Stinging Nettle and the Keyhole Garden

If you’ve ever grabbed a weed to pull it up and for your efforts got a handful of nasty stinging sensations, you may have met up with nettle, urtica dioica. This experience was my first intro to this plant. That was many years ago, and since moving from the farmhouse to here in the woods, there hasn’t been any. None rode along with the menagerie of plants I carted in. It might not have survived anyway. Nettle needs really good soil.

The Fedco catalog offers nettle seeds, and last year I bought a packet. You might be wondering why anyone would plant a stinging weed. I seeded it partly to have more weed variety than the plantain and dandelion which established themselves in disturbed soil back when the house was built.

Another reason is that it is thought to be, in terms of permaculture, a nutrient accumulator. This is a plant that draws nutrients from the soil bringing them to the surface. After the plants die down in fall the leaves can be left in place to provide mulch. Or they can be hauled off to the compost pile. Either way, the nutrients recycle.

Nettle is full of stingy little hairs

I planted the nettle seeds at one end of the first of our two keyhole gardens, click here for the first post on the keyhole garden, and here for the following year. The nettle got off to a slow start. The garden was built on top of a generous layer of pine boughs. They had not yet broken down, and none of the numerous varieties of plants I had stuck into the garden were thriving. It is said of nettle that you can tell how good your soil is by how well it grows. I kept adding compost, manure, and dirt to the keyhole as I'd done all along.

Last fall I pulled up the patch, roots and all, and contributed it to the compost pile. Like comfrey and horseradish, root bits left in the ground become new plants. A whole new crop emerged this spring.

And this year, things have changed in the keyhole garden. For the first time I can dig into the soil without the shovel being deflected by a layer of pine boughs. There are blackened bits remaining, but for the most part they have dissolved. My small nettle patch shows signs of robust growth, as do other perennials in the keyhole.

Nettle is a herb with many uses. In a future post I’ll fill you in on some of the fabulous things that this plant is known for. Meanwhile, you might consider putting nettle seeds on your shopping list. -jmm

The Zen of Weeding

I like weeding. I enjoy the time spent.  Am i crazy? Or even a little masochistic? I shove the weeding tool down by the roots, give a little prying action, then grab the weed and pull. It’s a part of the gardening experience.

Weeds are nature’s design to leave no bare spaces. Nature fills in. Voids are taboo. And so the weeds have entered into the spaces. Enter the weeds.

like empty canvas

nature fills the vacant space

so, enter the weeds

Weeding takes focus. All of my attention. It is a sort of meditation. Meditation is about being here, right now. Not thinking of either past or future. I pluck the weed and make sure the roots come out with it.

A healthy patch of weeds

i have great respect

for all nature's weedy gifts

yet, the weeds must go

Weeds are a good sign. They mean we did our job with manuring and getting the compost around. This year they are looking fat and healthy. To the compost pile they go, completing a cycle of growth to waste and waste to growth.

as veggies are picked

spaces in garden return

so enter the weeds

Herman Hesse wrote Siddhartha, a book about spiritual seeking and enlightenment. Sidhartha had his most enlightened time as a ferryman on the river. He had left the spiritual orders and religious teachers to spend his days listening to the river and ferrying people. He had stopped seeking answers. He felt no need to seek, just to be.

the garden thrives

with great bounty to sustain

without weeds for now

Weeding Is just weeding. There is no past and no future. There is the garden, the weeds and me. Pulling weeds by hand is not a chore and not something to avoid. It is my meditation. I don't need to think about anything. Just pluck ‘em out. The zen of weeding. -G.H.