I keep the purple dead nettle on the perimeter of my gardens. My wife, however allows it to run all through her flower gardens. We also eat the purple heads (a few) in our chopped salads, until it get hot out and it isn't too palatable anymore and other greens have come on. So it is completely a choice. Do you like the aesthetic? Keep some, pull some when you are ready to plant other things. Interplant with it. Or just keep chopping and dropping it. However, if you allow it to grow and seed, you will have lots of purple dead nettle in that location from seed in the future. And yes, it has a wonderful root system and feeds the soil life. I also have creeping charlie that I've allowed to grow as the ground cover for our asparagus hugel mounds. It can be pulled back, but always seems to find its way back in. I even bury it every few years with cardboard and wood chips when I'm "feeding" the asparagus.
Some really great notes here... Creeping Charlie for Asparagus makes a lot of sense. I think since we hope to have most of these beds transition to other crops moving forward I may not want a ton of the dead nettle throuough, but edges would be grand!
Beautiful! On my allotment the purple dead-nettle stays. I find it is very popular with the bumble bees (until the foxgloves flower, which are also a weed here) and it disappears in summer (probably because I don't disturb the soil much and the top gets too dry and warm for them). They are also so easy to pull whenever I want to use the space for something else. This year (my second) I even took the effort of removing other weeds carefully around them. I still have to see what happens in the long run. With my tendency to leave some weeds around because I like them, I might start annoying my neighbours... I don't think the bugs mind though, and the weeds I keep don't seem to disturb the crops.
i concur 😊 my first month on my allotment and ive yet to pull dandelion or nettle roots, just cut back to come again, and no doubt i will cause my fellow plotters to twitch a little..😂😂😂
The dead nettle gets along with everything else in my garden so far, so I leave it where it wants to be. It does especially seem to like garlic.... or they like the same soil biome habitat. Great video, as always!!
@@TheFreedomConversation I haven´t eaten it.... I have too many prickly nettles and other edible wild plants on my farm to keep up with them! Where did you hear it´s a super-food? Links welcome!! 🙂
Sweet to hear. I think we'll encourage and enjoy some nice patches of this beautiful plant and probably select it out of a fair number of these particular beds so we can transition them from garlic to the next crop in a smooth way
I've been growing the softneck garlic and with the way that I plant (a drunken squirrel), I find it really impossible to find it all. I wish I planted hardneck garlic like the elephant garlic instead. I may switch, and just let the softneck "go wild" and just be an aromatic confuser (that I can forage if desired).
You might need to plant some sort of tree-sized garlic to find it all in your system ;) I just this year decided to let some of my garlic stay in the ground, along with my shallots, walking onions, multiplier onions and daffodils, I have some really nice early spring greenery, and can nosh on most of it when it's needed.
In a hundred yr old cabin I moved into back in the 80s in the smoky mtns...there were 2 orchards albeit a bit overgrown and shy of needful pruning by a few years...they were fully underplanted with what is called elephant garlic (which is an ancient leek from Scotland)which had naturalised under cherry ( montmorency type) and a white medium sized peach (which I never found a matching variety)....the old feller who had planted it in his youth (now 80s+) said they used to do that to keep birds and other pests away....it was still a very productive orchard after many years.
I love the early morning light on this abundance 🌅 I plant my garlic around the edges of any inground beds sporting too tasty fodder - I have a pesky groundhog who loves Swiss Chard and won't stay in "his" garden - to deter unwanted attention - like you @CanadianPermacultureLegacy - in fact that's who turned me on to the trick! Thank you both for your hard work and willingness to share. We all appreciate it greatly ❤
I notice that purple dead nettle next to the garlic, does Sasha harvest that too? If she has some ideas or recipes to share on the dead nettles, I’d love to see/hear. We are in zone 6b and our Purple dead nettle is gone by end of April. I would let it be in your beds, it’s wonderful for the bees in early spring. We harvest some fresh to add in our spring salads. We harvest more to dry and add to tea.
I love dead nettle everywhere , it's easy enough to break off at the root and drop as mulch in out context of most garden veggies. Also henbit and chickweed . Alot of places this is a thick matt that I sickle down and plant into yearly
Great notes! There is a bed that is entirely chickweed and dead nettle and I plan to simply transplant summer starts right into it. Excited to try that!
Beautiful garlic! It looks so healthy. The bees and bumblebees love purple dead nettle, so I leave it in my tiny garden. It has meshed well with thornless blackberries that I bought from you years ago.
