Talkback: Nettles

If you want the dock leaf trick to work you need to crush the leaves and squeeze the juice into the problem area. So says Ray Mears anyway. I kind of like nettles. Lets face it they are the first plant you learn as a child and i get to look like a Samaritan clearing up great clumps of public nettles when actually i am just feeding my rather woody compost.

I have to say nettles the English type give me a sting that lasts for at least a week but I also have the very pretty dead nettle in my garden and this has no sting at all, also has a pretty white flower.

I love the dead nettle too - I have pink and purple ones. I regularly put the nettles leaves in my compost - but not the roots.

OK - so to make a nettle feed, how much nettle in how much water for a month before then diluting 1:10, please...?

A daft question.............can you buy NETTLE seeds from garden centres. I rather like the idea of growing pots of the stuff, to make up a liquid feed, after the butterflys have done their thing with them!

Stinging nettles! At first sight a nuisance, and not really welcome in the garden, but a useful plant nevertheless ---- Pick nettle leaves at the fully-formed but young, dark green stage. Boiled 50/50 with spinach is a v. good green veg., and apparently high in iron. Pick anytime, but preferably before the mature "catkin" stage, loosely fill a bucket with the complete stem+leaves, and pour over boiling water. When cooled to tepid, soak your tired feet in the liquid - you'll be 'walking on air' afterwards, and it doesn't sting! If you can gradually immunise yourself to the sting, it's not painful after a couple of years. The 'sting' is still there tho', but like beestings, promotes circulation and relieves rheumatism.

I'm not convinced that I have the tenacity to spend a couple of years getting used to nettle stings! Roman soldiers, apparently, used to sting themselves with nettles to keep warm in cold winters: some would say that it served them right for running around the place wearing leather skirts

A relative with similar roots, leaves without the sting, also useful to butterflies, can cover an old shed and an ingredient of beer. Is of course the hop?