Making Nettle Soup
Nettles
I’ve been making nettle soup this week. It’s that time of
the year when the young nettle plants are bursting with nutrition so I thought
it was time to adorn the think rubber gloves and venture off the paths in my
local park. I say thick rubber gloves as I have used the regular type and
nettles manage to sting you through the protection. I have industrial ones and
they do the job well. In next to no time
I had a large bagful and was at home adding them to a pan of pre caramelized
onions and a bit of broccoli stock.
There are probably hundreds of recipes out there for nettle soup, but
mine is just throw everything in and then after boiling it for a bit, liquidize
it and what you don’t eat on the day put in the freezer. I can’t see that a
recipe book is something I’ll be doing any time soon but if I do it’ll be
called “Just Bung it into the Pan”
Tadpoles
There has been a bit of a dry spell recently so our small
puddles that house tadpoles in the park are quickly drying up. They are more
like tractor tracks that hold water than small ponds and every year it amazes
me that there are any surviving frogs coming out of there to come back and
breed. They do, but this year the puddles were drying up too fast with no
chance of rain for a week. All I could see was a mound of glistening mud moving
around frantically as the tadpoles clung onto life. I had to do something so I
got my glass jam jar with a jute string handle (a plastic yogurt pot really but
I think I’m Huckleberry Finn) and moved most of the taddies to a larger pond in
the park, then a second batch I bought home to put into a pre made bucket pond
I have built in the tunnel. I couldn’t get them all but that’s nature I suppose
and I have meddled enough for one year.
The tadpoles have settled into their new home well and are
veracious eaters, making their way through a slice of bacon. With the food and
heat from the tunnel I am probably creating a breed of super frogs. If they
start taking over the world I’ll let you know.
Daddy long legs
Crane fly’s or daddy long legs are making quite a crunchy
treat for the tadpoles to. These are everywhere at the moment and very early
because of the early heat we have. These don’t do any damage themselves but
they do lay eggs in the grass where the resulting larvae, commonly known as
leatherjackets, develop underground over 8-10 months where they feed on grass
and plant roots. The larvae are greyish-brown, have tubular bodies and grow up
to 3cm in length. When fully grown, they pupate just below the ground and then
emerge as adults in late summer to early autumn.
If you have a neat lawn, commercially available nematodes
can be used as a precautionary treatment where crane fly may occur. These
microscopic worms are watered into the lawn or flower beds where they search
for crane fly larvae, enter inside them and cause a bacterial infection within
which kills them. Or you coulkd be like me with my patchy plot and enjoy
watching the starlings poke about in the ground digging them up. Crane fly
larvae are a good food source for birds such as crows, magpies and starlings.
Regularly mowing an infested lawn will enable these birds to find the larvae
more easily.
Earwigs
I’ve also found a lot of earwigs in my pots. I’m getting a
few ready for potting on the seedlings whci are shooting up. They are pretty useful in the garden
as they are predators of other pests but I must confess they are my most
disliked insect in the garden, it’s the way they jump out at you with their
pincers flailing about that I don’t like. I suppose I just have to be thankful
we don’t have anything poisonous to contend with, earwigs just have a shock
value. Occasionally earwigs will cause
damage to soft and stone fruits such as strawberry, raspberry, nectarine and
apricot. They particularly like dahlias, which isn’t an issue in our garden as
I don’t have any.
As well as jumping out of plant pots the earwigs do tend to
hide in plant stems and curled up leaves as well as damp dark corners. You can
set traps for them if you like but if you are anything like me you’ll just put
whatever it is you have found them under and walking away to leave them in
peace, scratching your legs and pretending you never saw them.
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