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Planting
Days to maturity
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Plant · P-357
Nettle Spinach
Urtica urens
Nettle Spinach is a fast-growing annual nettle that germinates with the fall rains, grows through winter, and finishes flowering and seeding before summer heat arrives - sown in spring instead, it just bolts and gives nothing. Young leaves cook into an excellent spinach substitute, and the plant can also be fermented into a potent liquid fertilizer or added to a compost pile as an activator, reaching harvest size in as little as five weeks. The sting is entirely in the handling, not the eating - cooking or drying destroys it completely, so gloves are the only real precaution needed for picking.
Record at a glance
Growing profile
- Sun
- Full Sun
- USDA zone
- Not yet recorded
- Soil
- Sand · Loam · Clay
- Moisture
- Moderate
Vertical layer
Herbaceous- Soil pH
- Not yet recorded
- Plant type
- Annual
- Mature height
- 24 in
- Mature spread
- 4–20 in
- Plant spacing
- 12–36 in
- Root type
- Fibrous-shallow
- Spread pattern
- Seed
Keep exploring
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Alsike Clover
Trifolium hybridum
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Amaranth Greens
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Anise Hyssop
Agastache foeniculum
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Apple Mint
Mentha suaveolens
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The deeper layer
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- Primary
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- Byproduct
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Behind the record
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