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What's wrong with my nettles?

bédébédé Posts: 3,095
edited May 2023 in Plants
I have lots of nettles in wild corners, both sun and shade.  They make lovely foliage plants with zero leaf damage.  A very few blackfly, but none of the lepidoptera caterpillars that are supposed to use nettles as a preferred food source.  I have never seen a caterpillar on my nettles though I get all the right sort of butterflies.
 location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand.
"Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."

Posts

  • DovefromaboveDovefromabove Posts: 88,147
    Try cutting them down in late June as I described here … this provides the fresh growth needed by the second brood of tortoiseshells 
    https://forum.gardenersworld.com/discussion/comment/2568100#Comment_2568100

    Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.





  • bédébédé Posts: 3,095
    edited May 2023
    That's more or less what I do when they start to seed or wind & rain blows them over.  Chelsea chop?  I still get wonderfully perfect, uneaten  leaves on the 2nd flush.
     location: Surrey Hills, England, ex-woodland acidic sand.
    "Have nothing in your garden that you don't know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful."
  • Slow-wormSlow-worm Posts: 1,630
    That's an odd one, because we had loads of nettles in our horse pastures, and I had to be careful what I picked because they were always covered in caterpillars. These were in full sun, I don't know if that makes any difference. I would always chop them down for the neds until they started maturing - rough, severe chopping with a muck rake - they didn't care a bit. Maybe that did it, who knows? 
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