hi guys

i was having a smoke with a rasta friend of mine and i mentioned im trying a home grow.
he told me that him and his mates get a load of nettles and SIMMER (never boil, he was quite persistant about that) them in a big pot on the stove for about an hour or two (the water goes light green when right)then when the waters cooled down water your plants with it. he said you just use it like normal water. but the plants love em and u need less nutes.

he could have been winding up the white guy , but he seemed genuine.

we smoked his own grown, grown using nettle (so he said) and i only had half a joint and it was mind blowing, he said hes tryed all the differant ways to grow and he says he gets the biggest buds using nettles. apparently his dad told him how to do it.

anyway getting back to the point!

i just thought id put the nettles thing out there as a point of intrest. im sure he was being strait with me as hes all for everone growing there own, so its just a tip, what you do with it is up to you.

but i know nettles like the same enviroment and nutes as ganja so i guess the nettles would contain all the things ganja needs.

Hiya Rio,
what you speak of I think are called 'teas' or 'drenches',so your man was'nt winding you up at all but describing something that organic gardeners do.

Personally,I don't think it can be all that,just simmering some nettles for a while but if your rasta friend was happy,well that's the main thing!



Rockster

aparantly it was something adapted from something his dad did in jamaca

Nettles are very nitrogen hungry, so they probably store a lot more (N) than other plants.

It makes sense, though i don't know about the simmering. Would that concentrate (N) in the water?

does he use this tea right throughout the cycle or just for veg?

i'd guess that the nutrients a plant needs to grow aren't the ones that are actually in the biomatter of the final plant

ie. they change when combined with other elements or are used in the production of the biomatter & locked into their next state

so although nettles are closely related to cannabis genetically i doubt their biomass would be half as good as biobizz to aid growth in bud

possibly suggest to him YOU'VE got a mate in the dam who swears that old tulip bulbs frozen in ice for a month then thawed work wonders & watch his face

(& check his freezer in a fortnight)

I hear that water from a bubble bagging session is good for the plants too. I now feed them the water from the bucket.

hes a rasta for gods sake........have you ever known a rasta smoke crap? no..me neither,

so if its what he does and hes happy with the smoke (thats purely for personal) then how can he be wrong?
i dont think he would waste his time pratting about with nettles if he thought it might be a waste of time.
also he does use nutes (organic) and he mearly supliments them with the 'nettle tea'

hi

he just uses it for veg up untill the buds start growing then stops.

what does he use in flowering, just regular bloom nutes or does he have another natural source?

dont know i told him what stage my babys were at and he gave me the advice i will ask him and update this post when he does.


i might phone him

Ask him about this then -

ok but im not sure he knows the science of this all he just knows it works.

With respect to rasta's everywhere,just because a rasta suggests something does'nt make it gospel truth.I once new a rasta who insisted sensi only came from Jamaica.Tried explaining,waste of time!All a drench can do is give a mild feed,and not a complete one than that.I can understand organic gardeners useing this but I would'nt bother with this as an additional feed for my plants as if you have all the bases covered with your existing regime,this is just extra hassle for no real gain.



Rockster

like i said. im not saying this is the truth but i know this paticular rasta has grown most of his life (origanaly helping his dad then growing his own when he got a place of his own) and im just passing on information he gave me so please feel free to use the info or toss ito the side.

just thought id tell you guys rather than keep it to myself.

well you and him both sound rather persistant and genuine mate im going to try it on some of my seeds which are in the germing process right now either tomorrow or next day when i pot them after all what harm can it do??? cheers for info bud

This is similar to what my mum does. She's been an organic gardener for at least 30 years. What she does is keep water stored outside in a big water butt, and she just adds nettles to it and leaves it for ages. The nettles are in no short supply, as next door'd garden is overgrown with them. The resulting liquid stinks and seems to work well on tomatoes.

spot on Dubsience you can use it in the same way as comfrey tea

not big secret here a lot of veteran organic gardeners use this here. This stinks as hell, but has some positive results. I guess this is just more and more forgotten as a lot of garden suppliers offer a wide range of nutes. It's just what the old folks did.

if anyone trys this out on there plants let us know the results...

here's how to make liquid nettle fertiliser

yep that should cover it!!

nettles have alot of nirtogen in them

thats my 2p

Agreed, similar to comfry tea although comfry is very good for turning into soil if youre growing organically with a compost heap.

