Bunny Gardeners?

[osprey]

Are there any other bunny gardeners out there in BinkyBunny land?  My buns serve as both input (litter, spoiled hay and poops go into the compost) and output for my garden.  In the summer I grew various easy herbs for them including mint, basil, parsley and oregano.  The parsley and oregano are still going strong (not a cold winter weather area here), the basil and mint died off when the weather turned cool.  I am also growing arugula, celery and broccolli for them.  I planted some kale, but the squirrels got to it before the buns did.  The arugula is great.  The yard critters leave it alone, and it was easy to raise from seed.  I am feeding the little plants to the buns as treats.

[poopy]

that is a good idea. i should start growing herbs for them. i’m just a bad gardner and i hate worms so i usually hate doing that stuff. but it would save a lot of money and trips to the grocery store

[osprey]

Can you grow stuff in containers?  Most herbs can be grown in pots, and mint in particular is hard to contain unless it is in a pot.  I also grow "cat grass" (usually wheat or barley seed) in pots indoors.  These are easy and the buns love them.  I tried giving them various kinds of sprouts, which are also easy to do indoors, but they will not touch them.  If your buns like them, sprouts are very easy to do yourself.

[Gravehearted]

I buy plants for my kidlets – Trader Joes seasonally has fantastic big basil plants.

I have a great bunny garden story. When I owned a house, I spent a lot of energy planting an organic garden for Niklaus. We had just bought him a leash, so took him for his first trial run with the leash. Well, I carried him outside to show off his newly planted lil garden. Let’s just say he did NOT like the leash. He turned into godzilla in the garden!!! he went right for the baby parsley stems, chopped right through the middle then tossed it aside!! then he went to cucumber plant and did the same thing! I scooped him right up and he never visited his garden again.

But – he looooved the fresh veggies. I just had a small garden, so had to supplement with farmer’s market veggies. He could tell the difference too – and would go straight for the stuff from the garden. it must have smelled tastier 🙂

[Hilde]

We garden for our buns too. We grow basil (lots!! and when the weather started getting too cold this year, we cut it all down before it died, and dried it inside. The buns love their basil hay! We did the same with some mint, they love that too), different kinds of mints, carrots, italian parsley, dill, cilantro, dandelions, clover, different lettuces, golden oregano, strawberries (the little wild native ones), and some different edible flowers and herbs, not all of which were a success with the buns. But the snails and pests loved them all! We lost nearly our whole crop of dill to aphids of some sort.
Does anyone have any suggestions for safe pestcontrol and fertilizers? Don’t really want to use anything toxic, but I would like to garden for the buns and us, instead of the pests.

[Wendy Cal]

Oh, wow, i’ve been thinking about starting a bunny garden, too, but i’m having a heck of a time finding places that will sell me seed in NON-bulk amounts!  (Honestly, i just want to grow a little of this stuff, and 40 to 50 POUNDS of seeds is just a little TOO much!  )

i found this website for info about making my own pesticides:

http://vegetablegardens.suite101.com/article.cfm/organic_pest_control_and_pesticide

Where do y’all generally get your seeds?  i plan to ask at the feed store, even if they DO laugh me out of town, but i’d like to find somewhere that i could order all kinds of seeds.

[osprey]

The very best place for herbs that I have found on the web is Richters.  I have not ordered from them yet, but they have a greate selection:

http://www.richters.com/

For general seeds, Park’s is good.  I have used them many times:

http://www.parkseed.com

And there is always Burpee.  I have used their packets from the store, not purchased online from them:

http://www.burpee.com/

The seeds that I have been using lately are mostly from Renee’s (I get them locally here at Orchard Supply, a hardware store):
http://www.reneesgarden.com/

Any chance you can get seeds at a local harware store or garden center?  They usually stock seed packets in the Spring, and greens and herbs are popular to plant from seed.

