For the past couple weeks, every few days I was going out to the garden each evening and letting my four year old pick 1-2 juicy red strawberries to enjoy.  We’d see them ripen from whitish to light pink to deep red and it was really fun to anticipate when we would get to pick them. Remember we only have four little strawberry plants so I don’t think we’ll ever have a bowlful of strawberries to eat at once.  

Then I noticed the strawberry production stop.  I’m out in the garden each evening after work and would see that a berry was misshapen, had a chunk missing, or had disappeared altogether.  Once I saw the strawberry stumps, I knew it was a critter at work. Prior to that, I was just thinking this is what happens when you grow organic, they don’t look so pretty.  

I immediately thought it must be Bunnies!  I guess birds would eat berries too, and certainly other animals like groundhogs and mice.  But I had recently watched the CGI version of Peter Rabbit (hilarious btw, I heart James Corden!) and thought it made sense.  Plus, I never told you about this, but when I was turning the soil back in March to get the garden ready for planting, I found two dead baby bunnies in one of the beds.  I was so sad for them and thought that would be a morbid post for a blog.

With my detective badge and notepad handy, I didn’t think it was too impossible to conclude that if they had been nesting in the garden, they were also probably dining in the garden.  Nothing against these little furry Easter icons, but I wanted to find a way to ever so gently suggest they do their munching elsewhere. I did some googling for how to deter bunnies and needed a solution that blocked them from the plants whilst not blocking me.  Initially I thought I’d put up a 2-3’ wooden stake in each corner and then wrap some mesh netting around the whole raised bed. But then I’d have to bend over all awkwardly to get to the plants myself. Nah.

Instead I had the idea to use some of the tomato cages that were in the shed. We had some left over netting too. I laid the netting out in the grass, folded it once lengthwise so that it was doubled over, and then laid the tomato cage on top of the netting.   Cactus helped me with this because it a job for more than two hands. He rolled the cage and netting together until the netting covered the whole thing and overlapped a few inches. He held the netting firmly around the cage while I cut it and then we secured it with a chip clip.  It doesn’t get more DIY than this I don’t think.

Now we’ll have to wait a few days and see if this does the trick so that we can say Bye Bye to the Bunny Buffet.  I’ll keep you posted.