Rabbits Eating My Asparagus

[EVP MAN]

YES, rabbits will indeed eat asparagus! I just put a new asparagus bed in this spring. I planted one year crowns only to discover that rabbits are nipping off the young asparagus shoots as fast as they emerge. This is NOT good as the first year, asparagus shouldn't be harvested at all. The shoots should be left to go to fern in order to place strength back into the crown for the following years harvest. This isn't possible when the rabbits are nipping the tops off of the emerging shoots. The shoots started to emerge about ten days ago and every morning I have found just the tops nipped off of the shoots. Today I found more shoots nipped off and decided this is enough of this crap! I went to the hardware store and bought fencing to place around the bed. Came home and installed it right away. Within two hours, project completed! From this day on, the darn wabbits can have all the asparagus that grows outside the fence but all that grows inside is mine!!! LOL

Rich

[Mysterious Traveler]

Are you by any chance having a drought where you are? I've found that when conditions get dry the rabbits get terrible. You might try getting an area of your yard extra wet so vegetation will be green for rabbits to eat, and rabbits do drink water.

One summer, years ago, during a drought, rabbits stripped leaves and bark from every little tree I planted that year, and the grasshoppers got the grape vines and privet hedge.

As far as I can tell rabbits have never eaten my Asparagus.

Good Luck Mysterious Traveler

[EVP MAN]

We are getting plenty of rain here and everything is nice and green. My next door neighbor has a very old established asparagus bed and the rabbits are eating his also. He told me this is the first year this has ever happened in his garden. He also put up a fence a few days ago to keep them out. I lived at this property for fifteen years now and I have never seen the amount of rabbits that I have seen this year. It's only April and I hate to see it when they begin to multiply. We have more rabbits here in town than out in the wild. I guess that's because they have no natural predators here to thin out their population. I do have a pellet gun that is very powerful and also very quiet. If they get out of hand this summer, this just may be the answer to a tough problem. I like to see them around but I just can't have them destroying my crops either!

Rich

[Fred Williams]

No deer eating our tulips this year, no doubt to the exceptionally warm winter we just experienced.