Rabbit repellent

A two-foot fence solves it, and a repellent does not

Rabbits are the one garden animal where a physical barrier is cheap, small and close to completely effective, which makes it unusual among wildlife problems. Chicken wire with a mesh of one inch or smaller, or quarter-inch hardware cloth, at two feet tall, is adequate for a vegetable garden.

Two feet is the figure people find hard to believe. A rabbit can jump higher than that, but it does not routinely jump into an enclosed space it cannot see out of, so the fence works in practice at a height that looks token.

The mesh size matters more than the height. A young rabbit passes through a two-inch gap without slowing down, which is why an inch or less is specified and why ordinary garden netting fails.

The detail that decides whether it works

Rabbits do not usually go over a fence. They go under it.

1. Pin the bottom edge to the ground

   U-shaped landscape pins along the whole run, or bury the bottom 1 to 2 inches below the surface.

2. Work it into the soil surface before the ground freezes

   Once frozen it is locked in place and nothing can push underneath. A fence installed on frozen ground has a gap all winter.

3. Use graduated mesh if you buy purpose-made fencing

   Rabbit fencing often has narrow openings at the bottom widening higher up, precisely because the small gaps are only needed where a baby rabbit would try.

4. Close the corners and the gate gap

   A fence is as good as its worst opening, and the gate is almost always the worst opening.

5. Check it after heavy rain and after mowing

   Both lift or displace a pinned edge, and neither is obvious from a distance.

Winter is the season that kills plants

Summer rabbit damage is annoying: lettuce, beans and young perennials grazed off. Winter damage is fatal, and it happens to different plants.

With snow on the ground and nothing green available, rabbits strip bark from young trees and shrubs, and they do it at whatever height the snow lets them reach. A trunk gnawed all the way round is girdled, and a girdled tree dies in spring when it tries to move water.

The protection is the same material used differently: a cylinder of hardware cloth or chicken wire 24 to 36 inches tall around each trunk, standing clear of the bark, installed before the first snow rather than after the first damage. Height is measured from the expected snow line, not from the ground, which is the part people miss.

How to stop rabbits from eating plants, and who else it might be

Before spending anything, confirm the animal. Four garden mammals leave damage that gets blamed on rabbits, and three of them need a different response entirely.

The distinction that saves the most money is the first one. A two-foot fence stops rabbits and does nothing for deer, and an eight-foot deer fence is a different project at a different price. Read the cut before buying either.

The vole row is the one that catches people in spring, when snow melts and reveals bark damage at the base of a shrub. Trunk guards installed for rabbits help there too, provided they are pushed into the soil rather than resting on it.

Keeping rabbits out of a yard, beyond the fence

A fence protects a bed. Making the yard itself less attractive reduces how many rabbits are there to press against it, and it is the half of the job that costs nothing.

Rabbits are prey animals, and everything about where they settle follows from that. They need cover within a short dash of wherever they feed. Remove the cover and the feeding ground stops being usable, however good the food is.

• Clear brush piles. The single most effective change in most yards. A brush pile is a rabbit shelter with the door open.
• Cut tall grass and rank vegetation, particularly along fence lines and around sheds, which is where it accumulates unnoticed.
• Keep vegetable beds away from a woodland edge where practical. Distance from cover does real work.
• Close gaps under decks, sheds and porches. Cottontails do not dig their own burrows, so ready-made cavities are worth a great deal to them.

None of that removes rabbits from the neighborhood, and it is worth being clear about that. What it does is shift where they spend their time, which on a suburban lot is often enough on its own.

Why do rabbits dig holes?

Mostly they do not, and that matters because it changes what animal you are looking for.

Eastern cottontails do not excavate burrows. Where one is living underground it has taken over a burrow dug by something else, usually a groundhog. So a fresh, substantial hole with an earth mound beside it is a groundhog, a chipmunk or a skunk rather than a rabbit, and the response is different.

What a rabbit does dig is much smaller: a shallow depression, a few inches across, lined with fur and soft plant material. That is the nest, and the section below is about it. Rabbits also scratch shallow resting hollows, called forms, under a shrub or in long grass, which are scrapes rather than holes.

Finding a rabbit nest in the lawn

This comes up every spring and it is almost always handled wrongly, with good intentions.

A cottontail nest is a shallow scrape in the ground lined with the mother’s own fur and soft material, and it is well enough hidden that people commonly find it with a mower. They are built in open lawn as often as in a border. Rabbits breed from February to September and can produce up to six litters a year, of one to nine young each, which is why they turn up so often.

The critical fact: a nest full of babies with no adult in sight is normal, not abandoned. Rabbits do not sit on the nest the way a bird does. The mother visits only about twice a day, at dawn and dusk, and stays briefly, precisely so that her presence does not advertise the location to predators. Watching a nest for an hour and seeing no adult proves nothing at all.

