Dead plants - weird root thing?!

Hi

My bloody rabbit has destroyed two of my pots - one contained sage and marigolds, the other thyme and marigolds.
My sage has been eaten within an inch of its life but now looks even worse for wear so not sure its gonna make it? The thyme was looking fab one day and awful two days later. My rabbit ate quite a bit of it but what is left looks completely dead, even the leaves that are left are dead and brown, it actually looks as if someone has applied weed killer to it! (they def haven't). I somehow don't think that the death of my thyme is solely down to my rabbit - what do you all think? Plus, almost all the marigolds in both the pots are also dead. They have wilted terribly but then i haven't watered them much recently - could that be why? coupled with my rabbit sitting on them?! Although ive not watered them much recently, the ompost in them is actually pretty moist.

The other thing is, when i have pulled up my dead marigolds - the roots had what looked like bits of metal all around them. It kinda looked like gold leaf or something - what is that??!!

 

Hmmmmm......just read another link and i fear sounding very stupid asking this question - please be kind - Does salt in the soil kill plants? The reason i ask is that in trying to kill the local slug population, i sprinkled salt around the tops of my pots so that when the slimey slugs got to the pot and went over the edge onto the soil, they would land in the salt and DIE. Only i fear that the salt has been washed into the compost of those pots by the rain, thus killing the plants in the pots - could ths be the reason for my dead plants??:o

 

Salt is not the best thing for the soil or plants. You'd be better off going on slug and snail hunt at night, using pellets, coffee grounds, coper rings or the plastic rings someone mentioned in another thread (but I've forgotten where!).

 

How much salt did you put on? Some salt won't harm the plants, otherwise you'd never get anything to grow near the coast because during bad weather it is not unusual for high winds to pick up sea water vapour and spray it everywhere.

I hate to say it, but rabbits are destructive beasties. They have a tendency to gnaw the bark of woody plants, and snaps stems off everything else, but if it was just rabbit damage you wouldn't expect the roots to be so badly off so soon after the incident.

 

I kinda poured the salt on around the rim but it was prob an inch or so wide and i couldn't see the soil through the salt. I did it 2-3 times over the course of a couple of weeks. But i only did it on the two pots in which the plants have died. The rabbits have destroyed a lot of my mum's garden but ive managed to keep my pots safe - until now. The rabbits have chewed many plants and although some are chewed to within an inch of their lives (such as my blackcurrant sage which completely just twigs, save for ONE branch that is thriving) the rabbits have never caused a plant to actually die or caused the rest of the leaves to go brown and die. The rabbit's just generally eat the leaves, rather than the stems. the thyme is all intact as i have checked to ensure the rabbit hadn't eaten through a stem. It was very sudden too - one day she was eating it and 24-48 hours later it was totally dead looking!

What about the 'metal' looking bits amongst the roots of the marigolds?? Any ideas??

 

Rabbit already with herbs Mmmmmmmm.

Seriously not being watered that would lead to the plants dying. The metal bits could be Vermiculite a compost component that is used to open up the compost and retain water.

 

Salt used to be used as a weedkiller.

I read a tip to use it on your weeds in a very old gardening book recently (another tip was to put fuel oil on your carrots to deter root fly - I'll avoid that one too I think!)

 

You need to look at a way of gardening and keeping rabbits in the garden. If that means fencing off an area for the rabbits to be in permanently, then so be it, but they'll keep nibbling and gnawing at your plants if they can and have free reign. It's what they do. If your garden is of the long and thin type, maybe divide it in half, lengthways and give the rabbits one half and garden in the other half. Then they still get a long run to play in and you get to garden.

Sorry if I'm stating the obvious! I know the idea of them wandering around free range is appealing, but take it from me, livestock and gardening are not compatible.

 

I'm fairly sure then that there's your problem. Salt has an affinity to water (or is it the other way round). Anyway, basically your plants will have dehydrated. If the concentration of salt in the water that the plant is trying drink is higher than the concentration of salt in the water within the plant's cells, then the water in the cells is drawn to the salt outside them, effectively dehydrating the plant even though the soil is moist.

 

Thanks everyone. It seems to me that ive killed my lovely thyme :dh:

So a lesson learnt, i'm sure i'll learn many others the hard way :(

I'm pretty sure it was the salt cos its only the two pots that i put salt on, that have died. The rest are all fine. At least i won't have to blame my bunny! But Aaron your right, i'm gonna have to seriously think about how i organise my garden. I've recently bought my first house and i'm still in the process of clearing the weeds. I'm constantly thinking of how i can design the garden with the bunnies in mind as i would end up putting them in a pot if they eat it all before it even gets going!!!

 

Is your garden big enough to section off an area for a rabbit run? If it is then ideally you could divide such a run into two sections, seed one out with plants that the rabbits like to eat (translation: seed it out with just about anything), then once established, let them in their and seed the other side out. Hopefully then by the time they've devoured their plants on one side, the other will be ready for them to swap back, and so on.

 

Thats a jolly good idea clueless!!

I adore my rabbits, they are my babies (no, i don't have kids!!) so i want them to be in the garden with us but not destroy it. They are house rabbits so it would be easy to keep them out of 'their' garden until it matures.

Is it best to get a professional in to design my garden for me (i've seen a company that would just do the drawings and then leave us to it) or is it something i can do myself (i'm new to gardening but my mum is pretty green fingered!)?

If i got someone in, what kind of price would i expect to pay for drawn designs (i live in Berkshire)?

 

It depends how much money you want to spend I guess. Personally I wouldn't get someone in, I'd just have a bash at it myself.

Believe it or not, there are plants that rabbits simply wont touch, so you could design your garden to incorporate such plants so that the rabbits can wander about at leisure in the main garden while you are there to watch them. Then in their garden, which would have been fenced off with chicken wire (make sure you get some with holes that are no more than an inch across, otherwise the rabbits can get their heads stuck in it), loads of super fast growing stuff that they like.

Alternatively, if the whole garden is fenced off with suitably rabbit proof fencing, you could have a mix of plants they won't touch, a section that they will love, and a few plants that the rabbits might have a go at if they are still hungry. You could put protection round anything that you definitely don't want them to touch.

 

Yeah i think i may just let them in the whole garden but fence off what i dont want them to eat. I was thinking that i could just fence off the two main borders (that i plan to make) with that green netting you can get from the GC. That way i can plant everything up and the bunnies cant eat it!! Once the plants get established you prob wont really see the green netting - how does that sound??
It allows the rabbit's full access to the garden but with no chance of them destroying plants. Plus i can plant some stuff for them to eat, i could maybe have an area that i divide in two for them to eat in rotation, as you suggested clueless!