I mulch with leaves in the fall and the excess snow this year really packed them down. My garlic has not been a fan of sprouting through it. I have fluffed a bit in hope of seeing a few more sprouting. Thanks for the video, always informative.
Would love to see (or maybe you have and I don't see) a video on the different weeds you have and what you've learned to keep them at bay. You said "Canada thistle" and I almost broke out in a sweat! I've tried all the suggestions I can find to no avail.
Yeah, the thistle is a tough one. I have a hori and plunge cut down low to take up as much as I can but I suspect there is some sort of soil imbalance at play that allows them to thrive... More to learn!
@@edibleacres after I wrote my comment and before I saw your response, I was outside with my drill and auger planting and some of the thistles came right out with it (with a little maneuvering), root and all!
I'm looking at my old bath raised bed where I've got my garlic, and I've been deliberating over whether or not to weed inbetween them for a while. We get herb Robert and a Cardamine spp filling in any gaps, but both are such classic annual weeds with super shallow root structures, they don't seem to negatively impact on the garlic at all; they just seem to be a living mulch/ scaffold/ slight windbreak for the garlic 🤔 I've chop and dropped it before, but I'm kind of keen to hold my nerve this year. Always a pleasure to see what you're doing at significantly larger scale!
I mulched my hardneck too thick with leaves in the fall and they started coming up yellow and spindly so I removed the leaves and the new growth was green and healthy. A few weeks later there was no difference between the yellow ones and the rest. Lesson learned!
Side topic - my friends growing up had a dog (an admittedly easy-to-train golden retriever) that they trained to use the bathroom in one particular spot under a tree in the corner of the yard, so they didn't need to watch out for surprises in the rest of the yard. I've been unable lately to get the idea out of my head of training one's pup to do the same and turning the dog bathroom into a compost area - go out every day or two and cover up the fresh deposits with woodchips, working as a sort of deep bedding method for dogs. Anyway, that could be a neat next project with your pups, Sean, if you find yourself looking for one!
I have had a covering of dead nettle the last two years. All I have done is when they start getting taller and it warms up I'll come through and weedeat them down and the area is ready to plant. I've also removed parts of it by hand or with a hoe, but the other option has worked well.
I inherited heirloom elephant garlic on an acre I bought here in North Central Texas in 2011. It grows well in sun or part shade, transplants easily, moves about like walking onion. For me it grows so densely that it would displace nettle or other plants. The scapes, which are about two weeks away from their lavender display, sometimes with stems that grow in interesting curves, are great for Japanese-style flower arrangements (ikebana) and dry well, even retaining a hint of their lavender color. I really should use it more for cooking than I do.
I was going to ask about the deadnettle when I spotted it at 0:50. Now that I'm done the video and you are asking for opinions, I would say to remove it. It grows a little TOO tall for garlic (roughly 1.5 feet) and you can probably still remove it now, but oh boy if you wait another season it may be really tough to ever get rid of it. It's a great plant, don't get me wrong, but it REALLY wants to take over a spot. I think the main reason is that it sows multiple times per year (in my experience). It's a great companion for bushes and trees, but not really ideal for this context. Another option would be to keep a section of it, but put walkways (if heavily used) between it and the garlic patch. I have also found that it very much dislikes shade (will grow in the drip edge of trees, but not further inward), so a comfrey border could work as well, keeping those 2 playing well together.
We must have some different purple dead-nettle genetics, or actually different species. There are quite a lot of similar species. The Lamium purpureum here doesn't get taller than half a foot (I've watched so many of your (plural) videos that I can think in feet now ;)).
Thanks for your notes here! Yeah, I think in this open field context where there is a fair bit of hopes for direct sowing of crops into the future these sorts of plants are not super ideal. We have it in another bed there where it is mixed with chickweed... To my mind that can be an excellent place to put in nice transplants of cabbages, etc., as a ground cover, but I'm not into the idea of it being absolutely everywhere...
@@edibleacres That makes sense: in a smaller garden pulling it up is fast, and I transplant most of what I grow (Dowding style) so I can sow earlier and they have a head start on the snails. But if you want to sow direct in an open field, having dead-nettles wouldn't work. I'm learning a lot from you and @CanadianPermacultureLegacy, especially about thinking outside of the box with mixing plants, so thank you both!
The Hardneck I purchased from you last year has come up, being in Northeast Michigan it isn't quite as tall as yours but so far it is looking fantastic.