• Do not pick the young up and do not move them. A moved nest is usually a lost litter.
• Put it back if you have disturbed it. Replace the fur and covering material and leave the area alone.
• Mark the spot and mow around it. The nest is temporary. Kits open their eyes at about a week and are out exploring at two to three weeks, after which the nest is abandoned for good.
• Keep pets away from it for those few weeks, which is the one intervention that reliably helps.
• If an animal is genuinely injured, that is a wildlife rehabilitator’s job, not a household one.

Three weeks of mowing around a patch of lawn is the whole cost, and it is a great deal less trouble than the alternative.

Rabbits and plants

What they avoid

Plant choice reduces damage and does not eliminate it, and Maryland states the limit plainly: no plant is totally rabbit proof once other food is scarce. Winter is when that qualification bites, which is the same reason the bark protection above matters.

With that said, the plants they usually pass over include black-eyed Susan, daffodils, mountain laurel, American holly and asparagus. On the pentas question specifically: pentas is commonly listed among plants deer and rabbits tend to leave alone, and the same caveat applies to it as to everything else on such a list. A list of resistant plants describes a preference, not a rule.

The home remedies

Several circulate and none of them survives contact with a hungry rabbit. It is worth grouping them, because the reasons they fail are the same reasons.

• Peppermint, cinnamon and other scents. Extension guidance on commercial repellents, which are far more concentrated than a kitchen spice, is already cautious: they can work, they are costly, they have to be reapplied frequently, and they are not effective in every situation. A dusting of cinnamon washes off in the first rain and is gone long before the rabbit is.
• Egg shells. Crushed shells around a plant do nothing to a rabbit. They are not a barrier at rabbit scale and they carry no scent that concerns one. In the compost heap they are useful; on the soil surface they are decoration.
• Baking soda. This circulates as a way to kill rabbits and it does not work, which is the practical answer. It is also not what this page is for. Lethal control of wildlife is regulated, varies by state, and where it is genuinely warranted it goes through a state wildlife agency or a licensed operator rather than through a kitchen cupboard. For a garden problem, the two-foot fence at the top of this page is cheaper, permanent, and settles it.

The pattern across all three is the same one this site keeps returning to: a barrier is a physical fact and a repellent is a suggestion. Rabbits are the one garden animal where the barrier is small, cheap and close to completely effective, so the case for spending effort anywhere else is unusually weak.

Identifying it correctly

Rabbit damage has a signature that separates it from deer, and getting this right decides whether you build a two-foot fence or an eight-foot one.

Rabbits snip stems off cleanly, leaving a cut that looks like scissors did it, usually at a neat angle. They have upper incisors and cut precisely.

Deer have no upper incisors, so they tear, leaving a ragged frayed end. Deer also reach far higher, while rabbit damage stops at a consistent low line, and in winter that line sits at the top of the snow.

Repellents, and what they actually are

Taste repellents make the plant unpleasant rather than making the area unpleasant, and the common active ingredients are worth knowing: thiram, which is a fungicide, capsaicin, the compound that makes chillies hot, and dried blood.

Two consequences follow. Thiram-based products are not for food crops unless the label explicitly permits it, which is a real restriction that people miss because the product sits on a garden shelf. And a taste repellent only protects the surface it is on, so new growth after application is unprotected and rain washes it off.

So repellents suit ornamentals, and they suit situations where fencing is impractical. They are a reapplication commitment rather than a solution, and on a vegetable bed the fence is both cheaper and permanent.

What does not work

The folk remedies are persistent and unhelpful. Human hair, mothballs, dog hair, chilli powder scattered on soil, ultrasonic devices and plastic owls all either do nothing or work for a few days until the rabbit learns the owl does not move.

Removing shelter does work, and it is the one habitat measure worth the effort. Brush piles, dense low shrubs against a fence, long grass at the boundary and gaps under sheds are where rabbits sit between meals. A garden with no cover near the vegetables has noticeably fewer visits, because a rabbit will not feed far from somewhere to run.

Frequently asked questions

How tall does a rabbit fence need to be?

Two feet is adequate for a vegetable garden, and 24 to 36 inches for protecting trees and shrubs. The mesh matters more than the height: one inch or smaller, because a young rabbit passes through anything larger.

Why do they still get in?

Almost always underneath. Pin the bottom edge down with landscape pins or bury it one to two inches, and do it before the ground freezes so it locks in place. Check it after heavy rain and after mowing.

How do I tell rabbit damage from deer damage?

The cut. Rabbits snip cleanly, leaving a stem that looks scissor-cut, usually at an angle. Deer have no upper incisors and tear, leaving a ragged end. Rabbit damage also stops at a low consistent line.

Are repellents safe on vegetables?

Not necessarily. Common taste repellents use thiram, a fungicide, so the label decides whether a food crop may be treated at all. They also only protect the growth they are on, so new leaves are unprotected and rain removes them.

Why is winter damage worse?

Because it moves to bark. With nothing green available, rabbits gnaw young trunks at snow height, and a trunk girdled all the way round dies in spring. Wire cylinders go on before the first snow, measured from the expected snow line rather than the ground.