The Rabbit House» Growing Things Archives – The Rabbit House

Making Winter Forage

Tamsin — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 18:01:23 +0000

This time last year I was writing about all the rabbit safe plants that I found in my garden for Scamp to enjoy. I’ve been picking leaves again and Scamp’s been enjoying them, but I know shortly autumn will turn them all pretty colours and that will be it for tasty leaves until next spring. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there was some way to store them up so Scamp could eat them all year around? Well, maybe there is. My experiment with making my own hay proved that it was possible to store tasty summer grass for eating later (I’ve made several more batches since), so why not do the same with other plants.

I started by collected a pile of tasty looking leaves. Look for green healthy looking ones without blemishes (or bugs) and collect them on a dry day.

Dandelion, thistle, strawberry, hazel, ginko, raspberry & basil leaves

Don’t forget to get your bunnies approval, there is not point going to the trouble of drying and storing leaves your bunny won’t eat. Scamp gives all these a pass on the taste test. I divided my pile in two, half for his supper and half to dry out.

Just checking the flavour!

The leaves for drying, the ones Scamp hadn’t eaten, I spread out on a tea tray on top of a couple of sheets of kitchen roll:

Then I popped them in the airing cupboard where it is warm and dry. I wasn’t sure how long it would take, but it was surprisingly fast! In just 4 days they looked like this:

It’s surprising how much they shrink! The Ginko leaves (which are thicker) needed a couple more days but everything else was dry and crispy. But the big question is, do they still pass the bunny taste test?

The answer is yes, Scamp seems just about as excited about dry leaves and the fresh ones. So I’m going to be drying a lot more leaves to provide tasty, home grown, rabbit food full of vitamins and completely free!

Other was to Dry Plants for Your Rabbit

There are several ways to dry out leaves for storage:

Leave them somewhere warm and dry like I did … I put mine in the airing cupboard! It takes 4-5 days to dry them out.
Lay them out outside and let the sunshine do the work. The drawback is you need sunshine! You may want to stretch a bit of clear plastic above them to keep the rain off.
Use your oven. You can dry leaves in an oven on the lowest heat setting, or better yet, save energy and just use the leftover heat after you’ve cooked something. The downside is you can’t fit much in at once and something can be a little stinky. I doesn’t take long though (about 15minutes), we did this with Scamp’s first greens when he was a tiny baby.

Making Your Own Hay

Tamsin — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 19:35:43 +0000

I wonder how many thousands of bunny owners wake up on a Saturday morning, mow their lawn, throw away or compost the clippings, and then pop into the pet shop and tut over the price of hay, that in some cases has been shipped half way around the world. Now the obvious thing would be just to cut a section of grass (with scissors not a mower) and feed that direct to your bunnies, but that isn’t always practical. Some people don’t like to feed fresh grass to buns with sensitive tums, and it’s handy to have a good pile of hay in the litter tray even if you’re topping up with grass at dinner time too. So the next option is to take the lovely fresh grass and dry it so it turns into hay! So, that’s what I did….

Making Hay Step 1: Find Grass

The first step is to find some grass. If you lovingly mow your lawn weekly, you might want to skip a week to let it grow out a bit. We may have taken that to the extreme as our lawn looked something like this:

Which was the inspiration for making hay in the first place. If you don’t have a lawn, you could try asking your neighbours – offer to ‘cut’ their grass in exchange for keeping the clippings. Just make sure they don’t use any weedkiller/pesticides.

Making Hay Step 2: Cut the Grass

Once you have located your patch of grass, next you need to cut it. It’s important not to use a lawn mower for this. Mowers chop up the grass and crush it which encourages it to begin fermenting. This is great if you want to compost it but no good for feeding to rabbits. If you’re cutting a big patch you could use scythe (don’t chop off any body parts) but I went for scissors; big hedge scissors would be quicker than kitchen ones if you’re cutting a lot. I filling up this A4 paper box in about a minute… it doesn’t take long.

Making Hay Step 3: Drying the Grass

Next is the difficult part, the grass needs to dry out (and turn into hay). There are a few options for this. You could leave the grass where you cut it and turn it a few times to help it dry. The trouble with that is you are at the mercy of the weather. If your grass keeps getting soaked it will turn into a soggy mess instead of hay. It also means your lawn is covered in grass cuttings.

It was raining almost every day when I started so I decided to pop it in my mini greenhouse now the seedlings are mostly outside. It’s important the air gets to it so I made a shelf out of some plastic mesh and left the doors open (a closed greenhouse would get too humid). Note: The foil isn’t part of hay making, it just helps my seedlings grow straight as the greenhouse sits against a wall.

You could also use a covered deck, greenhouse, shed with windows etc. or you could lay it out on a sheet and just pick it up in the sheet when rain is forecast and pop it out afterwards. The top of a wire rabbit run would be great if the weather is a bit drier.

