Rabbit-Proof Fence

Two months ago, a litter of cute, fist-sized bunnies was born in a furry nest beneath my neighbors’ kitchen door. While others fawned over the little creatures, I stood away, muttering grim prophecies that have, at last, come to pass. The rabbit is out of the bag, and he is a hungry devil, who brings all his friends, brothers, sisters, and associates to the banquet.

The main attraction of this lapine smorgasbord, for the last two nights, has been my formerly six-inch-high pea plants, tender-leaved, succulent seedlings that were far too young to be allowed out at night alone. Most of those plants are now one or two inches high, and those that have more than one leaf left can count themselves fortunate indeed. A pole bean seedling, meanwhile, fared far worse in the latest rampage, having been foully and mercilessly slaughtered, cut down to the ground just as it was feeling its way toward a strong support.

One neighbor (who is a non-gardener) suggested planting marigolds to deter the creatures. I pooh-poohed the idea. Even if I believed that marigolds are a strong rabbit repellent, I would still have no confidence that flowers alone, howsoever stinky, would deter a rabbit that knew quite well what it was going after. I offended my neighbor by mumbling something about rabbit stew. Later on, I bought a length of two-foot-high nylon-covered wire fencing and unrolled it around the garden. Perhaps the little marauders will find a way under my fence, but the barrier will at least tax their ingenuity and strength for a time, and siphon off some of the energy they have already usurped from my high-maintenance garden plants.

At night, I am re-reading Watership Down for perhaps the eighteenth time. Though I still love that tale of rabbits on the run from residential development and still sympathize with Hazel, Fiver, Bigwig, and the rest of their crew, I am not deluded thereby into believing that bunnies are our friends. Like all the other creatures on the earth, rabbits are herbivorous competitors that must be discouraged from consuming the dainties we desire. My mother, who memorized Peter Rabbit when my brother and I were young, says I have turned into Mr. McGregor. So I have, and it is only natural that I should. The unwritten code of the ancient and hard-working cadre of gardeners requires me to accept that I must do a certain amount of fighting for my future meals, and that the fiercest of those struggles will likely be against my fellow creatures.

A Tale of Two Trellises

My neighbor, the Man with the Perfect Lawn, built his trellis a few weeks ago. As usual, I’m playing catch-up—rather lamely, it would seem. We both were dissatisfied with last year’s yield of bush beans, so each of us decided to plant pole beans this year. Naturally, to grow pole beans, one needs a beanpole.

Lawn Man tried teepee trellises for his cucumbers last year and didn’t like them. This year, he has nailed together a tough-looking structure from two-by-fours. He’s a construction worker by trade. While I’ve wielded a hammer from time to time, I have little confidence in my ability to cobble together wood-frame structures. Instead, I chose materials I could easily lift and created a rickety trellis of my own from bamboo poles tied together with a kind of nylon twine that has an annoying tendency to fray on first contact.

I think this will work for the beans, but I’m not so sure about the peas and cucumbers. All the books I’ve consulted recommend nailing up netting that the peas can climb. As for cucumbers, my family has always grown them on the ground, where they trailed limply for about six feet or so. These cucumbers produced adequately, but they were never wildly successful. I’ve also had thoughts about training winter squash on my trellis, but the idea has begun to seem impractical. If the vine doesn’t climb up the thing automatically, why waste time tying up each tendril?

The melons, meanwhile, must go elsewhere. In 100 square feet of space, it’s hard to keep plants apart from each other. According to The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible, Edward C. Smith’s guide to organic gardening in raised beds, melon plants should not be allowed to mingle with cucumbers. Smith claims that melons pollinated by cucumber flowers will taste bitter. I’m not entirely sure I believe that, but planting cucurbits apart from each other makes sense to me.

Last year, I planted the cucumbers, melons, and squash together in the same infertile plot. The poor soil quality guaranteed that anything planted there would fail to thrive, but the cucumbers, at least, produced a few odd-shaped specimens. The winter squash died, and the zucchini struggled, producing only male blossoms. Both were early and frequent victims of squash bug infestation. Squash bugs prefer squash, but they don’t mind dining on cucumbers and melons. Thousands of tiny, yellow cucumber beetles, both spotted and striped, also descended on my poor, struggling plants.

I’m hoping that if I keep apart the squash plants and banish the zucchini to the front yard and the melon to the flowerbeds, the insects will be forced to divide their time among three separate locations, reducing the damage they inflict in any one spot. So my trellis will host only the beans, peas, and cucumbers, and the squash and melons will be left to find their own way.