Growing
lots of tasty vegetables can use a LOT of fertiliser, especially for
high nutrient requirement plants like tomatoes. It can
be quite expensive to feed your plants weekly with shop-bought
fertiliser over the summer, but good news! There's a completely
free alternative!
You
can make fertiliser from stinging nettles and water!
I
first heard about this technique from my Nana, who has a wealth of
frugal tips for gardening! It's great because you're helping your
plants AND getting rid of weeds at the same time!
Here's
how to do it:
- Find a particularly vicious-looking stinging nettle patch!
- Grab a large bucket or tub, preferably with a lid because this is going to get stinky!
Pull
up the stinging nettle plants (not the roots, those things go down
sooooo far) and chop them up into your bucket. Make sure
you're protecting yourself from their triffid-like stings
with gloves. You want to damage them as much as possible to release
the nutrient-rich juices.- Once you have mostly filled the bucket with chopped stingers (this takes a fair while to achieve!), then grab a handy brick or rock and go to town on them even more, crushing them into oblivion. If you've been stung as many times as me in the past, you'll really enjoy this part. Yelling “DIE, DIE, DIE!” is optional, but enjoyable.
- Fill your bucket of mushy nettles with water, and please do cover it with a lid or something. You need to leave it for at least 3-4 weeks and it's a very smelly process!
- After a month or more of decomposing, your nettle-based fertiliser is now ready to use. Just skim out the plant material and use the tea-coloured liquid as fertiliser. PLEASE NOTE that this is potent stuff. If you apply the neat liquid directly to your plants it will scorch the leaves. You should dilute it one part to ten and apply no more than weekly to your plants.
I
hope you enjoy the resulting vegetables, if not the smelly process in
between! Just remember, it's free! :D
Got
any top tips for growing your own? How
are your plants doing?
3 comments:
Yes they do make excellent fertiliser, but I would never shout 'die' ! because there are so many culinary uses for them, they are a rich source of iron, I have a whole recipe book dedicated to nettle recipes, they're not just for soup or wine.
Coincidentally, as the nettle season is upon us, I am at the moment compiling a blog post of the use of nettles. It should be up in a couple of days, hope you pop over and have a look.
Well that's a neat idea! I've only ever heard of a using when my Nana talked about using them in soup.
I had nettle soup today
İts seriosly good
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