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Happy growing!
this evening I’m working out at our neighbors field down the road from us where we do a lot of our garlic and potato production uh this evening in particular I was doing some mowing with the electric mower the bagger on the back and using that to mulch some of the nursery beds and production beds that we have out here I thought I’d like to spend a little time looking at in particular our garlic patch for the season it’s really up it’s probably the strongest element in the field this season so far and look at a a surprising and really affirming and wonderful companion that showed up with the garlic this year that we’re learning about how to work with them and really appreciate them I’ll start looking at this field this is the southernmost field not the garlic field I’ll get to that uh in a moment but this is where we’re doing some potato production a lot of complex stuff happening in here that doesn’t look like much right now there’s tons and tons of little uh onion transplants that are mulched in with grass from the push mower I’ll be coming back out with an electric riding mower with a Agger on the back soon and mulching much more deeply that’s a pathway uh management strategy we use pretty extensively uh you can see here for example these are little starts of onions that have been put in little compost on top some rain settled in to get them growing and then grass clippings to pin it all down and add some nitrogen that formula works really nicely and so slowly but surely We’re translating this whole field from last year’s production into a mix of potatoes and transplants and other things doing the boundary and Edge mowing with the push mower but I’d like to take a look at our northernmost field here our third field and see how the garlic is doing and look at some friends that have shown up to really support what they’re up to our Middle Field needs a lot of work this will be a space we’ll look back on in a little bit we’re going to do a fairly large amount of sweet potatoes in here some uh more sunflower and amarinth got a bunch of squash going in here but that’s for a little bit later that’s more of the hot seas and stuff this block this is the one I really wanted to focus on in this video this was in potatoes last year if I can find the video I’ll link to it here and it’s a pathway we’ve been using quite a bit is going from field context wedi sod uh you know generic open field context first season is to do potato so where the garlic is is where potatoes were uh and then then try to time things appropriately so the potato Harvest comes out and the garlic goes more or less right in right now the garlic is looking very very solid this is without any plastic or irrigation or spray it’s entirely uh organic here and hand powered and part of what is keeping the weeds at Bay and the fertility up and the health and vibrancy of the garlic is this sweet little Champion purple dead nettle I’ll put on the screen the Latin name I don’t know it so I’ll have to look it up uh this is a lamac it’s a mint family friend extremely early and I will be honest early in the season around February or March when things started thawing out a little bit uh premature this season in fact you can see the purple dadle all throughout um I got a little bit worried it seemed pretty dominant it seemed kind of scary uh it was the main character the garlic seemed to have a hard time pushing through it and I had one initial thought of like oh we got to come out here with a team and pull it all I really wish I got some more photos and videos of that uh early in the season because it did seem daunting and overwhelming it’s the first time I’ve seen purple dead nettle as strong in a field as I did this year um then all of a sudden this just kind of magic switch happened where the garlic started taking off a little bit and the purple dead nettle quietly gently stayed where it was the bumblebees and the bees kept working on it this is an absolute fantastic early season brows for all sorts of flying allies little native friends and non-native friends alike me see if I can get a shot here there’s a sweet non-native lovely that’s a a European honeybee working on them I’ve seen bumblebees I’ve seen Mason bees everybody in between so providing an amazing brows this little purple dead nettle that the garlic does not offer that’s one of the things about uh growing garlic in these monocultural crops It’s a Wonderful high density high value high value density crop uh and low embodied energy to get us here but it does not offer a huge amount of the ecosystem as far as uh diversity and ideas for them to explore but this purple dead nettle really is and it segues so exquisitely and now we’re left with the areas where it was pretty gapy you know we had some uh hardwood cuttings it didn’t work that well and some bare soil where the nettle is a lot stronger and this is not stinging nettle I should be really clear there that is an entirely different uh plant and wherever there’s a little bit of light and opening it’s a little bit stronger but in the Interiors where the garlic pushed past it it is now absolutely a gentle ground cover rather than a dominant uh competitor to the garlic in fact I wouldn’t describe in actuality a single moment where it really was actually competing with