Here is my grass all laid out ready to dry.

Making Hay Step 4: Wait

That’s it for the hard work, now you just need to wait for it to dry. It didn’t take long like this. In two weeks it smelt and looked like tasty hay.

Once it has dried out you can store it like you would normal hay. Something that breaths (like a Hessian bag or pillow case would be best) just in case there is any moisture left. If you leave it out in the sun it will loose the hint of green and go golden brown (still edible but less nutrients).

Making Hay Step 4: Taste Test

The whole point of making hay is producing something tasty for a bunny to eat, so the process wouldn’t be complete without a taste test.

I think it passed!

Conclusion

Okay, so I’m probably not going to make enough hay from our little patch of lawn to supply hay all your around, but it’s a fun experiment and certainly worth the effort if you want to cut down on your expenses, be more environmentally friendly, or just provide an extra treat.

mmm fruity!

Tamsin — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 20:13:44 +0000

Look at these strawberries… I brought them as bare root plants a few months ago and they are now producing some very tasty strawberries. Home grown strawberries are soo much tastier that shop brought and so much more economical too. They were on offer so twelve plants cost the same as one tray of strawberries from the supermarket. Once they are done producing strawberries they’ll start sending out runners to create more plants which means even more strawberries next year – for free!

The strawberries aren’t the only fruit growing well. The raspberries and blackberries are beginning to plump up, and the grapes aren’t far behind.

The bunnies like our attempts at fruit growing too. Rabbit’s can eat strawberry leaves and tops.. and strawberries of course (if there were any left). I have to keep chasing Gypsy away from the raspberries.

Growing Things Update

Tamsin — Sun, 09 May 2010 22:53:42 +0000

Everything is growing away well, although it would be nice if it stayed a bit warmer at night so I could put out some of the more tender things filling up my window sills.

Did you sow some carrots? Mine are just getting their second set of leaves and looking more like carroty. These are from BBC Dig In:

They are currently residing in my lovely new greenhouse/cloche/cat and rabbit defence system:

Along with leeks, lettuce, chard, radish, beetroot, spring onions, celery, and a couple of tomatoes that out grew the window sill. It’s surprising what you can grow just in tubs and pots.

Whilst most of these things are for me to eat, there will be loads of trimmings for the bunnies too. They will love things like this basil (once it gets a bit bigger):

Inside, my window sills are full of things that don’t like frost like tomatoes, sweet peppers, cucumbers, squash, melon, pepino and cape gooseberry. These pretty little flowers are sweet peppers:

See that green bit it the centre of the flower? That’s the start of a pepper. In a few days the petals will drop away leaving a tiny green pepper behind.

Sorry no bunny pics this time. They are just off camera licking their lips.

Growing Carrots in Containers

Tamsin — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 20:54:51 +0000

A few weeks ago I sowed my first carrots of the year and they are just poking their noses up now. I don’t have a lot of ground space so my carrots are in containers. I tried this for the first time last year and it worked really well. Lots of carrots for us to eat and lots of carrot tops for the rabbits to eat (and maybe the odd carrot too).

Here’s how you do it (photos from last year):

Something to Grow In

I use plastic storage boxes for my carrots but any deepish container will work eg a big flower pot, box or bucket. My storage boxes were see-through so I’ve taped black plastic around from an old compost bag, that way the carrots aren’t in the light. If you are really short on space you can grow small carrots in window boxes. You can also use a plastic bottle with the top cut off. You won’t get giant carrots but you can keep harvesting the tops for a healthy treat for you bunny.

Check your container has holes, mine didn’t so I use a drill to add holes to the bottom. Otherwise they will fill with water when it rains and flood your carrots!

Fill your container with compost or soil, any general purpose compost will do. If you have some to hand then mix in a bit of sharp sand. Carrots like nice loose soil to grow in, not heavy clay, so it’s easy for them to get their roots through.

Seeds and Sowing

If you try buying carrot seeds you’ll find lots of varieties to pick from. Read the packet to see what features they have. If your growing in containers avoid ones that claim to be really long show carrots. I’m growing Early Nantes, Chantenay Red Core (from the BBC), and Parmex. The later are round carrots (like a gold ball) and are meant to be great for growing in shallow containers or clay/stoney ground. When you are buying seeds it’s worth having a look at children’s seeds, often they have the same varieties but at pocket money prices.

To sow the seeds draw a line in the soil about 1/2″ (1cm) deep, then sprinkle the seeds thinly. I aim for one seed every inch. Draw the lines about an inch apart too. If you don’t mind fiddly sowing an alternative is to poke holes with a pencil and drop a seed in each. Again aim for a grid with the seeds 1″ apart in each direction. Don’t worry too much about planting them the exact distance apart though. If you get them too close you can thin them out and give the spare plants to your rabbit.

It will take the seeds 2-3 weeks to germinate so wait patiently. You can speed it up a bit by putting a bit of plastic over to keep it warmer. Take it off once they germinate.

