Reframing weeds

Reframing Weeds

What are weeds? While we may grow up thinking they're troublesome and invasive, weeds are just plants that are out of place. In wild spaces, these same plants have really useful functions, providing food, forage and shelter for insects and wildlife. But when they end up in our gardens, we start to see them as a problem.

So many of the plants we consider pests are actually incredibly useful. While you may not want to encourage invasive plants, like bindweed, into your garden, we should consider giving over some space to 'weeds' if we want to be truly ecological.

Allowing space for nettles in your garden

Nettles are incredible plants. They are a really important habitat for butterflies, which lay their eggs on them, and they are also really nutritious and rich in iron and vitamin C.

While many of us might have some bad memories of being stung as children, if you grip them firmly when you pick them, they won't harm you. This is where the phrase 'grasp the nettle' comes from.

They're also great for our compost heaps and help to accelerate the composting process.

What to look out for when foraging for nettles

The first rule of harvesting nettles is to hold back when they're flowering or in seed, as they will be tougher and won't taste as nice. The ideal time to harvest them is when the leaves are young.

We can cultivate them by removing the flowering growth and encouraging them to grow new, young shoots. Just cut above a pair of leaves and new growth will emerge from this node. If you keep chopping them back to stop them from flowering, then you can harvest them all year round.

This will also help to fill the space in the hungry gap in spring, when there may be fewer leafy greens for us to harvest.

Consider cultivating wild plants in your garden

In the wild, plants can quickly become over foraged, which can damage ecosystems and lead to species loss. To mitigate against this, we can incorporate them into our gardens in wild patches. Some other edible wild plants you might consider introducing include plantain and cleavers.