Kitchen Garden Forum

Snip a bucket full of new nettle shoots, add water to the top, cover and leave for 2 weeks. Strain off the disgusting smelling liquid and feed your herb garden. is it too late?

Nettle tea is a nitrogen rich fertilizer, but I wouldn't use it at this time of the year as it would encourage new growth which would be more susceptible to frost damage. Also most herbs like to be on the dry side, so after all this rain any additional water might just make them rot.

I think I'd wait for Spring, although I don't usually feed my herbs anyway and they do very well.

Plumpudding

You can usually tell a spammer like Andra2000. They usually write rubbish and have something to sell.

Peter is doing a splendid job eliminating all the increasing spam reaching the forum.

Hi Alan, I wouldn't have thought of that. The name does sound a bit American. I stopped using the Dave's Garden website because so many of them talked complete drivel and there were things attacking my computer every time I logged in. It was good in other respects though and I got some good contacts through their European section. We had a brilliant Round Robin seed swap which was really exciting when it was your turn to get the parcel. It went round Britain, Iceland, Crete, Spain,
Belgium, France and several more countries with each person replacing the number of packets they chose with the same number of their own seeds. I'm still growing some of the tomatoes, sweet peas, and dwarf french bean varieties from them as they are so good.

Hi Plumpudding, how does a round robin seed swap work please ?

Nature's Babe wrote:Hi Plumpudding, how does a round robin seed swap work please ?

Had me foxed too. Reading the explanation here it seems only slightly clearer

http://showmeoz.wordpress.com/2012/02/2 ... wap-works/

I have taken part in seed swaps organised on other fora. The ones I've done involve one coordinator, who collects a list of addreses for all participants. Then an initial seed parcel (made up of self saved seed, spares, free packs, whatever) is sent out to the first person on the list - they take what they like, and add what they can. To send it on, they get the next address in the chain from the coordinator.

Great fun. The only problems are (a) getting a pack to start the process, (b) privacy worries, though this is reduced if only one coordinator gets the full address list and (c) the tendancy for a pack of interesting seeds to return eventually to the coordinator magically morphed into dozens of packs of Carrot Nantes 2 and Tomato Gardener's delight.

It is quite a while since I did it, but it sounds on the lines Tony said. One person co-ordinates it by providing a selection of seeds to start it off, and anyone wanting to join in sends their name and address to the organizer who sends it on to the first person on the list.
I can't remember if the full list of names was sent with the parcel or whether the co-ordinator let us know who was next, but it all went very well.

We could send our own saved seed and put the variety and date it was saved and any other information we thought might be useful or interesting, or just spare packets of commercial seeds, both fruit and veg and flowers. The parcel eventually returns to the person who started it off with hopefully a nice selection of seeds for them to try. There was also a lucky dip bag of assorted flower seeds that you just took a couple of pinches out and you could put some of your own in if you had any odds and ends.

We tried to keep it moving round quickly so it didn't take too long to get back to the start, but it did take a bit longer with travelling round Europe.

It is quite a while since I did it, but it sounds on the lines Tony said. One person co-ordinates it by providing a selection of seeds to start it off, and anyone wanting to join in sends their name and address to the organizer who sends it on to the first person on the list.
I can't remember if the full list of names was sent with the parcel or whether the co-ordinator let us know who was next, but it all went very well.
We made our selection and then replaced the same quantity with spare seeds, and usually put one or two extra varieties in. We tried to not put too many heavy things like beans in to keep the postage down.

We could send our own saved seed and put the variety and date it was saved and any other information we thought might be useful or interesting, or just spare packets of commercial seeds, both fruit and veg and flowers. The parcel eventually returns to the person who started it off with hopefully a nice selection of seeds for them to try. There was also a lucky dip bag of assorted flower seeds that you just took a couple of pinches out and you could put some of your own in if you had any odds and ends.

We tried to keep it moving round quickly so it didn't take too long to get back to the start, but it did take a bit longer with travelling round Europe.

Sorry it has come up twice.