Consider yourself lucky to get the big rain!! We’ve had warm winds for almost a month, then 2” of snow one day last Friday. The snow melted before 3pm. I’ve been hand watering every other day, but my garlic leaf tips are looking brown. IDK if its from the snow, or the winds drying them out… I’ve given it plenty of N supplement. I’ll add some compost, give another soaking, and reapply more mulch. Any thoughts? Also, I’d love to get some Sea Buckthorn from you, if and when you sell them. It’s hard to source them here in New Mexico. Thanks for another wonderful and informative video. Please keep the stellar content coming!! It inspires this “mere-mortal”!!
Looking good! The mulch is garlic’s best friend. In terms of ground cover options... I have found creeping charlie appears in places on my farm and the bumbles are buzzing around the flowers this time of year. I know they are aggressive, so I’m still trying to determine friend or foe?
Agreed. I love the smell of creeping charlie and it offers a reliable early food source for bees when native forage in Ohio is scarce, but my how it spreads. This year I'm trying to compost the sheets of it I've pulled from mulch paths. If I can find a sustainable yield from it, I'd feel a bit happier!
Creeping Charlie is tough... When a ground cover to shrubs and trees its a wonder plant, but in rotational and annual systems we tend to interrupt it so we can keep our options open.
Spring updates are all ways a blessing for the eyes and the mind to see life coming back in the fields and gardens and later to see all the bugs good and bad lol coming the birds to feed on the bugs and frogs and spiders and other things. It's all life folks some for the nourishment for the physical body and some for the eyes and all to satisfy the spiritual side also. So all in all it just a beautiful thought and landscape. Thx.
Not with alliums, but I leave the purple deadnettle in my tulip beds and it seems to be fine. The tulips punch right through without issue, and with how shallow the roots are on the deadnettle I don't feel like it competes with the tulip bulbs at all. I would feel like most bulb plants would behave similar in the presence of deadnettle. It seems to be popular with the pollinators, keeps the soil shaded from the sun, and provides an easy addition to things like garden pesto if I need just some extra greens to throw in.
I think I've planted about everything with garlic. I only grow 300 sqft. Love seeing everybody comment on this interplanting. This year I'm going to try just a monocrop of hardneck and cover crop afterward. Best laid plans of micd and men 🤪
Garlic being a fairly heavy feeder, I'm kinda thinking it doesn't need any competition......unless cover crop is actually adding something other cover the soil.......the hay mulch is feeding and holding moisture....been using hay mulch for years.....
Yeah, I think the dead nettle is pretty gentle in what it's grabbing from the soil but it's a short season to grow the largest garlic we can so I'm thinking it doesn't need the additional plant...
Hi Sean. I'm hoping to get my hands on some garlic,namely Elephant Garlic for this fall. Also Egyptian walking Onions. On 3 sides of our property we have weedy hayfields that belong to a very dear neighbor. The fields havent be cut in about 3 seasons now and he doubts that they will be ever again. The seeds of hay and weeds are taking over our yard. Saying all of that to say. Im thinking of using a combination of the afore mentioned plants with a mix of garlic chives, standard chives. Also mix in some Comfrey and Joy Pie weed. Does.this sound reasonable to you as a weed barrier? Thanks for another great video.
Turns out that I’ve been planting my gardens using the hugel mound method forever. I just called it granny’s method. I’d love to see the business model for the land share model. Maybe I missed it.
That is a goodly amount of garlic. Do you have any suggestions on where to source garlic to get to started with the level/amount of garlic growing you are doing?
Get a few pounds from someone like us and then ramp it up! I started with 5 pounds of seed a bunch of years ago! It would be crushingly expensive to buy all this seed garlic, so why not go slow!
@EdibleAcres ok I will try and grab some garlic seed from you when it becomes available. I have a bit of elephant garlic that I been saving year to year but I think I need another injection of starter seed to speed up population growth
My garlic is doing wonderful this year. We mulched with straw in the fall and pulled the heavy clumps away just as you’re saying here. Lovely garlic fields! Is this a cash crop for you? Do you sell for eating for for seed garlics?
We sell seed garlic. It is basically beyond organic and done with hand tools and no plastic, etc., but we keep our costs low so we can sell the seed at prices lower than most conventional wholesale operations!
Purple Deadnettle doesn't seem to phase garlic, but onions don't do well with it. Once it gets hot it goes away, so unless I'm planting onions I leave it. What variety of soft-neck garlic are you growing? I tried growing it one year and the cold winter killed it. Been growing hard-neck since.