the garlic early in the season the garlic had its stored energy down in the earth that um it was slowly getting up and now it’s photosynthesizing the purple dead nettle is moving towards sence and finishing up for the season they’ll drop seed into into here and my gosh I welcome it immensely the idea of this being a perennial uh bial ground cover combo I don’t know exactly who it is I suspect they are bial please correct me please let me know in the comments uh this is technically an edible and medicinal plant really wonderful little being all throughout this garlic patch I don’t know how it showed up but my gosh what a beautiful thing super fine reminder when you are working in plant systems are Earth Systems animal systems what have you get to know the crew who is showing up and before you make decisions big strokes and big management decisions about you got to go I got to eradicate I got to control and dominate what are they up to what’s actually happening and here we are in this garlic field this is about as good as I could hope our garlic to ever look we’re in the first week of May and it is exeler ecstatic and healthy and beautiful and on its way to a beautiful crop I ran the uh weed eater down the walkways just to the string trimmer just to like knock down some of the grasses that were in there in the little light gaps but this is a beautiful field of garlic with an exquisitely wonderful little champion of a ground covering support plant along with it I’m so glad to have got to know them a little bit better folks have suggested in the past that purple dead nle is a really super fine and sweet companion to the aliam crew in general and my gosh it has panned out to be true we’ll share more updates as things unfold in here but right now we are on track uh barring some extreme heat wave or some extreme profound drought uh this will be one of the better growing seasons for our garlic this is an irrigation free field uh we do not add any fertilizer no chemicals as you notice there is absolutely no plastic drip irrigation this is a Segway pathway um plan of working with potatoes for deep tillage deep perennial uh weed eradication transferring translating directly into a strong garlic crop with some tree crops in the middle there’s hazelnuts in there and then once the garlic comes out in July we’ll transition this into a broad array of annual crops and go from there this pathway has worked well really well for us please share what are your feelings on this little wonderful friend purple dead nettle uh do you like them what do you do with them do you work with them for tea for medicine let’s talk more about this particular plant let’s highlight it since it’s been so nice to us this spring so far um and what are some other really wonderful companions that you have found in your fields for uh your annual crops your banal crops who pops up and shows themselves and turns out to be absolutely wonderful we found pane in midseason to be a fantastic ground cover for tomatoes and the hot weather um chickweed was beautiful and lovely and amongst the lettu uses early in the season there’s always these little serendipitous friends that show up just have to keep an eye and ear open and a sensibility a Spirit open to the idea that most of these plants are friends how do we work with them how do we adjust ourselves so we can be friends too
26 Comments
So far, I simply let it grow and do not pull it out. Now, I am motivated to experiment and explore.
How interesting 🤔. 💖👵🏻👩🌾❣️
I'm so pleased with my garlic. It's always been such a reliable crop! And so easy!
I don't see much purple dead nettle here but I will nurture it if I do.
Have you ever encountered allium rust with your garlic cultivation? Do you have any thoughts on prevention or dealing with it?
Are the seeds in burrs? I had a plant just like this, and in the end it was full of sticky round burrs.
Lovely to learn about this. I've got lots of p. deadnettle and its cousin bugleweed. Both look similar, but the bugleweed has much more flowers and more purple in the leaves. It is wonderful to see on the hillsides and to see all the pollinators visiting the flowers.
My garden was covered with dead nettles this year. It was everywhere. I thought my mint was everywhere, and then this stuff came in and seems to be a great spring cover crop. It's so pretty, too, with its little pink orchids at the top. So cute. It seems to have saved me from alot of bugs in the strawberry patch as well.
I have a lot of creeping charlie in some of my beds, not the garlic beds. I think creeping charlie can get a bit taller than purple dead nettle. But with growing roots, this seems fine as long as the root crop has enough light and the ground is damp. I keep wanting to rip it out, but gonna be patient with it and do some experiments.
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The best companion planting I've got going is hairy vetch. I planted a cover crop of hairy vetch and Daikon radish in a large crop plot at the far end of my property, where I usually grow things like potatoes, corn, beans, and squash. A lot of the ground is compacted and rocky just a couple inches down, and the soil varies a lot in organic matter, from nearly none to full of happy worms. I've seen lots of nitrogen nodules when I've checked the vetch roots, so it seems to be fixing nitrogen well.
