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My Natural Rabbit Repellent Home Remedy

This is my rabbit repellent home remedy list for keeping rabbits from eating the plants in our garden. I’ve also included additional tips below!

If you’re a pea plant trying to grow in our garden this summer, you’ve had your share of challenges. First, you had to endure two snowstorms with hard freezes.

Then, just as you were beginning to thrive and feel good about life, a rabbit snuck in the garden and ate most of your foliage and tender shoots. What’s a pea plant to do?

Rabbit ate plants at Happy Simple Living blog

Because I’m trying to be a frugal gardener, after surveying the damage this morning I was determined to try and solve the rabbit problem without spending any cash. (I’ve also discovered several free, natural ways to get rid of ants.)

So I rummaged around in the shed and found some bamboo stakes that I drove between the openings in the wire fence, about four inches in the ground.

Deterring rabbits at Happy Simple Living blog
Bamboo stake fencing at Happy Simple Living blog

Then I placed a fierce looking owl (or tacky plastic owl, depending on your point of view) to guard the plants.

Fake owl to scare off rabbits at Happy Simple Living blog

Finally, I sprinkled some black pepper on and around the nibbled plants.

Black Pepper to deter rabbits at Happy Simple Living blog

Filling the gaps under our fence also helped reduce the bunny population.

Garden Guides recommends sprinkling blood meal around plants to keep rabbits away. This has the added benefit of fertilizing the plants.

Other rabbit deterrents I’ve read about–but have no experience with–include:

  • Spraying hot pepper sauce around the garden
  • Sprinkling cayenne pepper around the plants
  • Planting marigolds or cilantro around the border
  • Scattering dog hair (something we always have plenty of around here) near the plants. Seems kind of unsightly, but it just might work!

I love seeing the bunnies in the back yard, I really do, so I hope these measures deter them from eating our peas and other garden plants.

A gray rabbit eating plants in a garden.

How about you? Are you dealing with critters in your garden, and if so, have you found any solutions that work? Drop a comment below!

About Eliza Cross

Eliza Cross is the author of 17 books, including Small Bites and 101 Things To Do With Bacon. She shares ideas to simplify cooking, gardening, time and money. She is also the owner of Cross Media, Inc. and founder of the BENSA Bacon Lovers Society.

16 thoughts on “My Natural Rabbit Repellent Home Remedy”

  1. No rabbit problems here. We tried growing peas when both our golden and black lab/golden mix were alive. The dogs had a field day with the peas. LOVED them. Our take of baby sweet peas – zero. Hope your tips work to deter the bunnies.

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  2. Oh Patty, that’s so funny! I guess those baby sweet peas are as irresistible to animals as they are to us. Thanks for stopping by.
    xo

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  3. We haven’t tried gardening yet but we may give it a try in the fall. The bunnies are so cute – it would be hard not to share with them! You have a beautiful garden – hope you get a taste of sweet peas at some point!

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  4. Oh Boy we have groundhogs. They eat everything. My friend swears they hate catnip so she gave me a small plant which I left to guard my sunflowers. The next morning the catnip was gone as well as the sunflowers. I have found nothing to deter these creatures. :(. Fencing wouldn’t look good in my front yard, so I just hope some of my flowers survive.

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    • Groundhogs, eh? Maybe you need to call Carl, the groundskeeper from “Caddyshack!” 🙂 I hope your hungry groundhogs move elsewhere, Joyce.

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  5. I don’t have trouble with rabbits since i used the following mixture. I mix 5 pounds of the cheapest flour i can find with 1 cup of sevin 5%, and dust my plants. If you are an organic grower of course you can’t use this. If you are organic i hope i didn’t offend you, but the mixture will work.

    Reply
  6. Our biggest pest here in the Pacific Northwest is slugs. Last year we used copper mesh fencing (well, it’s a very low fence) to surround the tender brassicas. This year we have been blessed with hardly any slugs. I think it’s the presence of the chicken run at one end of the garden. They do look rather large to a slug, after all.

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    • Chickens! What a good slug solution. I used to trap them with a pie plate filled with beer, which is very effective but the disposal part is kind of gross!

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  7. I’m ashamed to say that we are no gardeners. Everything seems to die on us. It must be the water we either forget to add or add too much.

    But we live in the city which has a lot of grey squirrels – large North American imports that have chased the native European red squirrels away in much of the UK.

    Now something to stop them eating everything in sight would be a good idea….:-) Like rats, they are very intelligent creatures and I think someone in Belgium has started training them to help clearing land mines. Apparently they like the smell of explosives….

    Help – have I just disqualified myself???

    Reply
  8. Ahhhhh those wascally wabbits. I used to work at a garden center and the rabbits would always try to nibble on our plants. The only thing that would really prevent them was to put really thin wire fencing around the plants we wanted to protect. We did have a bunch of sprays and items meant to prevent them which people said worked with mixed effects.

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  9. Thanks, Mr. Potato. It’s helpful to know that the experts use fencing to keep the wascally wabbits away!

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  10. I really hope this isn’t discouraging but we couldn’t beat our rabbits and my husband was frustrated enough to let our Saint Bernard out to chase them every time he saw them which just caused utter devastation as he is a very large puppy and ended up running laps… everywhere, regular grass and paved pathway be darned, lol. So we switched to elevated gardening and mini greenhouses we found on Pinterest and decided to try. So far so good, and our kids can still see the wascally wabbits,(lol thePotatohead!)

    Reply

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