Caught a cold - running stall in the rain!

It was bound to happen - last Monday I set up the plant stall in the market as usual, as soon as I started the heavens opened and the rain pouring down became torrential. It pretty much lasted all day on and off, so business was so slow - I'm starting to think that the gardeners in and around Brixton have forsaken me - so I soldiered on. I started packing up around 4pm through the rain and by the time I got home I was drenched. Now I've got the worst cold and cough - feel bunged up and sorry for myself.

If anyone tells you it's easy running a stall don't believe them!
I am so proud of my daughter who owns and runs Flower Love London in Brixton Market, she has been doing this since November 2014 - through the cold, rain, sun, hailstones, wind - going to market at 5am in the morning, getting home at 7-7.30 at night. You've got to have a dream to keep that up.

Anyway, I am such a herbalist so when the cold came on it started with a sore throat - I picked some Thyme from the garden, boiled it up and drank the tea. Then I went out and picked some ripe elderberries and made a cough syrup with it - which tastes delicious and will stave off a bad cough. I am also drinking a lung tea mix, courtesy of Brixton Wholefoods recipe without the peppermint - so it contains hyssop, mallow, mullein, coltsfoot, yarrow - plus other herbs I can't remember now but it works to support the lungs and generally for respiratory problems.

Monday raining all day in Brixton Market

Drenched when I got home1

Making Elderberry cough syrup

Black Elder in the garden

Make Your Own Tomato Fertiliser

I'm not a hater of nettles, they contain so many nutrients and they grow in good soil. I don't like the pain when you accidentally touch one, it lasts a long time. Dock, which would resolve the issue of the sting, does not grow in my garden which is a shame.

This year, in the Spring, I made a really tasty nettle soup, I've rinsed my locks with nettle leaf tonic after shampooing and I made a large bucket of garden fertiliser.

Comfrey too, makes a similar fertiliser  for the garden but it is potent in a different way.

trailing cherry tomatoes - seeds from 99p shop

Here's how you do it:

Nettle Fertiliser

1. Just cut down the nettles, do it in April/May when the nettles are still young and full of strength
2. Wearing rubber gloves, pick the nettles up and place them in a half bucket of water until fully submerged.
3. Fill the bucket with more water and place a lid over it.
4. Leave to stand for at least three weeks, or until the nettles turn to a smelly, slimy mush.
5. Take out the nettle mush put in on your compost heap.
6. This is your mother fertiliser.
7. Dilute this mixture 1 part fertiliser to 10 parts water and then water your tomatoes, or anything that needs a little feeding.

Comfrey Fertiliser
Use the same process but replace nettles with comfrey leaves

WARNING: You might want to wear a mask, this stuff smells like a sewer - I quite like the pure farmyardiness of the aroma, especially as I live in London it takes me out of the concrete and into the countryside.