I don't know the exact name of the softneck, as we had a number of them growing and have just selected for the largest bulbs of those who thrive during our random winters... 15 years later and we seem to have a pretty darn stable, purple tinted softneck that does well for folks. We don't excel at knowing variety names but we're good at selecting for seed stock that lives!
I leave big patches of purple dead nettle, henbit & creeping charlie for early pollinator support. No experience growing it purposefully with alliums. I can't bring myself to pull it because of the bees. I have in fact transplanted it for that very reason. It's not that hard to control. Other gardeners think I'm a heretic.
I had purple dead nettle pop up in my hightunnel this spring. I couldn't find any info on it, and it was very vigorous. So I pulled it and donated it to the chickens. At which point all the info about it's positive attributes immediately flooded forth from the internet. Now I wish I had it back. 😞. I have got to learn to follow my own rules! Thou shalt not kill!! Lol. At least not until attacked. 😉 By the way... Holy gargantuan garlic grove, Batman! We ordered what I thought was a rather large amount of seed from you last year. All of it is up and happy. However, I now know that I ordered about 1/5 the amount I wanted. But I know where to get more this year. 😉 Oh hey, do you think garlic would be ok in wood chip mulch? Right now I'm using sorrel leaves.
I'm sure some dead nettle will revisit and you can go a different path then! We'll have ample seed garlic this summer to offer, but you will have most likely 6x more than you planted as well, so you are on your way to having all the garlic you'll ever need!!
I was going to have an extension agent out to check if it is an imagination deficiency. I guess ID is common on some soil types. There has to be a spray for it!
@@edibleacres the manual says that if the garlic appears to have a downtrodden demeanor you can stem inject prozac to help them keep that negative energy in check.
Definite yes, just don’t til them in. I’ve heard sweet potatoes love them and I know living in northern california, I need a thick layer of woodchips on everything before the dry death heat of summer comes. God bless you!
It works. If thats whats available it will do just fine on the surface. Ideally when you plant the garlic, put a layer of compost or other nourishment down first and then the chips, since they won't feed the soil for a year or so and the garlic wants nourishment early...
I would like to transition to something like this in the future. If I missed it, how much input of organic matter and compost are you incorporating to allow this to grow so well per acre. Looks fantastic!
It is decently nice soil to begin with... Last year was potato as a crop and we added a LOT of compost from our chicken system to support that crop. Then ample leaves in the fall from folks bags and some bird bedding and lots of hay... Yeah, a fair bit of input at the early stage
I keep the purple dead nettle on the perimeter of my gardens. My wife, however allows it to run all through her flower gardens. We also eat the purple heads (a few) in our chopped salads, until it get hot out and it isn't too palatable anymore and other greens have come on. So it is completely a choice. Do you like the aesthetic? Keep some, pull some when you are ready to plant other things. Interplant with it. Or just keep chopping and dropping it.
However, if you allow it to grow and seed, you will have lots of purple dead nettle in that location from seed in the future.
And yes, it has a wonderful root system and feeds the soil life.
I also have creeping charlie that I've allowed to grow as the ground cover for our asparagus hugel mounds. It can be pulled back, but always seems to find its way back in. I even bury it every few years with cardboard and wood chips when I'm "feeding" the asparagus.
Some really great notes here... Creeping Charlie for Asparagus makes a lot of sense. I think since we hope to have most of these beds transition to other crops moving forward I may not want a ton of the dead nettle throuough, but edges would be grand!
Beautiful! On my allotment the purple dead-nettle stays. I find it is very popular with the bumble bees (until the foxgloves flower, which are also a weed here) and it disappears in summer (probably because I don't disturb the soil much and the top gets too dry and warm for them). They are also so easy to pull whenever I want to use the space for something else. This year (my second) I even took the effort of removing other weeds carefully around them. I still have to see what happens in the long run. With my tendency to leave some weeds around because I like them, I might start annoying my neighbours...
I don't think the bugs mind though, and the weeds I keep don't seem to disturb the crops.
Really thoughtful and gentle touch here, thanks for sharing
i concur 😊 my first month on my allotment and ive yet to pull dandelion or nettle roots, just cut back to come again, and no doubt i will cause my fellow plotters to twitch a little..😂😂😂
The dead nettle gets along with everything else in my garden so far, so I leave it where it wants to be. It does especially seem to like garlic.... or they like the same soil biome habitat. Great video, as always!!
Do you eat it? I hear its a super food. Is it tasty?
