The dreaded squash bugs have already found my cucumbers! I picked several off yesterday. I’m going to have to make a batch of pepper spray and get after them.
In my class last week I learned a few plants that I’m familiar with are good at repelling pests.
Mountain mint grows at the bottom of Granny’s driveway. I learned it can be used as a bug repellant.
Elderberry grows along our road and in our backyard where I planted two plants a few years back. The leaves are said to repel all bugs.
The first time I was introduced to stinging nettle was in mine and Matt’s courting days. I was tagging along with him on a trout fishing trip in the Sunburst area of Haywood County. He decided to take a shortcut down the mountain instead of walking the switchbacks.
It was way up in the summer and I had shorts on. We hadn’t gone very far before my legs starting stinging all over. I yelled at Matt and he came back to see what was going on. He apologized for taking me directly through a big patch of stinging nettle. He had long britches on so he didn’t even notice it.
Stinging nettle is edible and is medicinal. Cooking it takes the sting out so there’s no worries about having a burning mouth.
None grew here in Wilson holler until I started some in one of my raised beds on the bank.
The girls make a nettle tea to help with their allergies, the liquid can also deter soft bodied bugs.
I haven’t tried any of the remedies so I don’t know their success rate, but I’ve already spread elderberry leaves around my cucumbers in the hopes it helps.
Last night’s video: Picking Berries in the Rain & Making Matt’s Favorite Jelly (Black Raspberry).
Tonight’s video will be a premier of a short documentary I was asked to be in about Cornbread. The premier starts at 6:00 p.m. est. You can find it here.
Here’s a bit about the project and the director.
Willow Lawson is a Morehead-Cain scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, studying American Studies and Food Studies. She is from Mount Airy, NC, and has a heart for promoting stories that share the beauty of Appalachia. The Memory of Cornbread was a project done to show how communities in Appalachia feel connected to cornbread both through history and family. It was screened at the Boone Docs Film Festival. Her current work seeks to understand the state of small farmers in NC and how we can better support them.
Tipper
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Congratulations on being chosen to be in the documentary, what an excellent way to help preserve history!
We use diatomaceous earth as a natural bug repellent in our gardens and it really does work. The draw back is if you’re using an applicator that blows it on the plants, you need to wear an N95 mask. You can also sprinkle it on, but the applicator does a better job for overall coverage.
Nettles can be boiled and sauteed and then mashed in with potatoes, in a variation on the traditional Irish dish colcannon, which is usually taters and cabbage, or kale (but can be any green, really). Many European countries have some greens-and-taters side dish, but especially the British Isles (“rumbledethumps” in Scotland, “bubble-and-squeak” in England). You could probably even make kudzu palatable by cooking it this way.
https://lifesourcenaturalfoods.com/recipe/spring-wild-nettles-colcannon/