To make it easier to harvest and to cut the grass, we pulled out huge quantities of nettles that were growing around the plum trees. It seems that you just have to look away for a few weeks and there are more coming up. They were very high and and we had to be careful to stop them falling in our faces as we pulled them out. I managed to get a large nettle in my face the previous week which stung my nose and I was keen to avoid that again.

We also carefully went through the grass growing around the plum trees and cut down the plum tree suckers that had come up. These are mini plum trees that pop up around the established trees and the stems are too tough for the streamer or mower. Its a slow but useful job.

This is one of the piles of nettles we removed but I think we must have cleared about 5 more barrow loads over the course of a couple of hours.

A wheelbarrow full of nettles and plum tree suckers