Thanks for this information, and the caution to use only where nitrogen is needed. Also note, nettles are excellent food! Once dried for tea, or cooked as greens, they no longer sting. They also make a good green soup, with onion, carrot & potatoes.
Thanks Erica, I am going to try this trick! I like your clear style and the fact your videos are pretty bite-size compared with certain others. Also really appreciate you putting a shout out for the 🦋!
Thank you for sharing your love of nettles. To add to this brew, i would put a hand full of leaf mold soil in the bucket also. This would be the JADAM JLF way of making free fertilizer from any plants.
Erica, Nettles are the bane of my life at the moment , but when you spoke about all the butterflies 🦋 I thought ok ok I’ll keep them. And definitely make some fertilizer. Thank you for the tips 💛
I've got a whole patch of nettles in the garden and had been thinking about making some fertiliser with them - thanks for the push! I'm definitely going to give it a try!
Pick them young while the stem is still green and soft, then you don't get a net of un-dissolved stems in the end product. Also don't let it heat up, it'll kill the good bacteria and turn brown instead of dark green
What a clear and concise video:-) I've been using nettle fertiliser for a number of years now but I didnt nt know about the Caterpillar....but I should have taken time out to discover what eggs are indeed on the underside of the leaves as I HAVE noticed those!
Sorry to be late and miss some.. I am keeping up on FB but boy things have been so busy!! So cool you're making nettle fertilizer!! Such beautiful butterflies and I'm so glad you said that!! Very cool and great info Erica!! Thanks so much!!💖
Very helpful, thanks! What an inspiration. I’m popping over to the woods behind my house for some today! Can’t get them in my garden as my neighbour’s bully tall tree+ground ivy outcompetes our former nettle patch. But you said not to use nettle tea on flowering fruit? That we’ll need something high in potash? What weed can we use for making plant tea for fruit bushes that is high in potash? Thanks, E.
Cool video, thanks for sharing 😁 I have a batch of Dave’s feted swamp water on the go but I’m getting 2 more bins, one for comfrey and one for nettles, we have an abundance of both on and around our plots 😁 I also collect the juice from my worm bin and feed with that quite often 😁
Indeed, I’m a sucker for freebies and up/recycling 😁 and I’ll definitely need the extra bins, yesterday I was told I can have the 3rd plot 🥳 no worries, your a delight to watch, thank you for sharing so much with us 😊
all fresh weed leaves will have both, not just one or the other or both - actually all plant leaves. go for variety cos plants accumulate their preferences...blessings
If you take your nettles and ferment them with organic brown sugar about 2 part nettles to 0ne part sugar, in a week you will have a nettle syrup that you dilute 500 parts water to one part nettle syrup. They do not stink with this process either. It is more of a foliage spray.
Brilliant Erica. I see dock leaves in your video - that's what I use for my "tea". Sometimes I do a mix of both nettle and docks as they have different nutrients in them. Stay safe!
thanks Erica, I will try this although I am not confident in identifying stinging nettles! Would this work with Thistle, got heaps of those? Also I did this last season with comfrey and I think it was quite successful. Made the mistake of using it on my climbing beans throughout the season and got beautiful plants but not so many beans! Now I think I know why.
That was a thoughtful comment on leaving nettles with eggs on for our struggling butterflies. It often feels like such considerations just don't register on a lot of people's radars, that or they don't care, so it was a needed little boost to hear your say that. From what I've read, the butterflies tend to prefer large swathes of nettles in bright warm spots, presumably near favoured nectar sources too. Harvesting smaller groups of nettles in shady spots might be more promising places to forage.
Is it an eggy/sulphurous kind of stink? I recently rotted down some dandelions in a jam jar on my windowsill, forgot about it and only rediscovered it when the smell was so bad, it seeped out of the jar. 🤢 Weirdly didn’t smell much at all once I tipped it into a watering can to dilute it.
I have just harvested some nettle seeds from the garden. Can I use the dried leftovers to make this? And how long does the fertiliser last for? Thank you
Hiya Erica appreciate today’s lesson for us newbies to follow and under 10 min. I do have a wee patch of nettles that does need pruned so perfect timing. I did know about the butterfly eggs,but as a newbie I’m not sure what I’m looking for? Obviously our seasons are different and personally much behind yours. Soo was thinking now would be a good time? I saw my first butterfly yesterday, not by the nettles I clarify! Ontario Canada Thankyou 🐝
We used to have loads of nettles, but now I can't find any. However, we do still have lots and lots of comfrey. I make a 5-gallon bucket of comfrey tea and then add it to my 50-gallon rain barrel. It's diluted and ready for use in the garden, right where I need it, nestled between the brassica bed and the salad bed. I also like to pour some onto my huegleculture (still don't know how to spell that) beds to assist in their decomposition.
Great video. What if you dehydrated the nettles and grind them to a powder, maybe a good way to avoid the smell. And also easier to keep stocked up as it uses much less space. I haven't tried nettles yet but I've been drying and grinding banana skins, egg shells and tea leaves for years, with good results.
I cut the tops off my nettles every spring and put them in the dehydrator. I like to sprinkle the powder on my salads all winter. They are very nutritious and just seem to brighten up the salad.
