How to make a nettle dressing for cucumbers and fertilize
Top dressing of cucumbers with nettles can be carried out both at the time of growth of the vegetative mass, and during the period of the appearance of ovaries, and when the crop is ripe. This natural fertilizer can be found everywhere - not only in the garden area, but also along the forests - on the edges, in ravines, along natural reservoirs, along the roadsides.
Cucumbers, under which fertilizers are not applied, do not bear fruit as well as we would like. Therefore, summer residents purchase chemical fertilizers in specialized stores, which are already ready for use. But after all, a large amount of natural fertilizers grows near any site, which will not harm the human body and will serve as a good fertilizer for garden plants.
Nettle - a natural food for cucumbers
It should be recalled that not all weeds can be used as organic fertilizers. Some weeds are poisonous by themselves or can release harmful substances by decomposing. And some cereals release alcohol during decomposition. All this is harmful to vegetable plants, harmful substances can accumulate in ripening fruits and harm the human body.
But nettle, which is a medicinal plant, can benefit not only humans, but also growing vegetable crops. Zealous gardeners consider this plant a harmful weed and mercilessly deal with it in the garden and in the garden. But the following active substances were found in the composition of this plant:
- macro and microelements Ca, K, Fe, Cu, Zn, Mg, N;
- vitamins A and C.
True, some livestock and poultry owners use this weed as a vitamin supplement for their animals. But mostly, summer residents simply get rid of nettles in their area. But cucumbers in the process of growth need N and K.
The lack of these minerals leads to a deterioration in the growth of shoots and roots, ovaries are poorly formed in this vegetable crop, and the fruits do not ripen to the required size. And at the same time, the source of such minerals is mercilessly destroyed at the same time.
Top dressing of vegetable crops with nettle infusion saturates the roots and the whole plant with all the necessary nutrients. Nettle infusion will enrich the soil and plants with a large amount of vitamins and minerals, as well as prevent the infection of vegetables with various diseases, provide protection from "harmful" bugs.
Those of summer residents who tried to use nettle dressing for vegetable crops in their garden began to treat this weed more respectfully. They collect this stinging weed wherever possible, dry it and use it to feed the plants as needed.After all, this medicinal herb retains its valuable properties, both fresh and dried. But a number of gardeners prefer to prepare an infusion of nettle for watering plants, which they use all season.
Infusion of nettle for cucumbers
The pungency of the stems of this plant is well known to everyone, so many do not like nettle and prefer to get rid of it whenever possible. However, experienced gardeners use this "disadvantage" of plants for the benefit of their garden.
You can plant cucumbers in rows, and lay a layer of nettle between them. Caterpillars and other harmful insects will not crawl through such a burning barrier. And if you lay the plucked nettle grass directly along the roots of this vegetable crop, then the layer of this mulch will prevent weeds from growing, while protecting the plants from pests. And from the outside it may seem that cucumbers are planted on nettles.
A number of summer residents prepare fertilizer from nettle, crushing it and adding mulch to the layer. This additive enriches the topsoil and prevents the development of erosion.
So, with the question: "Is it possible to fertilize cucumbers with nettles?" all clear. It remains to understand how to prepare nettle fertilizer, and how to feed cucumbers with this top dressing.
Nettle fertilizer is very simple to prepare. The weed is collected and crushed. For the preparation of the infusion, you can use fresh, dried or dry weeds. The crushed plants are placed in large containers.
The main requirement is that nettle fertilizer is not recommended to be infused in a metal container.
Usually, any plastic containers are used to prepare the infusion, where the crushed raw materials are placed and poured with water. The water should be previously defended within 24 hours.
Then this infusion should be infused in the shade for two weeks. The smell that this natural fertilizer gives off is quite unpleasant, because fermentation takes place in containers. Therefore, such an infusion is usually kept away from the country houses where people live.
From above, the barrels with the preparation being prepared are covered with polyethylene or lids to limit the intake of oxygen. When the fermentation process is over, the fertilizer will smell like ordinary manure.
At the end of fermentation, nettle fertilizer can be used to watering cucumbers under the root (or for foliar feeding).
The nettle solution should be diluted with water. The proportions in which the infusion is diluted:
- for application under the roots - in a ratio of 1: 2;
- for cucumbers (their aboveground part) - the ratio is 1: 5.
Peas, beans, soybeans, onions and garlic are not fed with such a fermented solution - these vegetable plants do not like nettle infusion.
Infusion of nettle feeding of cucumbers is carried out regularly, which leads to accelerated growth of their stems, an increase in the number of ovaries, and rapid ripening of the crop. Moreover, such fertilizer is valuable even for indoor flowers, which literally two or three days after the introduction of nettle mash come to life, the foliage becomes more shiny, and the number of buds increases.
You can use nettle ash as a top dressing. In this case, all the mowed nettles are dried and burned. The resulting ash is dissolved in water and the cucumbers are watered. Nettle ash saturates plants with potassium and nitrogen, which is especially valuable for plants in spring and early summer, when they are actively building up their vegetative mass.
Preparing the beds with nettles
This method of preparing beds for cucumbers is especially common in Siberia and the Urals, where the warm season is short, and cucumbers and other vegetable crops need so much warmth (especially in warm beds).
The preparation of the beds on which it will be possible to grow cucumbers in the open field (or in greenhouses) is as follows. First, we prepare the beds themselves - along their length and width, trenches are dug for one and a half bayonets of a shovel.To a height of half a bayonet, the trench is filled with nettles, and soil mixed with humus, compost or rotted manure is poured onto the nettle. We plant cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, cabbage in the beds prepared in this way - almost any vegetables and greens can be grown on such "warm" beds.
I tried somehow to make such a top dressing, but I will no longer ... In the process of collecting nettles, I only burned my hands in vain (nettles “got out” through gloves). And I did not see much effect. From this year I started using a growth activator BioGrow - here the effect is noticeable from him, 30 percent more harvest.