Throw This Common Vegetable Around Your Yard To Help Keep Rabbits Away

Rabbits may be cute creatures, but when they're munching on your garden's cabbage and lettuce leaves, they're anything but welcome guests. You could put up a fence and wire, but since rabbits can get through holes as small as 2 to 3 inches, you'd need to build a very tight fence, which could block out important light for your vegetable garden. The better option may be to add a few onions to your garden instead.

Onions are one of the easiest ways to naturally ward off rabbits and other pests from a garden since the creatures don't like the onion's strong scent. Rabbits move from one area to the next as they seek out food, but if they come across a strong scent — like that of an onion — they're more likely to move on in another direction. Note that onions are poisonous to rabbits if ingested; however, because the odor manages to deter rabbits from an area, it's unlikely they'll want to take a bite out of a bulb.

Consider planting onions of any variety to deter rabbits and other pests from your garden. However, if you haven't planted any and are now faced with a family of rabbits for dinner each day, try cutting up a few store-bought onions and scattering them around the perimeter of the garden. The cutting of the onion helps to make the scent much stronger and easier for the rabbit to experience. You'll need to replace them every week or so until the rabbits have moved on.

The better option for long-term results is to plant onions as a perimeter vegetable in your garden. Once the vegetable's long shoots begin to rise, pull up a bulb or two as a warning to pests in the area not to come into your garden (or at least encourage them to do so less often!).

If you have persistent rabbits that simply don't want to stop visiting, you can use other repellents, including a combination of pungent ingredients in a water solution. Start with a couple of cups of white vinegar. Add to that several cut-up onions and garlic, along with hot peppers. You can add these to a spray bottle and spray around the exterior of the garden to ward off rabbits and other infiltrating critters.