{"id":1012,"date":"2012-06-09T09:40:35","date_gmt":"2012-06-09T08:40:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/?p=1012"},"modified":"2012-06-09T00:41:45","modified_gmt":"2012-06-08T23:41:45","slug":"mini-rabbit-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/2012\/06\/09\/mini-rabbit-garden\/","title":{"rendered":"A Mini Garden for Your Bunny"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rabbits love fresh plants, but sometimes they love them too much and the poor plant doesn’t stand a chance. If only they’d learn just to nibble a little bit instead of eating it down the ground and then digging out the roots.<\/p>\n

Drum roll please, introducing the super duper just bunny-just-nibble-a-bit planter that allows your bunny to browse without committing plant-homicide – as modelled by Scamp – do you think he looks a bit suspicious?<\/p>\n

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Okay yes, it’s a flower pot with an upside-down hanging basket on top, but it will let your bunny engage in a little bit of foraging from the comfort of their pen, or, if your bunnies have access to your garden, it is also an excellent way to give your pot plants enough protection to stay alive.<\/p>\n

How to Make Your Bunny Garden<\/h2>\n

First you’ll need a flowerpot, or a bucket, or something similar that will contain soil. My top tip would be the flower buckets they sell cut flowers from. These are often disposed of rather than reused and if you ask your local florist nicely they may give you one for free – ours asks for 25p to charity.<\/p>\n

I used this flower pot, which, even though it looks tiny, is about 12″\/30cm cross.<\/p>\n

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Then you’ll need some soil to put in it. You could dig some out the garden – or just use multi-purpose compost from the garden centre. My top tip would be to add a handful of bunny poops in the bottom layer – these are great organic fertilizer and particularly great if you’re just using soil from your garden which might be low on nutrients. Which reminds me, I must do a post about my lovely compost.<\/p>\n

Here’s some soil (it’s in a flower bucket in case you were wondering what they looked like):<\/p>\n

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You’ll also need a hanging basket. The trick is to find one about the same size as as your pot, ideally you want it to sit just inside the rim. They are often standard sizes like 12″, 14″ or 18″. Here’s mine – 12″ to fit my 12″ pot. Just unclip the chains, you won’t need them.<\/p>\n

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The final thing is something to grow in it! There are so many choices, you could try Nasturtiums, Pot Marigolds or Pansies <\/a>if you wanted something pretty but safe if your bunny should nibble.<\/p>\n

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Some tasty looking nasturtiums!<\/p><\/div>\n

Or you might like a mix of your rabbit’s herbs – parsley? Basil?<\/p>\n

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Bail grown from seed<\/p><\/div>\n

Or perhaps a natural mix of grass and weeds such dandelion and thistle. You could collect seeds or look out on ebay etc. for people selling seed mixes aimed at rabbits\/tortoises.<\/p>\n

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That's some long grass!<\/p><\/div>\n

You can grow your plants from seed – sow them straight in your pot if you like, or buy plants if you want faster results.\u00a0 As your bunny nibbles around the edges you should end up with a nice bushy plant under the hanging basket which sticks occasional leaves out for your bunny to nibble on. Some plants like basil, actually do better if you pinch the tips out, so your bunny is really doing you a favour!<\/p>\n

You’ll need to water your pot when it gets dry (so you might want to put a tray underneath) and most plants will need some sun so, if you have it indoors, pick a sunny spot or move it outside sometimes to get some light. As the basket protects the roots\/base of the plant from being chewed to bits it should last months!<\/p>\n

I think Scamp sniffed every blade of grass…<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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.. before he found the best one…<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Find out how to make a mini garden in a pot – and protect it from your bunny!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1022,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[43],"tags":[41,38,32],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1012"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1026,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1012\/revisions\/1026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1012"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1012"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.therabbithouse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1012"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}