Allotments 4 All

Was watching the "allotment" on dicovery realtime last sunday morning, and they were talking about making liquid feed out of a barrel with a tap at the bottom and a hessian sack. Unfortunatley, didnt quite catch what to put in the sack to make instant liquid feed!! Can anyone give me any tips on how to go about this?

From Sams allotment sharer J   ???

Sammyd,
A couple of things to try are rotted manure in the sack steeped in water in the barrel. You don't say how big the barrel is so can't give proportions. The other is a good couple of bunches of comfry treated in the same way.
Dilute the solution roughly 10:1 for good liquid feed.

The manure in bag works well, you wont need to dilute that too much.

You can also use things like comfrey and nettles.

http://www.nettles.org.uk/nettles/activities/nettlemanure.asp

Nice instructions here:

http://www.mylot.org/Garden/gardening03.htm

Jerry

i think nettles are good as nitrogen feeds.

thanks for your replies

where can i buy the container with a tap please

j :D

I made a comfrey fermenter with a plastic pedal bin, made some holes in the bottom with a garden fork and then put a container underneath something else to catch the runoff.

If you want to make something a bit more posh, you could get two of those  cheap stacking plastic storage boxes with lids, put a couple of bricks in the bottom one on them,  drill some holes in the base of the other and stack it so that it rests on the bricks. Fill the top one with comfrey leaves, put the lid on and let it stew. The comfrey should just rot down, get really smelly and the liquid will run through into the bottom container with the bricks in it. In practice it does help to take the lid off now and again noand give the top container a bit of a watering so the holes dont all block up and to help the smelly liquid run through into the bottom container. collect the liquid from the bottom container and bottle it.

(dilute when you want to use it, so that it looks the colour of weak tea).

Couch rhizomes can be rotted in water to make a good liquid feed.

Do be warned that they tend to smell foul but they are very effective. ::)

when do you plant comfey

Autumn, really for it to take well, but you will get away with planting it in spring too.

Phil kindly sent me some last spring and it's taken well, still trying to grow despite the frost.

Thanks Phil  :)

Comfrey warning -

wherever you plant confrey will be pretty unusable for anything else at a later date. The roots go down about 8' and they take all the goodness out of the surrounding soil, which is why they are used in compost/fertiliser. It is also hard to remove.

To use as feed I stuff as many leaves as possible into a bucket pour in water and put a sealed lid on. Leave at least 6 weeks somewhere warmish. Every now and again take the lid of to release gas (hold breath while doing this and not in a confined space) when out of water throw the residue on the compost heap and start again, have as many buckets on the go as you need. Dilute 1/8