Last summer, still new to our property in Clatskanie, I was obsessed with killing the Himalayan Blackberries that seemed to be taking over the east edge of the property. Oh how I hated the blackberries! I spent many hours killing them, and I felt like such a hypocrite as I was aggressively cutting them back and then would stop to eat a few delicious berries whenever I saw them.
One late-summer day last year, I was out killing blackberries at the south end of our north acre when I discovered (the hard way) that the large stand of plants I’d just walked through were stinging nettles. Ouch!
A nettle sting is not at all as painful as the cut of a blackberry thorn, and the nettles do not creep along the ground where you least suspect them to trip you as blackberries do. But nettles are evil in a way that is almost worse than the horrible blackberries: Blackberry vines are painful if they stick you, but with the nettles you have only to barely touch them and you will sting at the point of contact for many hours.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that some folks would be happy to have nettles on their property, as they can make tinctures and teas and other stuff with them. Here’s more info about that and here is the recipe. Personally, I think the nettle leaves smell just vile and can’t imagine imbibing this tincture, no matter how much alcohol is in it!
Now let’s fast-forward about a year to very early this summer, when I noticed that what last year had been a large stand of nettles had now spread to become a really huge stand.
Realizing that these plants are apparently pretty invasive, a few weeks ago I spent several hours killing the nettles. Wearing a long-sleeve shirt and leather gloves (more on that later), I pulled the nettle stalks up by the root and dug out as much of their traveling network of roots as I could. But when I surveyed the nettle stand after what felt like so much work, I’d made only a very small dent in the problem. And what’s worse, I saw that afternoon that the nettles had made quite a lot of progress growing along the path onto our south acre, what we call Trillium Trail.
The nettles were filling in the space on the east side of the path, an area that is only about 10-15 feet wide before it dips far down to a ravine with a stream (well, a mere trickle in the summer months) that skirts the eastern edge of the property. In the photo below, I am at the entrance of the trail, on its north edge, and you can see the nettles to my left.
Last week I went out Trillium Trail to see just how far down the property the nettles had gotten, and it was far: about 90 feet. Starting there, I got to work, eradicating them as thoroughly as I could, working my way northward back up the trail. I worked hard to dig up every one of the damn pioneering nettles and dig up their roots as much as I could while also avoiding the thorns of the blackberries that were everywhere. I made very good progress, making it maybe 20 feet up the path, trying but mostly failing to keep from trampling and damaging too much of the other foliage.
Today I went out again, this time making it another 15-20 feet up the path and still trying as much as possible to not wreak too much havoc on the surrounding plants. But this time, while deep in the vegetation, I discovered what we’ve been looking for ever since we moved here: A path down to the stream! My work to murder nettles stopped, replaced by intentional trailblazing to cut a path from Trillium Trail to the stream. What a find!
This pic doesn’t do it justice: here’s a short video that shows it off a little better (but only a little).
Side note: The path takes you into what feels like a dense, secret forest. A few days after I cut this path I returned with the goal of exploring the best approach to make it all the way to the stream. I ventured deeper into the little forest, which was very densely overgrown and had many fallen branches and trees on a very steep slope, making it very difficult to navigate. I soon got near enough to see the water at the bottom of a deep ravine, so far to the east that it is no longer on our property. Standing there, deciding there really was no reason to continue, it was the swarm of hungry mosquitos that had me turning around and heading back up to Trillium Trail. Oh well.
But back to the damn nettles…
I’ve got about 50 more feet of nettle-murder to go until I reach the head of Trillium trail. But I find that the closer I get to the head of the trail and the original stand, the more densely packed the nettles are. I figure three more work days should do it, then I’ll have the original stand to start on.
Last summer I focused on the damn blackberries, but this summer I vow to eradicate the damn nettles. Maybe by September or so they’ll be gone, until next summer (and the next… and the next) when they all come back, because that underground network of roots is extensive!
To be clear, even though it looks like this project will go on and on forever and even though I complain about the damn nettles (and the damn blackberries), I really love doing yard work. I’m not sure if this is a form of masochism, but I actually enjoy this!
Let’s close this story by going back to those long sleeves I so carefully wore when I worked on the nettles: On my first and second big nettle-murder days, everything was fine. But this time, both my forearms were very uncomfortably stung. I’ve since researched it and found that “People pulling weeds have even been stung through cloth gloves. Nettles have hollow stinging hairs about 1 millimeter long on their leaves and stems” [source]. I do have special arm-gloves I got for working on the blackberries last year. I guess I’ll start using them for the nettles, too.
Seriously: be careful around nettles! If you want to really geek out on the chemical profile of the damn plant, here’s an article on it from the International Journal of Molecular Sciences.
By the way, from what I have read, my experience with nettles are much more mild than what many others experience. The best at-home treatment I’ve come across is to coat the area with a paste made from baking soda and water. But, yeah. Nettles are horrible. Pretty plants, but horrible.
*The photo at the top of this post was taken by Tomislav Tosti [source]