The winter vegetables are being devastated. They can’t get beyond the seedling stage before just being brutally eaten into oblivion by these monsters. Even worse, the techniques of rabbit control I’ve learned from a lifetime of study, e.g., Mr. McGregor, Elmer Fudd, and the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, all turn out to be fictional!
Moved to IMHO per the OP’s request.
Have you tried wire fencing?
Call them pets, then they won’t be able to wait to get out of your garden.
I’ve successfully used plastic snow fencing. Buy a 4’ high roll and cut it in half with a sharp utility knife, now you have 100’ of 2’ fence.
I got some killer cats & a BIG dog you can rent.
Have you tried liberally sprinkling cayenne pepper all over the ground around the plants? It’s apparently quite effective at repelling most mammals (not me, but we humans can develop a taste for some weird-ass stuff). We haven’t used it on rabbits, but we’ve used it to keep squirrels out of bird feeders and to get rid of a skunk nesting under our house. Might be worth a try.
Do you have a zoo near by? Cougar or other big cat poop works very well. I know from experience that house cat poop doesn’t work. I’ve heard that coyote poop also works, but I never tried it.
Give them a foot massage. Preferably Swedish.
What rabbit can’t clear a two-foot fence? :dubious:
It helps by getting kicked up when the critter digs in the soil, getting into their nose and eyes. If the leaves/fruits are damp, the cayenne will stick (temporarily) which gets their tongue and mouth lining involved in the fun.
Black pepper can help, too, through much the same mechanism. Both have to be re-applied after a heavy rain.
Bloodmeal scattered/sprinkled around also helps, I’m told, but more for the reasons the poop suggestion from **flatlined **works: it smells like OMGDANGER11!1 to bunnies and other prey animals.
We’ve been spreading around a concoction from Home Depot based mostly on deer blood. It’s effective in that it limits them to just eating the leaves down to the stem, not the stems down to the ground. So … that’s something. Poop though, huh? It’s a thought, but how do you approach a coyote and ask for its poop? Cayenne pepper is worth a shot too, although they seem to have no problem chomping on our chilli peppers.
I was thinking more of a Claymore mine, with … wait for it … a hare trigger.
Not only can rabbits not jump a 2’ fence, it is not obvious that they will even climb over a 2" fence. In the spring of 2013 a rabbit ate all the growing shoots and we got no beans. This year, at the suggestion of our gardener, we put up some wooden stakes and 4’ intervals. They were probably 1’ high. We then took some twine and wrapped it twice around, once about 4" high and once about 8" high. It did the job. Before we did it, I saw a couple of rabbits and afterwards there were none. Loads of beans (and other things this year).
These rabbits seemed incredibly stupid. I nearly had to hit one over the head before it would move away from me. Considering how skittish most animals are around people, I was surprised. I think I could have grabbed it and made a rabbit stew had I wanted.
I read in Organic Gardening about 40 years ago that planting marigolds around the outside of your garden would keep rabbits out. My mom tried it and it worked. I also used marigolds to keep the neighbors’ cats from using my garden as a toilet; that also worked pretty well. Apparently animals don’t like the smell. I used to take off the seed pods and scatter the seeds around which helped propagate the marigolds as well as spread the smell around.
Maybe send it an ACME box with the Claymore mine? You can get coyote poop at the zoo as well. And yes, I did laugh at your joke 
Rabbits weren’t my problem when I was growing veggies. Javalina were terrible and they loved marigolds. But what could one expect from a critter that ate prickly pear cactus for breakfast?
I have (had) a problem every year with baby bunnies eating my seedlings. They love greenbean seedlings. Anyway, I put up some chicken wire fencing and that was the end of that.
Well, San Diego does have a zoo of course, but I’m not sure about how I’d ask them for coyote poop. I like the fence idea. I didn’t really think of my front yard as fence-able, but a short two foot fence along one side might just be possible and effective. Maybe add some marigolds too.
Thanks flatlined, that’s more than it deserved!
The failure of this method is that it fails to keep RickG out of your garden. 
Try catching a bunny and doing a transfusion between it and yourself, powered by captured lightning bolts during a lightning storm under a full moon at midnight. At least, you will learn to appreciate the problem from the bunny’s point of view.
Do zoos commonly keep coyotes? I think the above suggestion about hitting up a zoo for poop probably referred to getting big cat poop.
Anyway, my neighbor is in the process of building cages to keep the neighborhood cats out of his plantings. It consists of a wooden frame, with chicken wire stapled all around on all sides including the top, but not on the bottom. He will set this down over his plantings.
But can rabbits get into a cage like that just a easily by burrowing under it?
fence has to also have some buried in the ground. they dig real good.
I kept the rabbits out of my garden with a 3’ chicken wire fence. I didn’t bury it, and I guess that explains how the woodchuck got in and destroyed it all. :smack: