Aussiegav said:
I took garden shears to Two Tier main wall on the right side today. Cut back all the nettles….
Nice one Gav, though a bit of ‘nettle beta’ will hopefully be useful:-
Shears probably isn’t the answer, though for a particularly tall crop, shearing them to a foot above the ground might be a useful start point.
Nettles do pull out of the ground fairly readily, if you grasp the stem near its base. They won’t break off like many plants, and a length of root will come out with the stem.
Obviously you do need leather gloves for this - I always have a pair in my sac for belaying - but this approach will last much longer than shearing.
I pulled all the nettles out around the adit entrance at Smalldale last week, and you couldn’t tell there’d been any nettles there when I went back yesterday. I’ll try to do some other sections at the base of that wall in the coming days (if I find myself back there). I wish others would do the same, but the lack of summer veg clearance undertaken by the younger generation seems sadly pitiful to me. I carry a host of cleaning kit in my sac in the summer, including secateurs and a saw. And I use them….
Last one on nettles: sadly, whilst my approach will give you a decent result for a season, it isn’t the final solution. If you’ve ever attempted to dig out a patch of nettles, you’ll know that the root system - which is bright yellow - is really extensive. Round up, anyone…