Let's talk about....Bull Nettle

Hello friends. Please allow us to introduce one of the most beautiful, most unpleasant plants Texas hill country has to offer: Bull Nettle. Bull nettle is gorgeous. It is a vibrant green, reminiscent of that certain shade of moss found in the Cascades and is almost as neon as a Goodwill clearance price tag. It produces soft, crisp, white flowers that resemble the texture of a brand new, ultra-firm pillow. It also produces nasty, translucent spikes filled with poison. If you so much as brush up against one you will have an itchy welt for days and days. First, bull nettle stings. Then it burns. Then it itches like crazy! Quite frankly, bull nettle is the jerkstore of the plant kingdom. If bull nettle were personified, it would be that dude that goes to the bar just to start a fight. Whether alive or dead, its thorns get under your skin and stay there for days, leaving you with an itching, throbbing welt that makes every action painful. Bull nettle also grows rampantly across hill country. A good day for us is managing not to brush up against it before 8:30am. Tying 65 bunches of beets together under the hot Texas sunrise is hard enough without having to take the time to curse out a weed. Bull nettle has a way of vanishing in the undergrowth and jumping under your hand, just as you grasp and pull out a leek, like a deadly, miniature ninja hiding in the shadow of the squash plant.
Bull nettle also has an amazingly thick, complex, deep root system. When you pull it out, it just grows right back in a matter of days. The only way to get rid of it is to dig out the entire root system of every plant...an impossibility when you're also trying to run a working farm. This is just one of nature's many ways of punishing organic farmers. Coming soon.......fire ants, sunscreen and the best and worst aspects of living and working on a farm.