Nettle tea, smashed glass, c**p weather and the first lettuce…

On an otherwise miserable day weatherwise, a lot has been completed this bank holiday monday.

Firstly, upon opening the newly created coldframe this morning and leaning it against the conveniently positioned runner bean frame behind it, a heavy gust of wind brought it back down and managed to smash three panes of glass. Luckily I wasn’t stood inside it and should really consider myself lucky to be alive! (The gap in the ‘air tight’ seal has now been filled with a couple of binbags nailed to the wood.)

Note to self – build working locking device into coldframe asap to reduce mid-morning fatality risks to closer to zero.

Secondly, the weather today has been truly miserable. The worst I’ve been out in for at least a month. This however didn’t give me any excuse to put off the work that was required:

• runner beans had to be potted on
• tomatoes for school plant sale had to be potted on
• another batch of carrots, salad onions, beetroot and lettuce had to be sown

Later in the day, browsing through the forums of allotment.org.uk I came across a post regarding ‘nettle tea’ – a fertiliser for brassicas. This interested me and as there is a rather large patch of nettles doing little more than stinging me every time I walk past I decided to give it a go. Instructions are as follows:

Into a bin or suitable bucket, add 1 gallon of water for every 2lb of nettles. Leave for two to three weeks, stirring occasionally. After this period, dilute liquid at a ratio of 1:10 anduse to water plants.

Apparently this is meant to enrich the soil with nitrogen and is consequently a good idea to use on brassicas as they are ‘nitrogen hungry plants’ ~ apparently!

The first lettuce of the season was eaten this evening. The first crop of 2009 however was three stems of rhubarb that were eaten on Friday…

Furthermore, debris netting is now on order to cover the brassicas 2MX50M of it! I was using some bog standard 10mm netting but apparently this isn’t up to the job, I was informes on the forum, as the cabbage whites just stroll through it and take even greater pleasure in laying their eggs.

At least I can end my hunt for comfrey now after my discovery of ‘nettle tea’.