[Wendy Cal]

ROFL!!!    Our ‘Garden Center’ is also known hereabouts as the feed store!  i plan to call to find out about the smaller quantities of seed, but i SURE appreciate all the great links you posted, since i’m not exactly holding my breath about the feed store.  lol

We’ve got what we call a ‘feed lot,’ which is a holding pen that we keep cattle in so that we can fatten them up ~ FABULOUS soil, since they not only EAT (putting it IN), but also leave plenty good fertilizer behind.  i’m hoping to be able to plow it all up for planting of bunny salad makings, as well as fencing it so that the wild rabbits can come in, but nothing bigger than a cottontail!  My Flash rabbit is a wild cottontail, and i remember that the rabbit i had before liked to go outside with the cats ~ this was when we were living in Austin, in an apartment ~ and she knew where she lived, and always came back whenever something scared her or when she was good and ready!  (She was something else ~ a Californian that bonded IMMEDIATELY with my 1/2 siamese cat, Hattie, who HATED Rini the rabbit, poor thang!)  Anyway, i’m hoping against hope that i can have a wild cottontail rabbit that goes outside and does rabbit things, but who still wants to come in, and i wouldn’t mind if he made some wild friends ~ maybe a cute little girlie cottontail to see and ‘date!’  lol

Hey!  i just went to the store and saw (and bought) a head of Butter Lettuce, which they leave the roots on.  i’m wondering if i could replant it, for a renewable lettuce source…  Has anyone else gotten this bright idea?  Did it work?  The head of lettuce was like $3, which is a little expensive, but if the rabbits like it, i LOVE it!  lol  (Oh!  And if no one else has tried it, i’ll post back about my success ~ or lack thereof!)

[lisa]

I get all my stuff for bunny garden at the local farmers markets and green houses.  Walmart sell too.  Anywhere you go in the spring to by flowers you can usually get veggies and herbs at.  Try rosemary also cause Bunnys love it.  If anyonehas extra herbs at the end of the season I will buy them from you.  All herbs including mint. 

Last year I grew broccli and celery for my bunny.  The broccli was a waste of space because the plant is SO large and it produce little broccli, and bunny hates celery.  I have been growning garderns for years and I love doing it!!!! 

[osprey]

Did you try feeding your bun the leaves from the broccoli plants?  Ours like the leaves from the broccoli we buy at the store (cauliflower too), and I was hoping to grow some for them this winter.  Unfortunately, the snails and the gophers got the young plants.  I may try to sneak in a couple of month’s worth of growth before it is time to plant tomatoes and try broccoli again.  The arugula is amazing, it is about a foot high now.  I am feeding them big handfuls every day now, there is so much of it!

[wendyzski]

I got Pepper in Sept, so I didn’t have much time to grow stuff last fall.  But I did grow some fresh grass and wheatgrass and she loved it.

I got some mixed-lettuces seed at the store the other day and plan to try it out in window boxes once we finally thaw out

[lisa]

No i never did try the leaves…  wish i woulda thought of that before winter!!!!

[x liddo bunny x]

oh, i know that if you want to grow only small portions you can buy herbs in small plastic pots and put them in your garden when u get home. thats what my mom did with mint leaves and some flowers. it also works good because u can take a couple of leaves right after u just bought them insted of having to wait for them to grow first. =)

[Lucy]

i’m preparing some dirt to plant seeds in right now (i know I’m a little late). I kind of tired to use bunny poop as manure. I took some potting mix, mixed in just a little bit of old coffee grounds (just a little, i found out last year if you put too much the nitorgen burns your plants) and the top layer with old poops. and watered. I’m hoping all of the good stuff will trickle down to the dirt. we’ll see if anything grows. either today or tomorrow I’m using this dirt to plant seeds in egg cartons before I plant them outside- Chicago got a really cold burst.. everything is dying outside…

oh well, hopefully the bunnies will have herbs and such to eat this summer!

[Hilde]

You may want to go easy on the poops, since they also contain lots of nitrogen. The best thing is to let rabbit poops, “mature” before using them on your plants. Also, if you use wood pellets in the litter box, compost the poops with the wood. That way you mix the high nitrogen poops with the high carbon wood, and they compost better.
I made the mistake of doing what fujoethebunny is doing, putting the litter straight on top, right next to the plants. It killed a few of my herbs.
So now we put the litterbox contents on the garden beds through the winter and let it weather, before turning it into the soil in spring. I’m planning on finding a space for a compost heap, to compost the litter properly.

[Lucy]

ya.. I learned the hard way too. It killed my babies- all of my romain and my basil- though my tomatoes and zucchini are okay.

That and the poops started to mold. eh… oh well

[Author]

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