Growing Your Own Rabbit Garden

So, you have your herb garden, and your veggie garden. You may have a salsa garden or even a beer garden. So… why not give your bunnies their own rabbit garden?

In their little bunny houses or hutches, we generally feed our domestic rabbits pellets along with timothy hay. And maybe the occasional carrot or banana. But a rabbit’s natural diet can include flowers, fruit, grasses, fescues, and dark leafy greens whenever they can get them. You can provide many of these more natural and fresh items from your own rabbit garden to supplement and diversify your bunny’s daily menu.

Or maybe you are already supplementing your rabbits food with store bought greens and vegetable tops. But if you have a garden, you can start to grow a wonderful plethora of healthy, diverse food for bunny that you know will be pesticide-free. And best of all, most of the things your rabbit prefers are the things in the garden that we wouldn’t eat anyway!

Why Grow your own Rabbit Greens?

First of all, bunnies love fresh greens. You will make them very happy and keep them from boredom. Our rabbits look forward to their fresh greens more than anything, even their treats and toys. When your long eared friends are happy and not bored or hungry, they are less likely to nibble on things they should not.

Second, giving fresh greens is a great way to supplement their diet. Feeding fresh greens in addition to Timothy hay and pellets is nutritious and it replicates a more natural diet for rabbits. Plus, when you grow it yourself versus buying it at the grocery store, you know there will be no pesticides.

Lastly, growing fresh greens saves you money in the long run. Not only is growing fresh veggies far cheaper than buying vegetables, especially organic vegetables. But when your bunny is eating more healthy greens they will probably eat less of the pellets.

What to Plant in Your Rabbit Garden

Flowers:

Calendula, Marigolds, pansies and petunias, nasturtium, and leucanthemum are all good edible flowers to mix into you rabbit beds. One of the things I love so much is how mixing flowers and vegetables together in a planting bed brightens and adds color. And, marigolds chase away unwanted bugs like aphids from your vegetables, so they are a great addition to your rabbit garden… or any vegetable garden! By the way, all of the above mentioned flower petals are edible by humans, too!

Another flower which is a rabbit favorite is rose petals. If you have the space to fit in a rose bush, your bunny friends will be forever grateful. (you can also make your own edible rose petal jam – try my recipe!)

Roses don’t mind being cut back hard every year, so they actually do not take up too much area. Just remember to try to grow the rose organically. If you have any aphids or other suspicious rose diseases, try some of these environmentally unharmful solutions. Looking for a way to incorporate them into your landscape? Try these ideas!

Vegetables:

Rabbits love vegetables! Especially any leafy greens. They will gladly take the leaves of the vegetables we usually cut away, such as the outer cabbage leaves, the cauliflower and broccoli stems and leaves, carrot tops, and many more.

1. Leafy greens such as arugula, romaine, red and green lettuces, and kale. You can give them the stem and outer leaves you would normally cut away and compost and save the rest for yourself.
2. Carrot tops. actually both the carrots and the greens are highly palatable for rabbits, but the carrot greens can be consumed without limit, whereas the carrot itself should be fed to your rabbit in moderation. Note – if you wish to just grow the tops of carrots, you can do this from a sprouted grocery store carrot. Carrots are biennial, so when you root and plant a carrot stub, you will get lots of lush green and seeds for next year’s garden.
3. Bok choy
4. Broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage – the leafy greens. The heads can be consumed in moderation, but large quantities of the heads all at once could give your rabbit too much gas, interfering with their natural digestive process.
5. Brussel sprout leaves (our rabbits don’t like the little cabbage sprout part, but they love the leaves)

Grasses

Another great thing for rabbits is grass. Fresh grass is good for them, but remember should not replace their regular Timothy hay. Grass is easy to grow in a tray (or a wheeled red wagon!) with some compost or garden soil. They particularly enjoy:

1. Fescue or a fescue mix. This is often included in lawn grasses. Just be sure not to buy anything with fertilizers or pesticides pre-mixed in.
2. Wheatgrass, oat and barley, all easily grown from seed available at farm stores or pet stores. Alfalfa grass generally has too much calcium, so is not recommended for adult rabbits.
3. Timothy grass – of course! (specialty organic seed suppliers often carry this for extremely reasonable prices)
4. Dandelion leaves are a favorite! (if you grow dandelions, you may want to do so in pots so that they don’t spread. And make sure to cut off the head before the bright yellow flower goes to seed) We harvest these from our orchard.
5. Mallow. This is not a grass, I know, but it is a common plant (weed) which grows in meadows and fields along with the grasses and is an easily obtainable leaf to throw into your rabbits’ diet. Best of all, mallow is not a very invasive plant. You can even dry it and store it with your hay for wintertime meals.

A Few Things to Think about:

While fresh greens are super healthy and close to a natural diet, always be sure to provide your bun with balanced nutrition. Fresh vegetables and vegetable scraps are not intended to be a replacement for Timothy hay and pellet food. This is mainly due to the balance of nutrition and high fiber required for rabbits in the pellets and hay. To replace pellets altogether, you would need to consider creating a fodder system.

I espouse organic growing practices. This is especially important to adopt when growing greens for your rabbit. Their digestive systems are delicate and they could be affected more readily by inorganic fertilizers and sprays.

Just like with your dogs and cats, it is best to introduce new foods a little and over time so that there are no digestive issues. Some animals, especially younger ones, readily accept dietary changes, but many others have more delicate systems and can not. Anything new, no matter how good it may be, could cause tummy issues for a more sensitive bunny.

Remember – the key to good nutrition is balance. A little bit of lots of different foods provides many nutrients. A lot of just one food could skew the balance. So always be judicious when feeding your rabbits fresh food.

Things Rabbits Shouldn’t (or Won’t) Eat

In the immortal words of Douglas Adams, don’t panic. As long as you live by the golden rule of all things in moderation, and its corollary: all new things introduced slowly, your bunny should be able to digest.

The main caveat to this is that Rabbits love fruit and will eat as much of it as you give them, however the sugars convert to carbohydrates which is difficult for a rabbit’s digestive system to process. Fruit should only ever be given to your bun in moderation.

Here is the list of things that won’t go in your rabbit garden. The things that rabbits shouldn’t – and most likely won’t be eating:

1. Spinach and swiss chard (High oxalis content)
2. Asparagus and onion (too fibrous)
3. Anything in the Solanaceae (nightshade) Family – including peppers, tomatoes and tomato greens , potatoes and potato greens, tomatillos and eggplant. Also includes the flowers datura (brugmansia or angels trumpet), morning glory, and flowering nicotiania. The members of this family contain alkaloids which in some doses are known to cause gastrointestinal issues and possibly neurologic issues.
4. Radishes – any part (radishes are OK for rabbits to eat, but our rabbits just don’t Iike them)
5. Brussels sprouts – the sprout part. (they love the leaves)
6. Foxglove, iris, oleander, daffodils, rhododendron, azaleas, delphinium, clematis – all are no go’s because of their toxicity.

Our boy Boo loves to eat dry cat kibble. He also loves cat treats, chicken food and songbird seeds. Oh, and power cords, baseboard, drywall, door trim, and baskets. Anything right at his little mouth level. These, but especially the cat food, are not good for rabbits.

If you have both cats and rabbits, please make sure that the cat kibble is up high where bunny can’t reach. Potein and carbohydrates can really mess up a rabbit’s delicate gastrointestinal track, and lead to something called GI statis, which is incredibly painful and dangerous for your bun.