nettle tea- possible tomato fertiliser?

Seakay

Tomatoes need a little nitrogen, but mainly phosphorous and potassium.
Comfrey is high in potassium, and makes a good organic fertilizer, especially in combination with seaweed.
http://www.north-west-dahlias.co.uk/comfrey.htm (this makes industrial quantities, but you get the idea)

quietheart

"The organic gardener can produce a natural plant fertiliser rich in nitrogen and potassium, by steeping nettles in water:

Pick the nettles in spring, weigh them and pack into a lidded bucket. To each 2lb of nettles, add 1 gallon of water, cover and leave for 2-3 weeks, stirring occasionally. Strain the liquid, putting the nettles on the compost heap. The liquid can then be used, diluted at 1 cup of fertiliser to 10 cups of water, on garden and pot plants.

This mixture can also be used as a spray pesticide against aphids, especially blackfly. "

great idea, didn't know what to do with all the nettles on our allotment!

Lotus-eater

rovers wrote: »

great idea, didn't know what to do with all the nettles on our allotment!

Well you should be sticking them in the compost bin to start with!

Listen, you can use all the recipes you like, the basics are stick comfrey, nettles and wee in a big container, leave until it at least goes blackish and absolutely stinks to high heaven, then dilute to the colour of weak tea.

It will unblock your nose if you have a cold, I will tell you.

Trishh_2

:rotfl: Yup .. I can vouch for the stinkiness of it :rotfl:

Good point about using the nettles (and urine)as an activator on the compost heap too.

weezl74

Trishh wrote: »

Re. seed saving .. you will prob still have lovely toms but just so you know, a lot of other supermarket bought fruit will have been grown from F1 seed, so you may not always get exactly the same a what the seeds came from. This is typically true of squash and pumpkin etc ... they can cross pollinate and you can end up with some weird and not so wonderful stuff

Well this is quite a learning curve for me! I googled 'F1 seed' cos I'm a complete newbie to all this and didn't know what you meant! (other newbies click here for some useful info...)

So my crop might be a bit hit or miss unless say I used the seeds from a tomato or other fruit/veg bought from, say the farmer's market, which names a specific variety, that they have grown?

Many thanks to you all for taking the time to help me.

Weezl x

A._Badger

It's not whether the variety is named, I'm afraid, it's how that variety was arrived at.

If it's an F1 hybrid seed, it won't necessarily grow true - in other words its offspring could be any combination of the varieties that created it.

Not all named varieties of plants are F1 hybrids, so you might be lucky with one, but you might not.

Al the same, I wouldn't let it worry you. It's fun to try, whatever the result!


Hope that helps.

weezl74

righty-ho! Thanks all for your excellent suggestions.

Weezl x

Trishh_2

I buy a lot of seeds from http://www.realseeds.co.uk/ , so that I can save seed for the next year. Just isolate one plant (of each thing you're growing) so that it can't be promiscuious and save the seed from that. No need to buy new seed each year, for certain plants. There's some good info on seed saving on the real seeds site