@@TheFreedomConversation I haven´t eaten it.... I have too many prickly nettles and other edible wild plants on my farm to keep up with them! Where did you hear it´s a super-food? Links welcome!! 🙂
Sweet to hear. I think we'll encourage and enjoy some nice patches of this beautiful plant and probably select it out of a fair number of these particular beds so we can transition them from garlic to the next crop in a smooth way
I've been growing the softneck garlic and with the way that I plant (a drunken squirrel), I find it really impossible to find it all. I wish I planted hardneck garlic like the elephant garlic instead. I may switch, and just let the softneck "go wild" and just be an aromatic confuser (that I can forage if desired).
I subscribe to the Drunken Squirrel Method. 😂
You might need to plant some sort of tree-sized garlic to find it all in your system ;) I just this year decided to let some of my garlic stay in the ground, along with my shallots, walking onions, multiplier onions and daffodils, I have some really nice early spring greenery, and can nosh on most of it when it's needed.
Hardneck is truly the strongest type of what we grow. I like a little softneck in the beds, but our main focus is/should be hardneck!
In a hundred yr old cabin I moved into back in the 80s in the smoky mtns...there were 2 orchards albeit a bit overgrown and shy of needful pruning by a few years...they were fully underplanted with what is called elephant garlic (which is an ancient leek from Scotland)which had naturalised under cherry ( montmorency type) and a white medium sized peach (which I never found a matching variety)....the old feller who had planted it in his youth (now 80s+) said they used to do that to keep birds and other pests away....it was still a very productive orchard after many years.
I love the early morning light on this abundance 🌅 I plant my garlic around the edges of any inground beds sporting too tasty fodder - I have a pesky groundhog who loves Swiss Chard and won't stay in "his" garden - to deter unwanted attention - like you @CanadianPermacultureLegacy - in fact that's who turned me on to the trick! Thank you both for your hard work and willingness to share. We all appreciate it greatly ❤
Thanks kindly!
We bought 10lbs from you last year and it's looking great! It's even bigger than the garlic we got from you the year before. Couldn't be happier.
That is so wonderful to read!
I could watch you show us what you’re up to all day! 🎉 so relaxing and inspiring to see what you are planting and nurturing.
Your videos are always so relaxing, inspiring, and educational. I appreciate your calmness and peace too, brother!
Hey thanks for the kind words!
Marvelous stuff, love your use of the English language
I like how you made a swale like system when you get too much rain. The garlic looks fabulous, my garlic this year looks great atm too.👍🏻🤠
So glad your garlic is growing well!
Fabulous Sean, love it! 😍💚🙏🧄
Thanks for this strolling survey. Beautiful field. Appreciate reminder that mulching is key to success. Happy May to you and Sasha!
Thanks Cary same to you!
Marvelous love watching an Australian living in thr Philippines
What a beautiful feast for the eyes to see all that garlic !
I notice that purple dead nettle next to the garlic, does Sasha harvest that too? If she has some ideas or recipes to share on the dead nettles, I’d love to see/hear.
We are in zone 6b and our Purple dead nettle is gone by end of April. I would let it be in your beds, it’s wonderful for the bees in early spring. We harvest some fresh to add in our spring salads. We harvest more to dry and add to tea.
We certainly will leave quite a bit, especially on the edges!
Super. Looks great. Thanks for sharing your very useful knowledge, tips and tricks! 🙏🌱🐞
My pleasure!
I love dead nettle everywhere , it's easy enough to break off at the root and drop as mulch in out context of most garden veggies. Also henbit and chickweed . Alot of places this is a thick matt that I sickle down and plant into yearly
Great notes! There is a bed that is entirely chickweed and dead nettle and I plan to simply transplant summer starts right into it. Excited to try that!
Beautiful garlic! It looks so healthy. The bees and bumblebees love purple dead nettle, so I leave it in my tiny garden. It has meshed well with thornless blackberries that I bought from you years ago.
Good to know. Yeah, it's a nice plant in the right context
Isnt purple dead nettle a super food? I have one plant and it seeded last year. I am excited to see babys here and there. Never did try a taste yet.
I mulch with leaves in the fall and the excess snow this year really packed them down. My garlic has not been a fan of sprouting through it. I have fluffed a bit in hope of seeing a few more sprouting. Thanks for the video, always informative.
Yeah, if they are fully intact leaves and deposited very thick garlic can end up having a pretty rough time popping through...
