OMG! YES IM SCREAMING! MY BROCCOLI IS GONE!!!!! WAAAAA!

[Spongegirl]

and the first thing I thought to do was post to the Helpful Gardener. Crap, crap, crap! I planted like 30 broccoli plants last week, been watering them, and then it rains for a whole day. I go to check out my garden today and they are all gone! No Way! My garden has thrived this year with no pesticides or fertilizers. I missed a spring plant for broccoli due to a cutworm that attacked the sprout so I have been waiting sooo long for the fall broccoli planting. No evidence of an animal-no tracks or droppings. None of the other plants were harmed. My garden is enclosed but obviously not good enough. My guess is that it is a rabbit because if it was a deer jumping in, I would see tracks, right? There has been more rabbits this year than I have ever seen in my whole life!
So, IF I go get more broccoli plants, what do I do? Spray the heck out of them with pepper spray? I am 'everything organic' so I would love to hear some ideas of what has worked for you! I MUST defeat the WASKALLY WABBIT! I NEED BROCCOLI!
I think I will put my German Shepherd's crate out there too, that will detour the rabbits, right?

[gixxerific]

Ha ha ha ha. Sorry I had to laugh. But I feel for you, really. Been there done that, sounds like rabbits to me.

I remember several years ago I had some, I want to say, peppers growing. Than a few weeks later I realized "Wait a minute I had something planted there didn't I?" At that point there was nothing at all, eaten off at ground level.

I'm sorry you have bee ravaged, I know your pain.

[applestar]

Oh no! So sorry to hear that.

2 ft high fence usually works for rabbits. There are other critters that can get over them though -- like ground HOGs. This year, my main pesky critter has been chipmunks. Chipmunks in the apple and plum trees, chipmunks in the compost piles, chipmunks in the tomatoes, chipmunk perched on the rice stalks even! The potatoes too, I'm pretty sure -- dug under and chomped them up.

[rainbowgardener]

Sorry to hear that Applestar! Chipmunks are the one critter I don't have in my garden. I guess now I'm glad I don't.

[Toil]

floating row covers... they do double duty, and let you transplant without hardening off.

[Ceco Gakovic]

Sorry to hear that, spongegirl.

You may need to find out how the intruder got in, so that you can prevent it from happening again. A rabbit doesn't need much of an opening to get in, so you may have missed it.

I also want to make a comment on the cutworm.. just put a toothpick next to the stems. A cutworm will consider it a foreign object and will leave the plants alone. I haven't had any plants cut by cutworms since I started using this method. You can also wrap the stems in aluminum foil, though I prefer the toothpick method.

[DoubleDogFarm]

I second the floating row covers. The heavier material will give you a 4 degrees advantage also. Frost protection further into the fall.

http://www.life123.com/home-garden/gard ... rgan.shtml

Replant and protect.

Eric

[Runningtrails]

That would be so frustrating!! It happened to me too. I had about 5 rows of flax planted for the seed. They grew well until they had seed pods ripening. I went out to harvest and they were all gone. Just completely gone. Not a sign that anything had even been there. I don't know if it was rabbits or deer. I have not seen a rabbit in the years we have lived here but we have a lot of hawks and eagles and owls in the woods. We do have lots of deer and Buck was just a small pup then. We don't get the deer now that he's grown and free ranging the fenced property.

I was not upset by that as I wanted it for chicken feed and we sold our chickens early in the spring. I would have liked it for myself to eat, however, but flaxseed is cheap in the small amounts that I use.

A big free ranging dog would help keep critters at bay. We had a ground hog until we got 2 great pyr pups. We just have one great pyr now, Buck, sold the other pup.