Don't ringbark my trees

In my garden I have a small orchard. It is an enclosed area with a corrigated iron fence that also is my chook run and my bunny exercise yard. Unfortunately the bunnies like the apple trees and nibble on them. I have tried many things to deter them, mostly small fences and netting or shade cloth surrounds to deter them.

Over winter I have not done much weeding and many stinging nettles have grown up inside the wire cages at the bottom of my trees. This has also kept the rabbits from touching the trees. Now all my fruit trees have stinging nettles growing at their base.

A trial of a bed of lettuce with nettles around it also proved successful. Just before the nettles flower I put them in my compost. Some compost bays  and bins I let the chook's scratch in and some I like to keep them out awhile, so throwing nettles on top of the bays, stops the chook's as well. I recently made soup with stinging nettles in it. They don't sting when cooked and have good nutritional value.

The Bunny House

This is about the "Taj Mahal" of Bunny Houses. It is made from recycled materials, like the rest of my garden. It is a 3x3m shed with North facing windows for winter warmth and sunshine. it has a 400mm wide verandah for summer shade on the north. 

The southern side (in the photo below) has a large mesh window area to let the cooling summer breezes in. The bunny house inside is split level as the garden is also split level. 1) the upper vegetable area ; 2) the lower fruit area and chook/bunny run. 

Two feeding chutes made from old plumbing poly pipe can be seen just above Bella, my dog. The larger one is for food and the smaller one on the right is for water. The food goes down the chute easily, saving me from going through the gate and down into the lower part of the garden and opening the large bunny house door, where the bunnies love to rush out for their exercise.

The bunnies come out to play once a week usually and run around the fruit garden, eating the rosemary, and harassing the chooks. To get them to go back into the house, I put some food down their chute and they run back in, except Brownie, who I have had the longest, he's a bit more relaxed about going back in.

In the Taj Mahal, the bunny's have a large old cupboard on its side, that they go into or can sit on, to look out either window. This gives them a chance to exercise and jump inside the house as well.  They also have an old microwave oven with its door and cord removed, which is buried into the bank like a burrow with a brick tunnel leading to it.

Brownie (proud dad) and two babies in the entrance to the "microwave" burrow.

Thunder and Tubs- two bunnies that I adopted from friends.

   

Sunny (RIP) hiding in the cupboard above the "burrow".

A baby bunny.