I need some honesty about my baby serviceberry. I thought it was protected enough as the rabbits hadn’t touched it since planting this past April. But this morning they got it, almost 9 inches of growth chopped off. Only this little side shoot remains. There’s about a foot of its trunk remaining. Will it live? I’m just so devastated. I’ve been nurturing this new native garden all summer, plus the little f*ckers also got my big beautiful cardinal flower-just chopped it down. I’ve had an awful week and could cry. My husband is going to put up a better rabbit proof fence around everything tonight.
by softcriminal_67
26 Comments
Yeah, it’ll be fine
It will surveev!
Your fence needs to be a little bigger around the plant. You gave the bunny a place to stand up against to bite it off. I make chicken wire fences like this about 30″ in diameter and at least that tall (good for serviceberries which will grow quickly. You can cut a top to the fence out of the chicken wire and wire that on.
Great thing about serviceberries, dogwoods, and any suckering shrub is that they can take a LOT of hard cutting (eating) back and still come back strong!
Do yourself a favor and get taller chicken wire and move it about a foot out on each side of the shrub.
I recommend luring a fox to your garden
Your enclosure is way too narrow. Make it very wide, and maybe a bit taller. Make it so a rabbit cannot climb it and then get to the stems. They don’t have opposable thumbs to grab like raccoons so that should suffice.
Same thing happened to my serviceberry when it was that young. It just sent up a sucker and was fine
Pre-coffee me completely missed the dash in your title and thought, “Wait, why are the rabbits heartbroken????”
Sorry for your rabbit’s loss, glad you could cheer him up with some serviceberry leaves.
Deer ate 90% of leaves off my service berry
I was devastated. But the plant wasn’t it’s doing fine a couple months later even as a transplant lol
They got my 3rd year serviceberry. However, it was well-established enough to send up 3 or 4 new shoots from the root. My New Jersey Tea, on the other hand, seems to thrive and come back even more vigorous each year after being eaten to the ground each winter.
Your plant looks fine. My guess is that it’s only a small flesh wound.
It’ll make it come back stronger. Think of it as early pruning?
Looks great! It’ll be fine. Serviceberries are known for growing shallow LONG reaching roots. Those roots will have already built up reserve. It may be smaller but it’ll be fine.
Spray with tobacco or coffee, weakly made and they won’t eat it anymore.
https://preview.redd.it/735a5qdczjhh1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=88a9e2b4f640e7c4f5a2594ed8439b87bbc49afb
Y’all I was trying to redo some of the chicken wire and I found this little guy!!! taking this as a sign from the universe to keep going
It’s a native. This means its evolved over hundreds of thousands of years with rabbits and deer. This is nature. This is natural and this plant is not hurt in any way. Natives wouldn’t thrive in your area if the local wildlife taking a little bite out of it was detrimental. It’s a purely human response to think this is damage. It’s no different than mowing grass or pruning a large shrub. In fact its exactly the latter.
Tbh my chokecherry got nibbled and it’s great a year on, don’t fret! it’s still alive!
Mine had every leaf eaten off early on. Not a single leaf remained. That was 2023, and the serviceberry is still doing fine today! A bit of pressure from perennials growing into its space but otherwise thriving.
If you have deer, you should cover the top, too. In fact, this clean bite looks a lot like the deer nibbling I’ve been seeing on some of my flowers and shrubs. A few days ago I watched a young buck eating the suckers at the base of my serviceberry and trying to reach for the higher leaves. Apparently it’s a tasty tree.
https://preview.redd.it/q8tqfsoj1khh1.jpeg?width=3024&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5392108c68fe1ca1e12117d9e5419f982bbe6ee2
You have lots of wildlife! I haven’t heard of using other natives as deterrents. Thank you for sharing, I’ll look into this.
This happened to our dwarf hackberry sapling a couple weeks ago. It has already sprouted new growth.
Deer just deleafed mine too.
After losing plants to rabbits I’ve learned to just appreciate that I get to see rabbits every morning and try to improve my garden for the future
It will be fine. Actually, when wildlife eats the leaves of young plants, the plants put more energy toward their root systems. It will be a nice strong plant
I planted 3 wild plum & 2 black cherry unprotected from little critters. I planted on-site at work, during a shift & just was distracted. Then since I don’t live there at the rescue, it was a few days I was away.
All 5 got severely chomped (like a few inches of a stick(!) is what they looked like. We caged & now they’re all 2-3′ tall and leafy happy sticks. So far deer haven’t bothered to jump perimeter fence to eat the tops off 🤞🏼
Even as little sad bareroot saplings they had huge good roots, so I wasn’t too worried about them. I did have an ohhhh noooo moment though. Woodchuck got em, we think. 😅 Your plant will be ok!
I spent the past year trying to fight the rabbits as they can be a pain. Then I started noticing that the plants they chop down almost always come back bigger and stronger and it activates dormant growth points. I also find leaving some “weeds” like wood sorrels, clovers, grasses, between the plants helps a lot as bunnies like to munch what’s at nose level. And don’t antagonize them lol. If I want to scare them away I’ll casually go take a walk around the garden as if I don’t notice them because if you get mad or yell at them they’ll 9000% come back more often for intentional sabotage