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.




4 comments:

James Higham said...

Hmmmmm … better you than me doing that … kudos.

Scrobs. said...

They're a great source of nitrogen, and if you can also steep them with comfrey leaves, you've got the best liquid fertilzer you can ise - for free!

And yes, the pong is just awful, but also try it on the leeks, as they just lap it all up!

Mark In Mayenne said...

Thanks, SCrobs, I think I have some Comfrey somewhere, I'll check.

Scrobs. said...

First, apols for the typos...

We have a little bed of comfrey here, and that will get used, now the flowers, which are delightful, have died down!

I 'borrowed' a few roots of the wild comfrey from a local footpath in a wood, but it seems someone always gets there before me for the leaves!

I may even invest in some Bocking 14 one day, as they don't spread, but do a great job anyway!

As for nettles, I'm going to be on the case PDQ, as they're taking over parts of the same woodland!

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