Would love to see (or maybe you have and I don't see) a video on the different weeds you have and what you've learned to keep them at bay. You said "Canada thistle" and I almost broke out in a sweat! I've tried all the suggestions I can find to no avail.
Yeah, the thistle is a tough one. I have a hori and plunge cut down low to take up as much as I can but I suspect there is some sort of soil imbalance at play that allows them to thrive... More to learn!
@@edibleacres after I wrote my comment and before I saw your response, I was outside with my drill and auger planting and some of the thistles came right out with it (with a little maneuvering), root and all!
I'm looking at my old bath raised bed where I've got my garlic, and I've been deliberating over whether or not to weed inbetween them for a while. We get herb Robert and a Cardamine spp filling in any gaps, but both are such classic annual weeds with super shallow root structures, they don't seem to negatively impact on the garlic at all; they just seem to be a living mulch/ scaffold/ slight windbreak for the garlic 🤔 I've chop and dropped it before, but I'm kind of keen to hold my nerve this year.
Always a pleasure to see what you're doing at significantly larger scale!
Purple dead nettle is in the mint family. Makes a mild tasty tea and has medicinal properties. I dehydrate it.
We appreciate the plant and work with it in small amounts
I mulched my hardneck too thick with leaves in the fall and they started coming up yellow and spindly so I removed the leaves and the new growth was green and healthy. A few weeks later there was no difference between the yellow ones and the rest. Lesson learned!
I have done that before to be sure! Even in this bed there was hay deposited a bit too thick in some areas, but they recover quite easily
Side topic - my friends growing up had a dog (an admittedly easy-to-train golden retriever) that they trained to use the bathroom in one particular spot under a tree in the corner of the yard, so they didn't need to watch out for surprises in the rest of the yard. I've been unable lately to get the idea out of my head of training one's pup to do the same and turning the dog bathroom into a compost area - go out every day or two and cover up the fresh deposits with woodchips, working as a sort of deep bedding method for dogs. Anyway, that could be a neat next project with your pups, Sean, if you find yourself looking for one!
Fun side adventure :)
we planted your garlic in the fall, and they are coming up beautifully! Washington County NY
Hoping they size up into some amazingly beautiful heads this season!
I have had a covering of dead nettle the last two years. All I have done is when they start getting taller and it warms up I'll come through and weedeat them down and the area is ready to plant. I've also removed parts of it by hand or with a hoe, but the other option has worked well.
That makes sense.
I inherited heirloom elephant garlic on an acre I bought here in North Central Texas in 2011. It grows well in sun or part shade, transplants easily, moves about like walking onion. For me it grows so densely that it would displace nettle or other plants. The scapes, which are about two weeks away from their lavender display, sometimes with stems that grow in interesting curves, are great for Japanese-style flower arrangements (ikebana) and dry well, even retaining a hint of their lavender color. I really should use it more for cooking than I do.
Great notes here!
Wow!!!! That garlic! 🤩
So happy with it
Can't wait to be harvesting scapes with you in this field!
I was going to ask about the deadnettle when I spotted it at 0:50. Now that I'm done the video and you are asking for opinions, I would say to remove it. It grows a little TOO tall for garlic (roughly 1.5 feet) and you can probably still remove it now, but oh boy if you wait another season it may be really tough to ever get rid of it. It's a great plant, don't get me wrong, but it REALLY wants to take over a spot. I think the main reason is that it sows multiple times per year (in my experience). It's a great companion for bushes and trees, but not really ideal for this context. Another option would be to keep a section of it, but put walkways (if heavily used) between it and the garlic patch. I have also found that it very much dislikes shade (will grow in the drip edge of trees, but not further inward), so a comfrey border could work as well, keeping those 2 playing well together.
We must have some different purple dead-nettle genetics, or actually different species. There are quite a lot of similar species. The Lamium purpureum here doesn't get taller than half a foot (I've watched so many of your (plural) videos that I can think in feet now ;)).
Thanks for your notes here! Yeah, I think in this open field context where there is a fair bit of hopes for direct sowing of crops into the future these sorts of plants are not super ideal. We have it in another bed there where it is mixed with chickweed... To my mind that can be an excellent place to put in nice transplants of cabbages, etc., as a ground cover, but I'm not into the idea of it being absolutely everywhere...
@@edibleacres That makes sense: in a smaller garden pulling it up is fast, and I transplant most of what I grow (Dowding style) so I can sow earlier and they have a head start on the snails. But if you want to sow direct in an open field, having dead-nettles wouldn't work. I'm learning a lot from you and @CanadianPermacultureLegacy, especially about thinking outside of the box with mixing plants, so thank you both!