I met a man from afghanistan who told me they used shovel loads of bird shit to grow.

Dont know the source but this is similar to the chicken feed soup and also the outlawed (in this book) bat shite.


Dem Nettles make them talk nicely mon

and for flowering/fruiting,seaweed is widely used on allotments local to me,the gardeners fill a 50gall with it and top it up with water.leave it for about 3/4mnths and the juice/feed gives the best veg about.

True true,

Some fecking hippies who use a shitpit for a outside toilet lash the seaweed down there and after a few months theres worms.........

He aint got you smoking fried banana skins too has he?

been there..done that!!
Had no effect on me though I do walk slightly bent over these days!

"What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have not been discovered."

Ralph Waldo Emerson


Right on Ralph!

Nettle Leaf Plant Food


Besides stinging small children and innocent holiday-makers, nettles also provided fiber for the uniforms of Nazi soldiers. What nasty little plants they are.

This is a great way to kill lots of them. You can then feed their remains to your plants, who will respond with the fiendish glee of a nettle-eating fiend, and grow like cannabis monsters

Like most weeds, nettles absorb righteous amounts of minerals.

Nettles in particular indicate nitrogen-rich, recently occupied soil, and as that implies, are rich in nitrogen themselves (note: if nettles are growing chances are no one has been spraying nasty weed killers)

To make your nettle fertiliser you will need only four things:

1. a patch of nettles to attack, and some weapons of mass destruction
2. a watertight container - a large bucket will do, a big dustbin is better
3. water
( and if you like 4. a weight. not essential)


I usually just fill a dustbin packed full of nettles, then fill to the brim with water. The black soup you will have after a month can be diluted one part to ten and then used direct on plants. They will love it. Here is the other guy's explanation.


Namkha

First take your nettles. These are best as young stems but can be taken at any time. Quicker results are obtained if the nettle stems and leaves are bruised.

Then crush them. This can be done by scrunching the stems in gloved hands or by placing the stems on a freshly mown lawn and using your mower to chop and collect the nettles at the same time. The addition of a few grass clippings that results from using this method does not affect the quality of the finished product.

Immerse in water Stuff the crushed stems into your bucket. Place your weight on top of the stems. You may have to use a little ingenuity here - I have used a broken paving slab in the past. A brick and a piece of wire mesh cut to suit the cointainer serves equally well. Fill the container with water sufficient to cover the nettles and...

Leave to brew. This is where the wait comes in. You may also consider placing the bucket away from the areas in the garden that you use most as the soup tends to get rather smelly.

Dilute to taste. After around three or four weeks the liquid should be ready for use. The mixture should be diluted until it is tea coloured - usually around 1 part liquid to 10 parts water. Water liberally around or on the plants and see the benefits.

Repeat until winter. Continue to top up your container with more leaves and water through the year. As autumn sets in put the remainder of the feed and the sludge in your compost heap. Give your container a rinse and store for next year!

Happy gardening.

These are other very useful plants to use as a soup fertiliser (or to add to a basic nettle fertiliser)

They are all what are known as "Dynamic Accumulators"

This term is given to plants which are especially effective at accumulating particular nutrients (and hence are able to grow on ground deficient in those nutrients, e.g. braken on acid, low phosphate soil).


Particularly recommended for a soup fertiliser are:

Comfrey - N/Mg/Ca/Si/K/Fe

Docks - Ca/K/P/Fe

Dandelion - Na/Si/Mn/Ca/K/P/Fe/Cu

Clover - N/P



A list of plants for Nitrogen, Phosphate and Potassium


N - Nitrogen

Comfrey
Nettles
Clovers
Alfalfa (Lucerne)
Cattail



P - Phosphate (Potash)


Docks
Clovers
Chickweed
Bracken (also K/Mn/Fe/Cu/Co)
Caraway
Buckwheat


K - Potassium

Comfrey
Dandelion
Borage
Carrot leaves (also Mg)
Bracken
Chickweed
Chicory
Eyebright


Namkha

Sound organic information there.

Thanks.

My two cents:

Nettles for veg (nitrogen rich)

Comfrey for flower (phosphate and potassium rich)

I just put up a post about nettle fertiliser, not knowing this chat was going - fill a bin packed with nettles, then to the brim with water - leave for three to four weeks - dilute one to ten and pour on plants

Namkha

Correction - docks for flower

so far I have only used nettles for veg and has worked perfectly

I will try out the docks and let people know how it goes

I've merged your thread with this namkha - cheers for your input

most welcome

might it be a good idea to put a subtitle on it, to say it was about nettle fertiliser?

