Q: Something is eating the flowers off of my pansies. I assume it is rabbits, but not sure. The flower beds are in a fenced backyard. I tried putting pepper spray on them, but it didn’t work. The flower beds in our front yard are just barely nibbled on, but the beds in the backyard are completely flowerless pansies. Can you tell me what I can do to prevent this from continuing to happen?

A: I am not convinced that this is the work of rabbits. I believe a rabbit would not stop with consuming only the flowers – they would eat leaves too.

My suspicion is that wind may be drying the flowers and blowing them from the plant.

Try this experiment: cover half of the pansies with a wire cage of some sort and observe for a week.

If the plants under the cage have flowers but the others do not I’ll accept that rabbits are more picky than I thought.

Please let me know what you find!