Wascally Wabbits

It has just been over two weeks since we planted the first things in the veggie garden and in general everything was doing great.  This was in spite of torrential rains followed by high heat.

All five pepper plants seemed healthy and several were sporting blossoms.  It is not clear whether the peppers will actually form with heat currently over 90 degrees each day, but it is good to see them looking healthy.

Three happy pepper plants.

The cantaloupe seeds germinated in about four days after they were planted on June 6.  They were slow to grow, but had just started showing additional leaves in the last couple of days beyond the two "starter" leaves. 

Cantaloupe on 6/11/16, five days after initial planting.

Everything looked good from the window before leaving for our walk this morning, but all was not good upon our return when I went out to water everything.

All that is left of the two cantaloupe seedlings.

There were only two stubs left where the cantaloupe seedlings had been just a couple of hours earlier.  I don't know what committed this dastardly deed, but this site describes rabbit damage as follows:

Rabbits have both upper and lower incisors, so when they feed, they create a clean cut. Vegetation almost looks like it’s been trimmed with hand clippers.

That seems like a pretty good description of what is left of those poor cantaloupe plants.  I did not catch them red handed, but we have certainly have seen many rabbits around this year, including in our yard.

One of the neighborhood rabbits in our backyard.  I yelled at him when I saw him munching on the miniature mondo grass, but he just looked at me until I actually went outside.

 

The Peter Rabbit stories were among some of the favorites to be read in our house several decades ago.  Unfortunately I now must admit that although formerly viewed as soft, fuzzy, and cute, 

One of Gwen's favorites

the neighborhood rabbits have now been downgraded to varmint status and are perilously close to being put on the backyard terrorist list if this continues.  

We are going to have to figure out how to keep them out of the garden or at least away from the small seedlings.  I planted two more cantaloupe seeds this afternoon, but will cover the seedlings with some kind of yet to be identified anti-rabbit device (perhaps a chicken wire cage of some sort) in the next few days before the seeds germinate.  

The rabbits haven't bothered the pepper plants so far (knock on wood).  We have installed one of the trellises for tomato plants and plan to get and plant those this weekend.  I don't know whether rabbits eat tomato plants or not.  The next plantings after that (all from seeds) will not be until the first of August. (Yes, "fall" gardening in Texas is weird.)  If they leave the larger plants alone, we have a bit of time to figure out how to fence things off.  However, right now it is not obvious how we are going to do that.