Battle of the invasive plants... Nettle wars!

[picklemepopcorn]

I've got a huge area of ancient stingy nettles to sort out. It's effectively derelict land. If I dig up lots of nettles and plant Ivy and Mint and Chinese lanterns, all invasive things, in pockets, what do you think would win?!

Any other suggestions for how to tame it? It's an area which hasn't been looked after for years, shady and dry. The soil is chock solid with roots, tree and stingy. All I really hope for is to crowd out the stingies, as it is by a footpath. It isn't easy to water at the moment, either. I'd plant up Ivy in Autumn, when the stingies have died down, so the new plants would have a head start... The others won't get anywhere till spring anyway.

Cheers all!

Nettles grow on fertile land, so the soil should be good. I'd dig up all of the ground over the winter and reduce the shading. Hard work, I know, I've done it! A little at a time was my maxim, turning over the soil and pulling up roots.
If you plant Ivy it will take over and you will have a bigger mess. Much of my clearing, apart from nettles, dandelions, stones and Russian vine was Ivy. I'm still keeping it at bay now after the other things have long gone.

I don't really mind if Ivy takes over. It won't ever need to be anything else. It's at the back of a church, with towering Sardinian Pines with TPOs on. There is a footpath through the area. One side I've done a great and thorough job on, planted with rhododendrons etc. This other side is about two metres by eight and very steep. I just need to keep it from sliding down into the path below, and get the pesky stingies down. I think I'm going to hack out a trench along the top, add compost and water gel, plant it with ivies trailing downward, and see what happens.

When you did it did the Ivy slow the nettles at all, do you think?

It was a new garden to me, where apart from the lawn the previous owners had let it go wild for nature!
I think the ivy will keep the nettles down, but I would pull up as much of the nettles as possible, they travel by running roots. Easier done after rain.
To make the ivy more interesting I'd plant some variegated types. I'm sure lots of people will give you roots!

Nettle soup is really good.
Might as well use it.

pulling up nettles is quite an effective strategy. They gradually weaken and die off. We had a large patch in a flower bed and pulled them by hand and planted it up. We kept a careful eye and pulled any sprouts. Never had a problem since.

In terms of invasive plants, ivy is much much harder to keep on top of than nettles. You'll constantly have to peel it off the trees and it grows like mad. The roots are much harder to get rid of than nettles too. Don't do it!

Ivy is horrific, I'm despairing over the quantities I'm trying to defeat. You might not think it's a problem now, but it could be later. Nettles on the other hand have been pretty easily defeated by being pulled up and then encouraging grass there.

The sticky weed and ground elder are still causing problems though :(

Don't put in ivy you'll end up regretting it as its a nightmare and it hasn't suppressed our nettles they just grow together in an unholy mess scattered with sticky weed. 😡

We have a really large garden that was somewhat neglected by previous owners.
We started off with large patches of nettles, sticky weed, tons of ground elder, brambles, buttercups and ivy by the bucketload. The only way we have managed to tackle them is to take sections and literally painstakingly pull the stuff out. It's only just started to look better now but so glad we tacked it properly as when we didn't at the start,you'd do a little bit halfheartedly and then some rain & sun and suddenly the weeds would rise up and take over again. It was so disheartening.

Splitting it up into manageable sections really helped.

I've done a third of the space really well, and am concentrating on keeping that clear for the moment. Grass and nettles are shown no mercy, I'm not bothered by the other weeds, goose grass and so on, I'm putting wildflower seed down in the autumn, and the plants I've put in will win out eventually.

Just mulling over how best to tackle the strip...

Thanks all, I'll have a think.

It was variegated I was planning, by the way. I've saved and rooted a few pretty bits.