FROST!

EXTRA: We harvest after the first frost night, get nail bed pain from the cold and do exciting discovery! and make an exciting discovery!

October 19th 2022

Outside the project, we harvested 2,000 nettles for Aud after the first frost night. The idea was to test harvesting after frost or uprooting. Even though it was outside the project, I'll include it; We made observations that I think are important. This was an icy experience, and eventually we discovered that all we had to do was stick our foot at the bottom of the stem, and it would break all the way across.

The plants were put in buindles and dried in the sun. It wasn't as easy to make “nettle ropes” (“Bennild”), whether this was because the plants were stiffer than usual, or if there was little to take off, I don't remember. That's why hemp rope and cotton twine were also used to tie the stakes. Ideally, the plants should have been hayed and dried well before they were taken indoors, but they only got one day in the sun.

The plants were placed together with the original 12,000 nettles in the airy backhouse at Ryghsetra. This was a bit unfortunate, as it became a bit difficult to distinguish between old and new plants, especially because I had used hemp string and cotton twine to mark plants that had lost their “bennild” / nettle rope.

When the frost plants were later retted, they were also marked with blue nylon rope. In theory, they shouldn't have needed to be shed. I think! But they did, and it was exciting. What kind of "chemical" reaction happens when the plant is frozen? I don't know, but we made some discoveries when we later prepared the bundles. I'll write about this during the retting in April 2023.

Photo Fride Kramer Riseng: Nettles after the first frost night