The Hardneck I purchased from you last year has come up, being in Northeast Michigan it isn't quite as tall as yours but so far it is looking fantastic.
So great!
Consider yourself lucky to get the big rain!! We’ve had warm winds for almost a month, then 2” of snow one day last Friday. The snow melted before 3pm. I’ve been hand watering every other day, but my garlic leaf tips are looking brown. IDK if its from the snow, or the winds drying them out… I’ve given it plenty of N supplement. I’ll add some compost, give another soaking, and reapply more mulch. Any thoughts? Also, I’d love to get some Sea Buckthorn from you, if and when you sell them. It’s hard to source them here in New Mexico. Thanks for another wonderful and informative video. Please keep the stellar content coming!! It inspires this “mere-mortal”!!
Looking good! The mulch is garlic’s best friend. In terms of ground cover options... I have found creeping charlie appears in places on my farm and the bumbles are buzzing around the flowers this time of year. I know they are aggressive, so I’m still trying to determine friend or foe?
Love your name! :)
@@carybradley3968 thank you!
It’s a foe in my zoysia grass. Can’t dig it out, but in my flowers and garden it’s very easy to pull.
Agreed. I love the smell of creeping charlie and it offers a reliable early food source for bees when native forage in Ohio is scarce, but my how it spreads. This year I'm trying to compost the sheets of it I've pulled from mulch paths. If I can find a sustainable yield from it, I'd feel a bit happier!
Creeping Charlie is tough... When a ground cover to shrubs and trees its a wonder plant, but in rotational and annual systems we tend to interrupt it so we can keep our options open.
Spring updates are all ways a blessing for the eyes and the mind to see life coming back in the fields and gardens and later to see all the bugs good and bad lol coming the birds to feed on the bugs and frogs and spiders and other things. It's all life folks some for the nourishment for the physical body and some for the eyes and all to satisfy the spiritual side also. So all in all it just a beautiful thought and landscape. Thx.
In my raspberries the dead nettle always died in June and served as mulch both when living and dead to limmit grass seed sprouting.
Yeah, seems like an incredibly nice companion to raspberries!
Not with alliums, but I leave the purple deadnettle in my tulip beds and it seems to be fine. The tulips punch right through without issue, and with how shallow the roots are on the deadnettle I don't feel like it competes with the tulip bulbs at all. I would feel like most bulb plants would behave similar in the presence of deadnettle. It seems to be popular with the pollinators, keeps the soil shaded from the sun, and provides an easy addition to things like garden pesto if I need just some extra greens to throw in.
Great and positive opinion on this lovely plant, thank you!
Also we ferment the dead nettle and make vinegar from it
I think I've planted about everything with garlic. I only grow 300 sqft.
Love seeing everybody comment on this interplanting. This year I'm going to try just a monocrop of hardneck and cover crop afterward.
Best laid plans of micd and men 🤪
Good luck!
@@edibleacres Thanks for showing digging out the walkways. Great tip 👍
Garlic being a fairly heavy feeder, I'm kinda thinking it doesn't need any competition......unless cover crop is actually adding something other cover the soil.......the hay mulch is feeding and holding moisture....been using hay mulch for years.....
Yeah, I think the dead nettle is pretty gentle in what it's grabbing from the soil but it's a short season to grow the largest garlic we can so I'm thinking it doesn't need the additional plant...
Hi Sean. I'm hoping to get my hands on some garlic,namely Elephant Garlic for this fall. Also Egyptian walking Onions. On 3 sides of our property we have weedy hayfields that belong to a very dear neighbor. The fields havent be cut in about 3 seasons now and he doubts that they will be ever again. The seeds of hay and weeds are taking over our yard. Saying all of that to say. Im thinking of using a combination of the afore mentioned plants with a mix of garlic chives, standard chives. Also mix in some Comfrey and Joy Pie weed. Does.this sound reasonable to you as a weed barrier? Thanks for another great video.
Leave the dead nettles, good for bees, and they fade when it dries out, plus you can use for seasonal allergies
We certainly plan to leave some nice patches in this field
Turns out that I’ve been planting my gardens using the hugel mound method forever. I just called it granny’s method. I’d love to see the business model for the land share model. Maybe I missed it.
Shawn talks about his land share in earlier videos. Fun and informative 😊
Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.
