According to Marie, the popular online host of Farming on the Rocks, Jamaica, rabbit urine has been as much of a game changer in her garden as has rabbit manure. She obtains the prized liquid from her own hutch of fuzzy bunnies that go by such names as Eric (a buck), and (does) Ms. Rose and She’s-so-feisty-Ava.
Marie admits that when she first started her now well-mastered art of planting only in containers— as her home is basically nested amongst rocks—she enrolled in YTU (YouTube University). It was there she picked up many useful tips and tricks that have enhanced her garden in “amazing” ways. In ‘lecture’ after ‘lecture’ she was watching on manure, “Rabbit manure kept coming up as one of the best cold fertilisers,” she shared.
Knowing that she and her hubby, Steve, were on a mission to grow over 90 percent of what the young family eats, they decided to get their first set of rabbits so they could have a constant supply of manure.
“Little did I know that the urine was an even more potent fertiliser than the manure itself,” Marie laughs, adding, “And guys, you know, whenever I find something out, I test it in my garden first, and once I see that it actually works, I’m gonna share it with you. It has been amazing for me!”
She then demonstrates how she and Steve set a piece of zinc under the rabbit hutch, ensuring it is slightly bent in the middle. At the end of the zinc is a container on the ground, and into it drips this liquid gold.
“Unlike the poo, rabbit urine is a hot manure,” Marie warns, cautioning that if the poo is saturated with urine, it must be completely dried out before using.
“Human urine (HU) can also be utilised in the garden,” the YouTube vlogger, who was raised in a farming family, declares.
Hastily adding that HU is not on her ‘things to use list’, though, the container-garden farmer expounds that she ‘cures’ rabbit urine by diluting it at a ratio of 1 part urine to 10 parts water, preferably the free kind coming from the sky above. And just like that, the mixture is ready to be applied around the base of plants as a fertiliser, and as a foliar spray for pests.
Marie concludes:
“I don’t recommend using this when it’s raining because [then] you waste it. It can be used to water anything in your garden and I’m yet to see anything that it has adverse effects on; it works on everything.
It’s one of my favourite fertilisers to use on pineapples because it is so hard to get to the roots of some of them when they grow up.
Rabbit urine is one of the best things that you can use to feed plants that you’re unable to top dress or add more manure to; it is just so good for your plants all over. And I do believe it is the odour that keeps the pests away!
Now, let’s get to pest control because pest is our biggest problem in gardening…”
Readers, I hear the thunder and think it’s about to rain, so let’s go uncover our water drums and resume this discussion next week, in the will of the LORD.
Shalom!
Screen grab of how Marie filters urine from her rabbit manure accoutrement