returning from vacation. The whole thing looked like a big grass field. It took 3 days of continual weeding to unearth...
Can you see the difference on the right? You are looking at cauliflower in the foreground, peppers, broccoli, behind broccoli are beans that I have yet to weed as a possible way to keep the bunnies from finding all the beans. The broccoli and cauliflower are the final ones left. Our freezer is full of these two veggies and they look sparce due to the bunnies' tummies.
(Left) L to R, carrots (with chives in between), kohlrabi in front with brussel sprouts behind. (Right) Ignore the weed, but this is how brussel sprouts grow... who knew!
Pretty Kohlrabi, tastes like a hard cabbage.
(Left) It's not zucchini, but winter squash. They aren't dead yet and there is one tiny veg. growing. (Right) Close to far, squash leaves, pepper plants, garlic (the yellowing ones), onions (the tall green ones).
About 4" across, a yellow onion, very happy. Yup, onions grow out of the ground. Crazy but true! Garlic looks similar but grows under the ground. The garlic's green stems go to yellowish brown when they are done and the onions go to brown when done. Again, crazy!
(Left) Hiding in the tall grass is my cantaloupe on the left. For some reason, I have convinced myself that the tall grass will help defend from squash bugs. Stranger things have happened.
(Right) All these tomato plants and eggplants and pepper plants are ones I planted wayyyy to early but they are all doing fair. Smaller than normal, but fair.
(Left) Foreground are my 3 purple cabbages that have finally started to make heads. The weeds on the top left are hiding what is left of my pepper plants. Eaten almost entirely by bunnies. On the upper right are completely demolished edamame/soybean plants. They have been systematically chopped off at the exact height all the way down the planted line. The dirt behind them are where there were more plants that got eaten and we dug up to attempt to replant. *Sigh*
(Right) To the left are more bean plants half eaten by bunnies that I am attempting to hide in grassy weeds. On the right are happy eggplants.
(Left) Here is the tomato patch I planted later. It is big and beautiful and doing great! They are very dense and have much foliage. I kept picking out the sucker stems and the plants really liked that. Now, if they would only turn red, :)!
(Right) This is it... the whole lot. I do indeed believe that this year has been much more difficult than last year. I am learning a lot, which I will post later. But in case you were wondering how things were going... there you go. ;)!
*In the story, The Tale of Peter Rabbit.
Dana your garden looks so yummy! I had my first experience with kohlrabi this summer and it was really tasty. We did it in a stir fry. Anyways, if you catch those bunnies, I'm pretty sure Ambre recently got a cookbook at a yard sale that has a rabbit stew recipe. Just an idea for you... ;)
Yummy kohlrabi stir fry! That is one of the recipes I am going to try. So far I just slice them up like carrots and the kids eat them no problem. The smaller ones taste much sweeter which is nice too. Stew, eh? Hmmm.....
It looks like you'll still get a pretty decent harvest even with the bunnies munching on your veggies. I imagine that it's very frustrating none the less. I think we were lucky not to have any bunnies get to our garden last year, because our yard was fenced in with 2 dogs to take care of any "intruders." You'll have to let us know how your strategic weed placement works to keep away the animals!!
Yeah, I think my strategic weed placement is very lofty thinking, but right now nothing else is working for me. For the bunnies I may just put a fence inside our fence that is a tighter weave. We'll see if I try that or call it a wash. And on a lot of things the harvest has been huge so far, I am just missing 2 of my favorites from last year, the beans and edamame. *sigh* :)!
I was sooo bummed last night when I was working in the garden I chased two little bunnies out!!! and they ran right out thru the fence!!! I saw that I have a few edemame on a few plants that they haven't eaten yet... and I really really hoping they would grow a little bit so I could harvest them...
OH NO! Where did they jump through the fence? Did they go under or actually through the rungs? Grrrrr.... When I chased the one the other day I fixed the fencing where he went under. I will happily fix the fencing again!
He jumped right thru the rungs!!!! both of them!!! one of them i chased out your side.. kind of by your brussel sprouts, and the other I chased out my side kind of by my beans...I didn't see anything wrong with our fence.. it just isn't small enough for the bunnies to not sneak thru. oh brother.
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