How to Use Bat Guano Fertilizer Safely In Your Garden

With the rise of organic gardening in recent years, the use of organic fertilizers like bat guano has gained popularity. Bat guano is a manure fertilizer that helps plants become healthier, stronger, and greener. It also helps considerably with flower development.

Bat guano is dried in organic fertilizer form. You can easily find it in a powder form or as small pellets. When mixed with water, it becomes a slow-release fertilizer with high nitrogen content, helping all of the flora in your garden thrive. 

Gardeners often wonder about the safety of banding bat guano. There are also some environmental concerns to consider, particularly in the harvesting process. Let’s dive into bat guano to explain how best to use it in your garden.

What is Bat Guano?

Guano is the excrement of birds found near the sea. Bat guano is essentially bat poop harvested from wild insectivorous bats and fruit-eating bats. Several bat species produce resources for companies that make commercial fertilizers and soils, many of which consume cave cockroaches.

In the 18th century, bat guano was used to produce gunpowder and was actively harvested from bat colonies for that purpose. In fact, actual bat cave mines were created to harvest the droppings of bats. What essentially resulted was a wealth of guano deposits.

Today, it’s popularly used as an organic fertilizer. The Organic Materials Review Institute has placed its stamp of approval on mineralized forms as a conditioner for garden soil. Once applied, it improves the growth and structure of your plants. Bat poop is also an incredible compost activator as it significantly speeds up the decomposition process.

Bat Conservation International promotes proper harvesting of guano for sound cave ecosystems. While the guidelines they provide in training to guano farmers around the world are currently voluntary, hopefully they’ll become the industry standard. Much like sphagnum peat moss, ethical harvesting from the source (in this instance, the bat colony) is important for conservation.

To due environmental concerns, it’s recommended to harvest bat guano from bat boxes rather than purchasing from suppliers. That way, you can be sure you aren’t contributing to the endangerment of bat populations.

Benefits of Bat Guano Fertilizer

There are some glorious benefits of bat poop fertilizer in the garden.

Nutrients

Bat guano is full of nutrients that are beneficial for the development of your plants. The droppings have an NPK ratio of around 10-3-1. These are the three most abundantly used plant nutrients.

The high nitrogen content of bat guano helps your plant leaves become greener in just a few days. This is what makes bat droppings such an effective and useful fertilizer.

The phosphorus in the fertilizer encourages seed creation and flower development in your plants. The potassium feeds established plants and helps them move their liquid content and nutrients more effectively. 

The slow-release nature of bat guano fertilizer provides a continuous supply of nutrients for at least two to three months after the initial application. 

Soil Improvement

Bat guano makes a great fertilizer because it contains microbes that benefit the texture of your garden soil. It also has the potential to enrich the soil and improve its draining properties. Additionally, it helps make dense soils lighter and holds together loose soils. 

Plus, guano is not easily washed away from the soil. It benefits your soil and feeds established plants much longer than inorganic fertilizers that are displaced or washed away after a single rainy day.

Microbial Action

Bat guano supplies more than just nutrients to your plants. It also carries beneficial micro-organisms or microbes. Microbes are minuscule single-cell organisms that cannot be seen with the naked eye. The microbes found in bat guano have bioremediation capabilities. 

What this essentially means is that the droppings of bats can reduce the toxicity of your soil. Plus, these helpful microbes loosen the soil, which increases its water-holding capacity and airflow.  

Moreover, these microbes protect your plants by preventing the occurrence of dangerous nematodes and soil diseases. Plus, they are efficient decomposers, so much so that if you want to speed up the decomposition process, simply add bat guano to a compost pile. 

These microbes will break down the dried organic material in your soil and turn it into a source of nutrients for your plants. This will also create a soil texture that retains moisture without overly saturating roots. 

How to Use Bat Guano Fertilizer Safely

You can find bat guano in fresh or dried form. It’s best to wear a mask when applying dried guano due to a fungus called Histoplasma capsulatum found in the dust of dry bat manure. If inhaled, these spores could cause a serious human respiratory disease called histoplasmosis. Bat experts assert that this disease is very rare, and the risk of transmission through guano is very low, but safety precautions are recommended.

As with any form of animal waste like chicken manure, it’s also best to wear gloves and wash your hands thoroughly afterward.

You can incorporate the guano directly into the soil, turn it into a liquid fertilizer and spray it on the foliage, or disperse it through an irrigation system. 

When applied to plant leaves, guano not only produces vigorous vegetative growth but may also protect them from fungal infections. You can use guano as a top dressing fertilizer, either in wet or dried form. Simply mix it into the top layer of your soil prior to planting or during active growth. 

Always make sure to read the instructions on the fertilizer label before using it. Also, if your plants show any sign of distress, immediately stop using guano fertilizer.

When to Use

Pour bat guano into the soil immediately prior to planting. This will ensure your garden soil is sufficiently prepared to provide beneficial nutrients to your plants. 

You can also add guano fertilizer during the active growing season. Simply make potent guano tea and use it during your regular waterings. 

Where to Use

Sprinkle guano powder around the base of your growing plants and water thoroughly. You can also make guano tea and spray it on the leaves of your plant to protect it from fungal diseases. 

How to Make Bat Guano Tea

The best way to utilize the full potential of guano is to brew an aerated compost tea out of it. To make a potent guano tea, you need to add liquid or powdery guano into warm water, and then aerate it with an air pump. However, beware that this tea will produce a severely unpleasant odor. 

Here’s how you can make this beneficial tea:

1. Pour 1 tablespoon of bat guano in 32oz of warm water. Make sure it is not hot as that will kill the microbes in your guano.
2. Stir the mixture well, and turn on the air pump.
3. Leave the tea to rest and brew overnight.
4. Use once every week to ensure generous and fast plant growth.

Or you could follow this recipe:

1. Wrap ½ cup of guano in cheesecloth and steep it in about 1 gallon of water.
2. Let the tea steep for at least 3 days before using it as a fertilizer.

You can use this guano tea as a foliar spray and apply it directly to the leaves, or you can pour it over the roots and soil. Bat guano tea is a great source of abundant essential plant nutrition. 

It will also effectively protect the soil from insects and nematodes. Plus, bat guano tea will ensure that your garden soil retains its moisture without harming the roots of your plants.

Frequently Asked Questions