I clicked on "Rasta Secrets" as I thought it might have some info on making nice sensi

by the way - anyone know any authentic Rasta curing methods?

I know they bury stuff in the ground and in the roof thatch, in Malawi - rapped up in cob leaves - don't get much more "organic" than that!

someone once told me they used banana skin wraps too - true?



Namkha

Sorted

Don’t do this with nettles in your garden though, unless you are going to dig the roots up as well.
Nettles really appreciate a good hard cropping. They’ll come back bigger, stronger, and looking for revenge.

True - though generally people who use nettle fert say that the younger shoots that come back are even better for fertiliser (they're also the bits people use for eating in actual nettle soup)

Plenty of permaculture types will leave a patch for mulch/fertiliser at the bottom the garden and just keep cutting them back

It's true they can spread, but even the hardest weeds will soften off with regular persistent cutting - there are ways to contain the roots too)

I also do stuff like leave dandelions in my flower beds and just pinch the new leaves off every week or two - after all, all they are bringing up nutrients in the tap root for me to nick

I sound like a right hippy sometimes

Namkha

potash = potassium not phosphorus.

For making your own fertiliser bocking #14 is the comfrey clone line to have.

Wild cut comfrey leaves, packed into a container no water will break down to a black liquid in 3 weeks. Breakdown Nitrogen 0.12% Phosphorus 0.055% Potash 0.86%

So comfrey is a very high potash fertiliser, is very very low in phosphorous and very low in Nitrogen! N P K ratio 2.1:1:15.6 ie there is over 7 times potassium to nitrogen and over 15.5 times potassium to phosphorous.

Its very good for flowering and fruiting.

Charts for bocking clones including 14 here the selected clones give a much better balance.

Yeh, sorry about that! (I suspect it may be a generational thing, in school we just called it potassium...)

For people who haven't heard of Bocking #14 Comfrey before (I hadn't till now - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comfrey) it's an infertile strain line developed from a Russian variety of Comfrey by an organic gardener called Lawrence Hills in the 1950s (...at an organic famring centre in Bocking...)

A question: is it really possible to give such precise figures for the breakdown from wild Comfrey?

I would seriously doubt it myself... I mean, to several decimal places? I know it's a "dynamic accumulator" i.e. actively uptakes minerals, but surely variations in the contents of the soil where it's growing will have a role to play too (?), and variations between plants (since it's a fertile strain)

Anyway, says on wikipedia that comfrey should be cut at about 2 feet high (roughly April?) and will be ready for another cutting in about five weeks from then...

Also, for those who like to find creative uses for their urine (I know a Hemp-obsessed man called Tony, of Cally Road, liked to drink his, so chacun a son piss etc.) it says here Comfrey is one of the few plants that will tolerate a 50/50 solution of fresh wizz... (rather it than me)

Namkha

The Malawi cobs, or so I read a long time ago, were supposedly burried and then cow urine was poured over top, don't know how much or anything precise about it, and it was supposed to act as a preservative, not sure how accurate this is but maybe it is useful somehow? The banana leaves are used to cure herb sometimes and I believe it was Rita Marley who said that the best herb she got in Jamaica was cured in banana leaves for 3 months or so.
Sincerely,
Limeygreen

Thanks for the info, appreciate it

Cow's urine is not a route I am going down, but for sure I will have a think about banana skin curing - with Malawi 99

Been reading about tobacco - says it has a lot to do with continuing respiration in the the leaf, starches break down to sugars etc.

My understanding is that ripening banana skins emit ethene (or ethane, I forget, probably ethene) - this will accelerate ripening of other fruits, maybe this would affect what goes on in a bud too

Just a thought or two

Namkha

Lets stay on topic peeps




Close.

Banana skins are very good for ripening green tomatoes - but lets stay on topic as this thread is worthy

im simmering up some nettles as i write, will let u know how it goes in a few days, see if there is any noticable increase in the plant growth

weedboy

is there any chance of having nutrient problems with the plants after feeding them, as the stuff is pretty strong i think, should i dilute it, or is there no chance of nute burn or nute lock up or anything?

weedboy

Do you have tds meter you could check the strength with?Although I don't know if there would be anything in it that might be 'blind' to a meter but I doubt it.

nah i dont have a tds meter.....