I did loose a few last spring to mold, not nearly as much as Brad, but when I analyse where the losses occured the most it was in two beds. Both of which were heavily eaten down by rabbits. There was also a lot of rabbit droppings left around those areas. One was near my house in my micro climate, but on the end where the wind kept the snow cover off it a lot. The other was one of the two rows I have near the veggie garden. They chose to eat one bed down to the rhizomes, and left the other one alone. That one had a fairly good snow cover for much of the winter. I didn't suffer any total losses in that bed, as it's an older established bed. None of the other beds were affected much, I did have two other plants affected by mold a bit.
I have a lot of maple trees, so when the wind blows the leaves around in the fall, I leave them in the beds until spring. Some beds get a lot of leaves, others get none. Both affected beds were not covered with leaves. I'm not sure you can draw a lot of conclusions about what happened from this observation. I do wonder if the rabbit droppings caried some bacteria that was harmful.
