Nettle and 5 ways to get rid of it at their summer cottage

Nettle, despite its potential benefits, is a malicious weed that burns the skin and causes discomfort.

In the spring, it actively spreads through the garden, preventing plants from developing and gaining strength. There are several effective ways to get rid of weeds.

Tillage with a weed chopper

A laborious, long, but effective way to get rid of nettles is tillage with a chopper. It is recommended for use in early spring, when nettle shoots have just begun to hatch out and have not yet formed seeds.

Using the tool, you need to work out the soil to a depth into which it can crash, thereby pulling out the roots and shoots of the weed.

After that, you need to collect nettles and burn them or put them in a compost pit as an addition to the green layer. It will be necessary to cultivate the soil several times until the bushes completely disappear.

Digging the site

A long-living bush has a root system up to several meters deep. It will be extremely difficult to get rid of such a bush by hand weeding.

Therefore, you need to dig the soil on the bayonet of a shovel, manually collect and pull out all the bare roots, and then cover the area with nettles with something dark, for example, black film, cardboard, a piece of roofing material. This technique will deprive the roots of the plant of sunlight. They stop growing and eventually wither away. Digging should be repeated in late autumn. Before winter, seeds and roots will be turned out with a shovel, which will freeze the culture.

Folk remedies

In the fight against a stinging weed, you can use long-established folk methods:

• 40% solution of potassium salt for surface spraying of nettles;
• watering young vegetation with boiling water, followed by covering with mulch;
• displacement by aggressive green manure crops or crops with predatory behavior that will drown out the weed;
• burning the place of nettle growth with a blowtorch.

herbicides

Nettles can be quickly and effectively controlled with herbicides. They suppress both the aerial part and the root. The plant will dry out after treatment. But it is necessary to carry out processing before the appearance of seeds, otherwise the nettle will sprout again in the same season.

Experienced gardeners recommend such herbicides as: “Hurricane Forte” for spraying the green mass of the weed, “Roundup” with low toxicity to humans and animals, “Zenkor”, used in the spring on newly emerged nettles.

Mowing nettle bushes

Weed culture tends to grow along fences, often outside the site. To achieve a neat appearance of the cottage, you can mow the bushes as they grow.

Additionally, mowed weeds can be covered with dense roofing material, depriving them of light, thereby making them weak. Instead of this material, which emits an unpleasant odor due to heating by sunlight, sawdust or spruce litter can be used.

You can get rid of nettles in your summer cottage in many ways, choosing, among other things, an environmentally friendly and safe approach.