How to make rabbit tea fertilizer

How to make rabbit tea fertilizer

Rabbit poop fertilizer can truly change a garden; and if you have rabbits you have an endless supply of droppings at your disposal. Why not make that waste into something you can use for an amazing garden?

Now I know that most gardeners dread having a rabbit in the garden. Rabbits are know to mow down veggies, burrow holes and generally not a friend to our gardens. BUT they can be. NO, I am not suggesting that you allow some bunnies to run willy nilly through your garden….but rabbit poop fertilizer should.

We have used rabbit poop in our garden from our pet rabbits and meat rabbits for years.

Rabbit droppings are little nuggets of nutrition with phosphorus, potassium and nitrogen. It can also contain trace elements of sulfur, calcium, copper and magnesium. Can we say organic super fertilizer?

The secret to our healthy vegetable garden?  Rabbit poop fertilizer! Let me show you how we use it!

So how can rabbit poop fertilizer be used in your gardens?

  1. Straight From Pan to the Garden
    Rabbit poo is not a hot manure so it can be used strait from the source. If you don’t use a lot of bedding (hay is ok) in your pans, you can pretty much take your poo straight to the garden. Sprinkle a little bit of the droppings around your garden and let it slowly release nutrients into the soil. I prefer to bury mine a bit to prevent flies but it isn’t necessary. But don’t worry about a stink, rabbit waste doesn’t have much of a smell to it at all.
  2. Give Transplants a Boost
    When you are digging a new hole for a transplant to your garden, add a little rabbit poop into the whole before putting the plant in. This give the roots and instant fertilizer to tap into.
  3. Compost Rabbit Poop
    Rabbit droppings are wonderful additions to your compost. They will add a rich boost of nitrogen to your compost pile and I have found they break down pretty quickly. This is how I use most of the rabbit waste that we have and it is part of making the rich soil that we use to grow our vegetable garden.
  4. Brew Rabbit Compost Tea
    Rabbit poop compost tea is another fantastic option for that super rabbit poop fertilizer. To make it you’ll want to soak 2 cups of rabbit droppings in a 5 gallon bucket full of water. Keep that tea covered and only uncover once a day for stirring. Make sure you keep your brew as far away from the house as possible because the flies love this stuff! It will take about 3 – 5 days for the poo to completely breakdown, settling at the bottom (it won’t dissolve completely). But keep the brewing tea in a warm, sunny, spot for best results.
    Use the rabbit compost tea to water you plants, giving them an infusion for nutrients. See more about the benefits of compost tea.
  5. Create a Worm Sanctuary
    If you have an outside worm or vermicompost bin you can add your rabbit poop into worm farms; red wigglers especially love rabbit poo. You’ll want to combine the droppings with materials like straw, newspaper and coconut coir.

There you have it – 5 ways to use rabbit poop fertilizer for a better garden. Happy gardening my friends!

How to make rabbit tea fertilizer

Reader Interactions

As John walked through the kitchen yesterday, I just casually mentioned, "Hey, I've got buckets of rabbit poop tea steeping over by the hose, if you're wondering what that is.  Please don't pour it out."  He just stopped and gave me a very grave look, "Those are words I don't ever want to hear put together again." 

Yep, he's a funny guy.  Sometimes I need someone to ground me and remind me that I'm not normal.  I've grown so accustomed to our little farming life, that those words didn't seem so strange to me.  Without reminders like that from John, I might go blabbing at Mom group about how my rabbit's poop has done wonders for my tomatoes and really gross some folks out.  Some of what happens in the backyard just isn't to be discussed among polite society.  Luckily for me, this blog is designed to be about the goings on of our backyard, so if reading about rabbit poop tea is just too gross for you, click back tomorrow for an astounding garden veggie pasta recipe (you don't have to think about what fertilized the veggies atop our pasta unless you want to  ;).

Rabbit poop is an excellent fertilizer that doesn't have to break down or compost before being added to the garden.  That is, after all, why we first decided to bring Cocoa Puff to our home.  But, the poo pebbles themselves take awhile to break down in the soil, and thus it takes awhile for the plants to reap the benefits of the fertilizer.  The trick is to get the rabbit poo into a form that is more easily absorbed by the plants' root systems -- liquid.  One gardener touting the benefits of rabbit poop tea (more politely referred to as rabbit manure tea -- although I hardly think that makes it more palatable a concept) called it "rocket fuel" for the garden. 

Here's what I did.  I used two of John's old t-shirts (ones with yellowed pits -- could this blog entry get any more disgusting?) and cut them up so as to create two big rags from each t-shirt.

How to make rabbit tea fertilizer

Then, I gathered 4 big buckets and some rubberbands . . .

. . . and made my way over to the rabbit poop tub.

I placed a big scoopful of poo in the center of each rag and tied them up with the rubberbands.

I placed the "tea bags" into the pails and filled them with water.  The sun will do the rest of the work, steeping the tea all day long.  I'll let them steep for a day then use the tea to water the garden. 

If you have a worm bin or compost pile that is ready for use, you can brew a worm castings tea or compost tea in the same way.  Your garden will thank you.

There are a lot of things I've enjoyed about gardening organically.  One of them is definitely learning creative ways to tend the garden.  Organic gardening has become mainstream enough that I could just drive to Home Depot and buy some "organic fertilizer," but I enjoy being able to make use of what we have on hand and participate in the cycle that takes the carrot to the rabbit, then the rabbit's poop back to the garden where it's used to grow yet another carrot. ;)

How do you make rabbit poop tea fertilizer?

Rabbit poop compost tea is another fantastic option for that super rabbit poop fertilizer. To make it you'll want to soak 2 cups of rabbit droppings in a 5 gallon bucket full of water. Keep that tea covered and only uncover once a day for stirring.

How do you make rabbit manure fertilizer?

Find a five gallon bucket, and a large scoop of rabbit pellets and drop them into the bucket. Give it a good stir every now and again for a day or two. Let the manure settle and use the tea at the top of the bucket to water your plants.