A wascally wabbit

I told you that something ate my beautiful lettuce. Well it returned. It mowed down the rest of my green beans. It ate the tops off my poor parsnips.

And my radicchio was just starting to head up ( while still not turning red) when half of it got mowed down!

I showed hubby. He said he saw the ground hog running away from the back of my garden with something green in his mouth. I've seen that too. But always from the back,  I never thought he could get into my garden. I walked around reinforcing any areas of the fence that looked like a ground hog could get in. Our ground hog is so fat. The few loose places along the fence were so tiny. Hubby and agreed that after dinner we would double check (four eyes are better than two) to see where he could be getting into the Potager.
When dinner was done we went back into the garden to see if there were any holes under the squash and were greeted by a horrible sight.

All the radicchio had been eaten while we were in the house eating our dinner!!! The nerve of this creature! Hubby figured it had to be a rabbit and he must be going through the wooden rays of the gate. Since everything that has been eaten has been in the front of the Potager, this made sense.
As it was getting late, he covered the gate with a sheet and said that would suffice until he could do something better.

I had my doubts about a sheet stopping a vegetable loving varmint, so I liberally doused the sheet with Deer Off and added my own little deterrent.

A little rubber snake amid the sad remains of my green beans.

Incredibly these preventative measures worked! No more damage until hubby could make something more permanent. As lovely as that sheet was.

A day or two later, he took a bit of left over plastic fencing from the garden and attached it behind the garden gate.





It doesn't look ugly, which I was concerned about, but if that is how the critter got in, it will be impossible for him to get in now.

And just in case it somehow shimmied under the back gate, hubby added an extra piece of wood to keep the critter out.

So far so good. Since he's done this, nothing has been eaten. 

Directly behind this eaten green been is a bean that was not eaten. Behind that are the  Royal Burgundy beans that were previously eaten. They have recovered and are giving us beans now.

The green beans  are getting new leaves and may survive (although I have to replant more than half of them), and the radicchio has perked up. I'm waiting to see if it will eventually need to be removed.

While I'm all for letting the wild animals graze in my yard, this rascally rabbit has gone too far! I'm hoping the reinforcements will make him search for food elsewhere from now on!

I'm linking this up to  at An Oregon Cottage . Be sure to tour all the gardens linked up there.