Nettles and Nicer Things

Nettles
Neil Munro (1864 - 1930)


O sad for me Glen Aora,
Where I have friends no more,
For lowly lie the rafters,
And the lintels of the door.


The friends are all departed,
The hearth-stone's black and cold,
And sturdy grows the nettle
On the place beloved of old.

There's deer upon the mountain,
There's sheep along the glen,
The forests hum with feather,
But where are now the men?

Here's but my mother's garden
Where soft the footsteps fall,
My folk are quite forgotten,
But the nettle's over all.

My first experience with nettles was when I was a young adult, and visited a house my friend wanted to buy and restore. The house was over 100 years old and what had been the yard was weeds nearly head high. At the edge of the weeds, I sniffed mint and maybe catnip, and I was on the hunt! I had no idea that there was a plant like nettle. Oh, in a fairy tale once, as a child, I had read about a girl weaving a nettle shirt for her beloved, who had been bewitched and turned into a swan. But no one ever explained what nettle was.
When we got back to the car my legs were on fire, everywhere. I thought I had walked into a nest of fire ants. The first time I read about nettles and their painful properties, I knew exactly what I’d experienced.

It’s understandable that your first painful experience with the plant would lead you to want only information how to stop the burn, and kill the plant. It helps to know that dock, which often grows with nettle, can be rubbed on the sting to cool the skin and ease the pain. Some say that the juice of the nettle stem will do the same thing. Having picked the nettle today, and getting the inevitable sting, I tried the juice of the nettle stem, and it worked!

But the information and lore about nettles is prolific, and interesting to read. http://www.gaias-garden.co.uk/Herbs/Nettle.html
There are many recipes available as well, but nettles cook up just like spinach and are used in the same way – except of course you never serve nettles raw in a salad, unless perhaps the person you’re dining with talks too much!

Today was my first Nettle hunt of the year.
Every early Spring, I search the moist rich areas of the property, and pull all the nettle. I wear gloves, but still I always get stung. It is a Spring right of passage into gardening weather. Note that I “pull” the stuff, I don’t leave the roots behind. But it doesn’t matter. It comes back every Spring. I generally get a couple of stir frys out of the harvest, and one year I put it all into a bucket of water and made nettle fertilizer tea. WHEW! You may think you’ve smelled rotten nasty things, but you have yet to smell anything worse than fermenting nettle. http://www.gardeningdata.co.uk/soil/nettle_manure.php
I put it in the compost and it got used that year on the garden, but I don’t think I’ll try the tea again. Why not just rot it in the compost heap, if it’s not going into a recipe?

On to nicer things; an afternoon spent with Judy over Dr Peppers and under the clear blue sky and warm sun. After the Nettles, how nice!! She called me over for a surprise gift. She's always doing that - bringing home divisions, or potted plants, just on a whim that I would have a place for them. Of course, she knows I always do! Today she had for me a primrose,

PRIMULA ELATIOR, POLYANTHA PRIMROSE.

It is a surprise for me, so I'm still thinking where to put it. I think I'll put it in the border of the east bed where my favorite witchhazel grows. That's the same sun exposure hers have and they do well. That is also where the "Pink Forsythia"

[Abeliophyllum distichum roseum] will go (also a gift from Judy). I think that area will be focused on pinks and yellows.

I started out at this house in 1996 planning a friendship garden, but I have so many friends who've shared so many plants that every useable plant space is turning out to be a friendship garden! I just realised I need to start a plant list of gift plants, so when I start forgetting, it'll be there for posterity.

Judy also gave me a healthy little relative to my Sweet woodruff (Galium odoratum).

It looks like this, though it's not blooming and I don't know the flower color.

Such a productive day! The Southwest "garden", shaded by Hemlocks and surrounding woodland, is done except for removal of the piles of branches to await a safe burn day, and the planting of a couple of azaleas to add color.

Today I planted the Lily of the Valley, transplanted the Yellow Archangel, placed the bench and cleaned up branches. Oh, and that area is where the Nettle was so I removed that. It will be a quiet, not very colorful spot, with the only pop of color being the azaleas.

The front borders are done until the spring bulbs die down and I get a soil test.