Topic: Nettle tea fertilizer

[greenhousegirl]

Last year I made a batch of nettle tea and used it on various things.

I have just been sorting the greenhouse out and found the bottle, is it OK to use it again this  year or should I make a fresh batch.

[beanqueen]

If it still stinks I think it's ok to use...but someone here may know better ;)

[Robert_Brenchley]

It'll be fine.

[STEVEB]

tRY A BATCH OF COMFREY JUICE stinks to high heaven

[greenhousegirl]

Thank you all !!

I will go back to the greenhouse in the morning and see if it still smell vile, if not I will make some more  and I have some comfrey now so am going to have a go with that for the toms this year

[Paulines7]

I have plenty of nettles.  What does nettle tea fertilizer do for the soil and are there any particular vegetables that benefit please?

[Digeroo]

I thought nettle tea was more of a foliar feed.  It is supposed to make cabbages unappetizing for butterflies to lay their eggs but I have not seen that it does this.  I have a golden delicious apple which is prone to fungal infections on the leaves and I believe it has a good effect on this.   So it gets an annual spray with nettle tea as soon as the leaves open.

I call it the power of the stinging nettle and feel that it gets plants away well. 

If you clean them and put them in clean water the next day the water becomes slightly yellow  before the major rotting takes place and it makes a very nice drink.  Later it does stink. 

[artichoke]

Digeroo - I am very fond of mint tea made by boiling, cooling and straining mint (sugar to taste, and incidentally terrific for indigestion or hangover). Are you saying you can do something similar with nettles, without the boiling? I have masses of nettles.

[Digeroo]

It certainly does not taste like mint.  But nettle does not respond well to boiling water.  You are supposed to be able to make soup.  But in cold water is produces a refreshing drink, I like it but I do not have a normal sense of taste.  If you make some and you do not like it then you can always spray it on a plant or two.

[artichoke]

Yes, I have made the soup. I think it owes a lot to the onions, butter, chicken stock, cream, whatever, that you add to the nettles.

I have illustrated a comprehensive book on middle eastern wild food, and eaten most of it while there, and come to the conclusion that it was emergency starvation diet, not something you would eat unless you had nothing else. Likewise the foraging movement here in the UK.

Though I have to admit that in Greece I have met people energetically foraging in the spring for traditional wild leaves with which they make delicious salads and cheese pies.

http://www.greek-recipe.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article301

Slightly off topic, I have just replanted some accidentally blanched dandelions under some black pots to increase the blanching. These leaves are really delicious.

Blanched nettles, anyone?

[Robert_Brenchley]

Nettle tops can make a really good soup, but I agree, it's a diet for people who had come through winter on little more than bread and dried peas, and would regularly have been short of food this time of year.

[artichoke]

Yes, I agree. But the charming thing about the Greeks is that it is still their tradition. Well off Athenians were travelling to Mount Pelion, where I lived at the time, to collect these greens because their families always had done this, possibly originally out of sheer need, but now for fun. All over the mountain, people were bottoms up, plucking everything they had been taught to recognise, and they showed me what they were looking for.

Their pies were genuinely delicious. I would examine the greens carefully within the pastry and cheese: the cultivated spinach was hairless and smooth, but the wild greens were hairy, crisp and pleasantly bitter.