Rabbit Manure Tea
Rabbit manure tea is
a great way
to feed the exceptional nutrients in
rabbit manure to your garden. It is even more
powerful when you add to your tea
valuable trace minerals.
Quite a few years ago we kept some rabbits in a
large wire cage under the overhang of our house.
The cage had a wire mesh floor, so the rabbit's
poop and urine just dropped to the dirt below. I
wish I would have known then that rabbit manure
is perhaps the best manure fertilizer. My lime
tree would have loved it!
A Cold Manure
Rabbit manure has a
higher percentage of nitrogen than manure
from cows, horses, sheep, goats, pigs or
chickens. Yet, it is classified as a cold
manure. This is because the nitrogen
in rabbit dung is a slow release nitrogen,
making it less likely to burn tender roots.
Less Aromatic
Another advantage of rabbit manure tea is
that it
doesn’t have much of an odor, making it
more pleasant to work with.
Fewer Pathogens
Rabbit
manure has fewer pathogen problems
than manure from feedlot animals. For non-edible
crops, some people use fresh rabbit manure to
make their tea.
If you are going to put your tea on your
vegetable garden, then it is best to
allow the
rabbit manure to sit and rot for at least 6
months,
or put it into your compost pile.
Of course, once
your rabbit manure is mixed with carbon items
and composted
well in your compost pile, it is no
longer just manure, it is compost, and you can
use it to make
compost tea.
Compost piles
need nitrogen to help them heat up to the
desired 150 degrees F.
Rabbit manure
supplies this nitrogen. Mix it in with
some good carbon
sources,
turn the pile occasionally, and within 2 or 3
months your compost will be broken down and safe
for use on your garden.
Making your
Tea
Unlike compost
tea,
to make
manure tea we simply dissolve nutrients from the
manure into water, making these nutrients
instantly available to the plant. The easiest
way to make it is to
put about a
gallon worth of rabbit manure into the bottom of
a 5 gallon bucket, then add water, and
stir occasionally till you have a weak looking
tea. This can take a day or two.
.
Applying your
Tea
Just dip your tea out of the bucket,
thin it down till it is a weak tea color,
and apply about 1 to 2 pints to the soil around
each plant, not on the plant itself. Manure teas
are especially beneficial in helping plants in
the growth stage.
Don’t apply
manure tea once the plant is ready to set fruit,
since the nitrogen in your tea will encourage
the plant to grow larger but set less fruit.
Rabbit manure tea is a good source of nitrogen,
phosphorus, potassium and calcium. However,
rabbit manure
is lacking in many of the
trace minerals. To meet this important need,
I always add an ounce of
Concentrated Sea Minerals to each gallon of
tea.
.
When you are done reading my manure tea pages,
you might like to check out my home page,
Healthy Vegetable Gardening, for a wealth of
information on growing a highly nutritious
garden.
(Return from Rabbit Manure Tea to Manure Tea)
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