Be a great neighbor!!!

I am a great farm sharer and I encourage everyone to be.  My neighbors and I trade tomatoes, potatoes (of course I have to mention spuds in my blog), and squash as well as flowering plants, apple starts and sometimes grass seed.  Some things should not be shared however!  The other day I was showing a neighbor around the farm - he is a hay farmer - and when we got to the cold frames with the squash he began to try to pull the nettle I have growing in there out!  Oh - he said - you cant have this growing in here!

 I had left the nettle in there so that I could harvest it for my tea products, particularly my detox tea that is an important part of my winter health program!  I have tried for a few years to establish a patch of nettle on the farm at various locations with no success - it wants to grow where it wants to grow!  These plants established themselves in the squash bin along the way and have done really well - I've made two harvest runs at them and they just keep producing!  So I have left them and they have dropped some seed and I have been able to harvest some seed as well to save for next year.

 The hay farmer neighbor was quite concerned that the nettle would escape into his field and make his hay much less salable due to it not being easily consumed by livestock.  He made a good point.  When I had started to try to establish a patch of nettle I never even though about how it might affect my neighbors - certainly not the ones a half mile away and up a fairly large hill from us!  I finally agreed that I would keep the nettle in the squash bin as best I can, but from now on I will think really hard about what I am planting and how it might affect my neighbors.  Poisonous plants and ones that might become difficult to control and contain will be hard pressed to find a place here at Wicked Raven.  I have experience with  mint getting out of control already even though I planted it inside a container!  It is rampant.  I will give you some hints and helps for that one in a post coming soon.  Nettle can become a rampant pest plant in some circumstances, but here in the "burn area" of Big Lake, the clay seems to be a deterrent for this plant spreading too wildly.  At least where I am.  That's not to say that it couldn't get out of control anywhere.  Nettle is a perennial plant and sometimes resumes growth after winter from rhizomes or root nodes.  Here in Big Lake, any perennial can be killed by the cold and I haven't had success finding nettle in the same place each year.  Im hoping it likes the squash bin and will come back there next year.  I would feel somewhat better about my neighborliness if it stayed in the box!

 

The above photo shows the seed on the paper towel from one harvest of the two plants in the squash bin!  The stack of twigs to the right of the glass jar are the ones that I harvested the leaf from and these seeds are all from those twigs - only about a dozen stems!  To the left of the glass jar are the newly harvested nettle stems that are waiting to go onto the towel and rack.  The orange prescription bottle is where I store the seeds that I save and these nettle seeds will go into that jar.  My harvested leaves go into the glass jar.  It takes a lot of nettle to get through the winter for us - I use it for a lot of things.  Nettle is an anti-asthmatic, it helps with liver function, and can assist other herbs as a cure for gout.  It has vitamins C, B, and beta-carotenes, among others.

Most folks are not able to handle nettle bare handed and you should take caution when you are handling it as it can sometimes cause a severe rash or other reaction.  I have never been bothered by nettle and only occasionally do I have to pluck a tenacious stinger out of my skin.  I brush them off and go about my day!

 Regardless of whether I am a good neighbor or not - nettle is a necessary plant.  I will however be more careful about how, where and what I plant and how it will affect my neighbors.  I hope that you will think about your neighborhood and how your planting affects that neighborhood!  I hope your affect will be only positive!