Thinning & Harvest

If you managed to get your seeds about 1″ apart they shouldn’t need too much thinning at first. Once they start pushing again each other start harvesting them as baby carrots, taking out every other carrot to leave the others room to grow.

If you want a really long harvest period then sow your carrots in batches 3-4 weeks apart, then you’ll have some ready all summer. They keep well in the ground too so you can leave them in containers and although they won’t grow more there will still be carrots to pull up in autumn/winter.

If you cut the tops whilst they grow you’ll get smaller carrots, so try taking a few leaves from each instead of the whole lot if you are using them as bunny snack food.

So, anyone going to give it a go?

Spring Gardening with Bunnies

Tamsin — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:32:21 +0000

Finally a bit of warm weather. The last few days have been lovely (it will probably rain tomorrow now I’ve said that). The 240 crocuses plus a few snowdrops we planted last autumn before returfing are putting on a good show.

Gypsy assisted with tidying up outside by trying to eat the stray bits of hay whilst we swept up. Why is it that bits of hay that have been totally ignored for ages suddenly becomes a must have piece as soon as you go anywhere near them with aÂ dustpan?

Scamp was equally helpful inside whilst I planted seeds. I’ve sown over 200 in the last couple of days, a mix of veg and flowers.

Is any one else enjoying a bit of spring gardening? If you’re feeling a bit green fingered (and are in the uk), the BBC are offering free vegetable seeds again this year: BBC Dig In.

Bunny Food on the Window Sill

Tamsin — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:40:57 +0000

In the quest for more leafy greens I’m experimenting with a bit of window sill growing. Two weeks ago I sowed timothy grass, dandelion and carrots seeds to see which would be most productive. The grass is off to the best start with quick germination and 3 inches of growth already. The carrots are slightly slower and the dandelion (the weeds that will grow anywhere) haven’t even shown their heads yet!

Poor bunnies, still a bit of a wait before there is anything to eat. Later on this month I’m going to be starting my proper carrots off and I’ll post some easy instructions in case anyone else wants a go.

Raspberries for Rabbits

Tamsin — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 01:11:20 +0000

Today I started pruning our raspberry canes. I’m going to spread it over a week or so and give the rabbits the prunings. They had the remaining leaves in autumn so now there are just sticks (called canes) left but hopefully they’ll enjoy gnawing them.

Last year was the first year we’ve grown them and I’m really pleased with how they did. We put six canes (plants) in a large tub in March/April (a bit late) and they gave us several handfuls of raspberries over the summer and into late autumn and some lovely leaves for the rabbits to nibble. Hopefully they’ll do even better this year.

Blackberry and raspberry leaves are great for rabbits. They are high in fibre and are really tasty. They are very handy if you have a rabbit with a sensitive tummy or that needs tempting to eat.

You’re meant to plant them by early March, before the weather warms up, so here are some tips on growing raspberries:

Picking Plants

Raspberries come in two types, summer and autumn fruiting. Summer ones fruit on the growth from the previous year, autumn on the growth from the same year. The summer ones you have to prune the stalks that fruited without pruning the new ones. Autumn is much less complicated to prune, you just chop it down to the ground each winter. Needless to say, we went for autumn fruiting.

If you haven’t seen a raspberry still attached to the plant, let me warn you those plants are prickly! Loads of spines all over the stems and underside of the leaves. Not much fun for picking or pruning. The good news is now you can get thornless varieties with no prickles! You might need to hunt around a bit more but personally I think it’s worth it. We went for a variety called ‘Joan J’ but there are lots of others too.

Planting

Raspberries need planting whilst they are dorment, so you have until the weather warms up sometime in March. The plants come as ‘bare rooted canes’ that means they basically look like a short stick with some roots and no soil. They look quite dead to be honest.

We planted our raspberries in a containner (about 18″x18″x3′) but you can also plant them in the ground if you have room. You’ll probably get more growth in the ground and you’ll have to water less but a containner is handy if your short on space.

To plant, you need to soak the roots for an hour or so, dig a hole, drop the plant in so the soil comes up to the old soil line where they’ve been dug up before sale, then fill the hole in and water them. You’re left with what looks like a 6″ stick stuck in the ground.

Then you sit back and wait, they should sprout new green shoots (canes) which will grow 4-6′ over the year and eventually have the raspberries on the end.

Care

They don’t need much care. If it’s very dry then they’ll appreciate some water. A bit of fertilizer (such as rabbit poop) will help them along. They need pruning in late winter. Cut off all the stems that fruited that year, for autumn raspberries that’s all of them.

Here’s some slightly more professional advice on growing raspberries from the RHS.

It’s nice to be thinking about growing things, the garden looks so misrable at the moment. I’m looking forward to spring when everything turns green. There are already a few bulbs poking their noses out ready!