Not with silver bells and cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row that´s for sure: more like with ants, snails and stinging nettles. This does not mean I am up to my eyes in weeds in my organic garden but rather I have learned to appreciate the different qualities of a plant I used to hate.
Stinging nettles were the bain of my life from an early age: partly because my elder sister’s idea of fun was to chase me around the garden brandishing the horrid things and partly because in green, damp leafy Oxfordshire where I spent my early childhood you could hardly move without getting stung by the wretched things. I didn´t find much relief in the famous dock leaf cure either and my tiny ankles were habitually covered by masses of irritating raised white spots.
So you can imagine my delight (not) at discovering that these torturous plants have magic qualities for the organic garden. Not only do they make a wonderful fertilizer capable of perking up the saddest seedlings but also act as an insecticide and help prevent a host of different garden malaise.
Maybe it is the climate in Calasparra which breeds bigger and badder bugs like the those armies of devastating ants which feed on and help propagate millions of tiny aphids which, in turn, twist the leaves of the vegetables like mad curling tongs or the regiments of vociferous snails which cling onto tall blades of grass during the heat turning them into weird sculptures but which, in the cool of the night, mount rampaging raids on everything that´s green. Probably better not to even mention the “enfermadades:” the leaf blotch, leaf curl, general rot and rack and ruin that run amok in a chemical free garden.
Every year we have picked the bugs and snails off by hand and washed the leaves of our plants with natural soap in a bid to beat the insects and plagues. We have cleared the weeds and the long grass so there are natural barriers metres wide and erected screens and covers to stop the unforgiving Calasparra sun literally burning the flowers before they bear fruit. We have planted hundreds of “healthy companions” in the form of marigolds, basil and mint interspersed strategically among their hosts and with all of this we have logged a degree of success. But none of this compares to the efficacy of the great enemy of my childhood, the humble stinging nettle.
We had heard rumblings about the qualities of stinging nettles but as they grow in cool, green damp, shady places we are not exactly overrun with them in dry arid Calasparra. Until this year when the rains came not only swelling the local reservoirs to 80% capacity but also bringing thousands of nasty sharp leaved nettles to every corner of our land. We didn´t even have to go looking for them, they simply sprouted up everywhere.
When they first began to appear we dug them up and carefully replanted them in front of the giant water containers we use for our homemade and rather rudimentary drop irrigation system and religiously watered them every day. However soon, as the rain persisted it became clear this wasn´t really necessary as the nasty little beasts flourished everywhere.
Unpleasant childhood memories were evoked as I managed to get stung through gloves, long trousers and sleeved shirts when I “harvested” them but I achieved some revenge and a certain amount of satisfaction from pounding them with a long stick in their bucket of murky water as I passed by. The recipe says they are ready for use when they start fermenting and smell like a public loo and in this climate that didn´t take very long.
One litre of concentrated fermented stinging nettles to 15 litres of water makes a fertilizer and a litre to 10 litres of water kills the bugs. The mixture smells absolutely disgusting but it works. Our plants perked up overnight and the bugs took a holiday.
The hottest June in living memory has seen off most of the stinging nettles by now as the sun has dried up all their hiding places so we are forced to return to our old standby protection: concentrated crushed garlic juice. Why does everything that helps protect an organic garden have to smell so foul?