Always our pleasure
That is a goodly amount of garlic. Do you have any suggestions on where to source garlic to get to started with the level/amount of garlic growing you are doing?
Get a few pounds from someone like us and then ramp it up! I started with 5 pounds of seed a bunch of years ago! It would be crushingly expensive to buy all this seed garlic, so why not go slow!
@EdibleAcres ok I will try and grab some garlic seed from you when it becomes available. I have a bit of elephant garlic that I been saving year to year but I think I need another injection of starter seed to speed up population growth
Any secrets on sea buckthorn? I had trouble getting them to transplant to the field.
They can be finicky sometimes... Warm soil and rich, we'll watered spots help them settle in
My garlic is doing wonderful this year. We mulched with straw in the fall and pulled the heavy clumps away just as you’re saying here.
Lovely garlic fields! Is this a cash crop for you? Do you sell for eating for for seed garlics?
We sell seed garlic. It is basically beyond organic and done with hand tools and no plastic, etc., but we keep our costs low so we can sell the seed at prices lower than most conventional wholesale operations!
Purple Deadnettle doesn't seem to phase garlic, but onions don't do well with it. Once it gets hot it goes away, so unless I'm planting onions I leave it. What variety of soft-neck garlic are you growing? I tried growing it one year and the cold winter killed it. Been growing hard-neck since.
I don't know the exact name of the softneck, as we had a number of them growing and have just selected for the largest bulbs of those who thrive during our random winters... 15 years later and we seem to have a pretty darn stable, purple tinted softneck that does well for folks. We don't excel at knowing variety names but we're good at selecting for seed stock that lives!
I always understood that the Giant Garlic was a type of Leek.
I believe that is true
In my maritime climate Dead Nettle gets oidium and disapears mid may.
For sure!
I leave big patches of purple dead nettle, henbit & creeping charlie for early pollinator support. No experience growing it purposefully with alliums. I can't bring myself to pull it because of the bees. I have in fact transplanted it for that very reason. It's not that hard to control. Other gardeners think I'm a heretic.
I appreciate all those plants to be sure, just more towards the edges of a large production field like this
Do you ever have issues with slugs with the hay mulch?
I've had that issue in the past but it doesn't seem to be a problem here...
I had purple dead nettle pop up in my hightunnel this spring. I couldn't find any info on it, and it was very vigorous. So I pulled it and donated it to the chickens. At which point all the info about it's positive attributes immediately flooded forth from the internet. Now I wish I had it back. 😞.
I have got to learn to follow my own rules! Thou shalt not kill!! Lol. At least not until attacked. 😉
By the way... Holy gargantuan garlic grove, Batman! We ordered what I thought was a rather large amount of seed from you last year. All of it is up and happy. However, I now know that I ordered about 1/5 the amount I wanted. But I know where to get more this year. 😉
Oh hey, do you think garlic would be ok in wood chip mulch? Right now I'm using sorrel leaves.
I use wood chip mulch on garlic with no problems.The only potential issue I see is that it slows soil warm-up a bit.
I'm sure some dead nettle will revisit and you can go a different path then!
We'll have ample seed garlic this summer to offer, but you will have most likely 6x more than you planted as well, so you are on your way to having all the garlic you'll ever need!!
If the elephants aren’t doing a festive twist is that a mineral deficiency or just a general lack of imagination?
I was going to have an extension agent out to check if it is an imagination deficiency. I guess ID is common on some soil types. There has to be a spray for it!
@@edibleacres the manual says that if the garlic appears to have a downtrodden demeanor you can stem inject prozac to help them keep that negative energy in check.
Has anyone had success with mulching with wood chips instead of hay or straw ?
Definite yes, just don’t til them in. I’ve heard sweet potatoes love them and I know living in northern california, I need a thick layer of woodchips on everything before the dry death heat of summer comes. God bless you!
It works. If thats whats available it will do just fine on the surface. Ideally when you plant the garlic, put a layer of compost or other nourishment down first and then the chips, since they won't feed the soil for a year or so and the garlic wants nourishment early...
Consider dead nettle as a medicinal crop?
For sure
I would like to transition to something like this in the future. If I missed it, how much input of organic matter and compost are you incorporating to allow this to grow so well per acre. Looks fantastic!
It is decently nice soil to begin with... Last year was potato as a crop and we added a LOT of compost from our chicken system to support that crop. Then ample leaves in the fall from folks bags and some bird bedding and lots of hay... Yeah, a fair bit of input at the early stage