Protecting Garden Trees From Hares

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Animals as cute and cuddly as hares can wreak havoc on garden trees, especially in winter. For these animals, the stems of young plants and tree bark are quite tasty food. In order to avoid such a misfortune in the cold season, you need to properly prepare for meeting long-eared guests

Why are hares on the site dangerous?

Regardless of whether hares come to the garden alone or make massive raids, they always strive to destroy young plants first of all - the bark on them is not so tough and much juicier. Having dealt with young shoots, eared pests begin to destroy the bark and mature trees on the trees. Having peeled off the lower layers of the bark, hares move higher, eating the bark at a height of up to one meter. As a result, they completely expose the most important parts of the trees, and the trees dry out and crack as a result of the influence of the winter cold. In most cases, unprotected vegetation dies.

In addition to trees, long-eared ones with an unprecedented speed are able to destroy young stems and branches, which would give juicy young foliage in spring and delight gardeners with exuberant flowering and beautiful fruits.

How to identify the presence of hares on the site

In order to understand that hares periodically visit the site, it is absolutely not necessary to see them with your own eyes. Moreover, hares feast on the bark of trees mainly at night, frightened by all kinds of movements and any rustles - although they have poor eyesight, nature has endowed these animals with excellent hearing in return. However, according to a number of signs, it is still possible to identify the fact of regular rabbit visits. The presence of hares is indicated by shoots of young plants eaten under the root (from the side it looks as if they were removed with a pruner). The next sign is eaten bark or its absence at all on young trees and shrubs (it can also be partially absent on mature trees) at a height of up to 1 m. And hares also tend to spoil the relief of the site with pits. And, of course, sometimes you can find traces of food digested by animals on the site.

Taking preventive measures to scare away hares

Not every gardener will decide to take a gun, so you should think about more civilized and, if possible, humane methods of dealing with long-eared ones.

It's a good idea to try to divert the hare's attention away from the site. To this end, you can pick up trees that are tasty for them and plant them either a little further from your site, or along its perimeter. The likelihood that eared guests will reach the garden is markedly reduced if they love to eat in such places.

Another excellent preventive method is cleanliness on the site: throughout its territory there should be as few unnecessary shrubs, weeds as possible, as well as heaps of firewood and various garbage. On clean, flat places, hares experience noticeable discomfort.

Protection of the site from hares

It is possible to limit the eating of trees on the site by long-eared guests in a variety of ways. A high-quality and solid fencing will do a good job. As a rule, it is made of a chain-link netting, a brick, or it can even be a fence built of stone - such fences will become a rather serious obstacle to the visit of long-eared pests. But ordinary unpretentious sectional fences can easily let hares into the garden. Their owners can be advised to purchase a fine-mesh metal mesh (an inexpensive chain-link in skeins is also suitable), and then wrap it around the sections of the fence that are most attractive for hares to penetrate. In the warm season, you can also build a good internal fence from the net. The entire orchard is fenced with a net, pulling it along posts made of thick reinforcement, a corner or pipe. As for the height of all fences, it should be at least 1 m. In addition, part of the net (25 - 30 cm) should be buried in the ground, since eared guests can also dig a tunnel, respectively, this margin should be added to the total width of the net. And the supports of all fences must be strong and not giving in to the weight of hungry animals.

In garden and hardware stores, a special plastic mesh is now sold, designed to protect against long-eared pests, so it is not forbidden to use it. Also on sale you can see special plastic tubes used to protect against intruders. They are ideal for protecting seedlings and young trees. On trunks without branches, these tubes fit very easily; if there are already branches on the trunks, then unbendable plastic tubes with longitudinal cuts along the entire length are purchased, and they are worn only on the lower parts of the trees.

You can also purchase special motion sensors - when a hare runs past such devices, a light immediately comes on or the area is announced with a sound signal, and the frightened hare immediately runs away.

Some summer residents also use means such as a trap, trap and snare. A number of such accessories are fraught with death for hares, and some of them simply make it possible to catch the animal in order to scare it properly and subsequently release it.

Common black pepper is a very effective remedy. It should be scattered all over the site, forming a kind of border (usually this is done around trees) - hares are unlikely to dare to cross it. Pepper is renewed quite often, since when wet it loses its working properties.

If the above methods of struggle are not enough, repellents from hares will always come to the rescue, which can be purchased without much difficulty.