I have a lot of pesky weeds and grass to deal with back there too, such as Canadian thistle. I made a few passes last year at cutting back what I didn't want, and letting the hairy vetch and radish grow as much as they wanted. The hairy vetch in particular eventually grew into a couple feet high rampaging masses of vegetation. It's rather easy to wrangle, flopping it over to smother other weeds that I just cut to smother them further. It self seeds well, and so I let most of go to seed and do it all again this year.
I'm simply clearing out circles of about 2 feet in diameter for lots of three sisters plantings and potato plantings, following up once a week or so to grab handfuls of vetch, tearing them out easily, and laying them down as mulch around my planted circles. It seems to be working great so far, and it's the lowest labor method I've found yet to keep my plantings doing well without getting swamped by weeds and grasses.
Awesome! I recently obtained seeds of purple dead nettle for the chicken patch (as well as chickweed), have a section currently fenced off to allow everything to establish and then gradually spread into the adjacent food forest as part of the ground cover with clover and yarrow.
Lamium purpureum makes a good tea, a bit of a "hay" taste, but refreshing! Our chickens also love it!
purple nettle and chickweed is the first, the white nettle second and now we have purslane all over the place! uh oh!
Edible, apparently.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamium_purpureum
Last year I planted garlic in a bed that had autumnal radicchio. The bed that had radicchio come back in it was twice as large as the bare soil garlic. I found that very interesting.
I’ve got creeping Charlie that has been among my strawberries and so on without issue for a few years. This year however, it has become competitive with asparagus as well as the strawberries. I’m not sure what has allowed it to out-compete the crop plants, but it has definitely become unwelcome in it’s 4th year in my garden. I’ve been struggling to pull it all. Be careful of the apparently innocuous “weed”, just in case it turns into an unwelcome monster when conditions are just perfect for it to take over….
Purple nettle is called ground ivy in French.not in the ivy family either ! I have found it to be a very polite weed, shares space easily. In an open context like yours where light is not a premium I see it's z good companion to tall, skinny plants.
I sometimes crinkle it to slow it down, as light is becoming rare under my fruit trees, in an urban plot, I can't move the garden space. After spring it's soon gone.
So i've never given it much thought. Now i'm interested.
I never really noticed the purple nettle mints much until a few years ago. Scrapped together a bunch of the chop n drop, then went to town on a few corner areas with hand cutters and plopped it all together on some brick out of the pathway. Eventually it blends in like more plant coverage and an obvious dry crusty layer of chaff over that one particular patch. Winter rolled through and compressed it all. By the time everything melted it had done the compost cycle and in these early spring months, the entire cluster had EXPLODED with these Purple Mints, and acted like a surface covering the whole next season out of amusement to see what it did, a few other flowers and vines poking up around them. It's still there waiting to be scraped clean off the brick, but these purple mints have since colonized throughout other patches of the yard and allowed more of the barren patches to break through and add the extra biome and moisture it needed in the first place. I'm cool with the pioneer crop doing its thing and sealing in ground moisture, and bringing in the bugs and bird life to the scene again.
Lovely video! I wish I had it your way. Dead nettle grows very strong in my garden in NZ. And can Totally smother our garlic especially early in the spring. We are struggling to grow garlic at all these days. With rust coming early. Maybe we need some new varietys. Any advice welcome.❤
Looks wonderful! Sounds like the PDN is a great understory for a garlic canopy. So nice when you can do less, have more life, and harvest as much or more as you would have if you chose the plant removal method!
Dead Nettle happened heavy and early here in Indianapolis . It was daunting… I’m a bid fan now as a companion to garlic, onion, trees and shrubs.
Thought this video of hedge laying from 1942 might have value.
https://youtu.be/WoprVhpOKIk
I use a free app called Picture This that uses AI to ID plants I don’t recognize. It’s right the VAST majority of the time. Helped me ID dormant seedlings in winter, and leafy green things I don’t recognize. 👍🏻
Pls. Come to Italy and teach us !!!
I agree that deadnettle isn't bad, but assuming that weeds are moving north- alehoof often moves into deadnettle spaces and it's allelopathic and beastly difficult to get rid of once it's established so it's a good idea to keep an eye out to make sure it's not moving in.
Dense garlic planting; do you thin for spring garlic?