Friday, 31 May 2024

A walk in the village

Nothing special, just a few things that caught my eye.








Thursday, 16 May 2024

Purin d'orties

Purin is liquid manure, and orties are nettles.  It's supposed to be a really good fertiliser: you can buy it in garden centres, but it's easy enough to make.   Since I have no shortage of nettles around here, I thought I'd give it a go.

I collected up a watering can-full of nettles, then topped it up with water.   According to the instructions, you're supposed to shred the nettles but I didn't bother - I figured that when they all go to mush they'll disintegrate on their own.   You then leave it for a couple of weeks to ferment.   Sure enough, after a week or so there were bubbles on the top, and I mashed the nettles back down into the water.

All the sources say that it smells bad.   It does if you catch a nose full of it, but it's not powerful, just unpleasant.

So once the fermentation had stopped, I took some, diluted it about 10 to 1 and put it on the tomatoes.   They seemed to perk up by the next morning.   I'll be doing some more of that.