[Ferkilort]

Your enthusiasm for nettle got me curious, so I looked up the health benefits. Did you know that it's a natural anti-histamine? I just ordered 2 bottles of nettle pills from Amazon to try on my seasonal hayfever. If it works, I'm sure it's healthier (and cheaper) than the synthetic anti-histamines I use. The reviews at Amazon are all 5-star, with people saying it works great for hayfever.

Also I found a place where I could order 1 pound of dry organic leaves for $20 (I didn't order any yet). What would someone do with the dry leaves? Can you add them to rice and other simple dishes like that? What does it taste like?

I don't have a husband, otherwise I would definitely send him to pull my nettle! I would never try to grow it purposefully because I'd be afraid of it spreading. When I'm picking weeds in my garden there'll always be a nettle hiding somewhere, and I always get stung. Sometimes I wear gloves (if I see there's a lot of visible nettle), but usually I don't.

Have you ever heard of "Blita"? I would guess it's spelled like βλήτα in Greek. I started growing some last year, and it's pretty good, but I have been trying to find out for a long time what the English word is for that plant so that I can research it. I try to ask the Greeks at Church what the English word for "blita" is, and they're always like: "Blita? Blita is blita! There's no English word." But I don't believe them because their English is horrible!

Christina, dry nettle leaves are used as a tea.
During the German occupation when these cruel people stole anything and everything they could lay their hands on including food, lots of people starved to death in Athens. It is said that nettles saved a lot of lives because the women would go into the countryside and pick the nettles along the roadside and then make them into a type of stew.

Christina blita are similar to great plantain.

Their English name is blite. I just looked this up in Google images but the pictures I found don't look much like what we have here. It does flower - if you can call it that - but the flowers are greenish not red. Perhaps we have a another variety here.

I know that women used to pick these and use them in pittes and perhaps they still do in the villages. In towns women now use spinach which is full of chemicals.

When we first started our garden I used to spend quite a lot of my time uprooting purslane (glistrida) until a neighbour who is from a village told me that it is used in salads. I looked it up on the Internet and it is another of God's wonder foods. It is full of goodness and nutrients and I use it often. I tried pickling it but that was a complete disaster.

I bought two blueberry bushes a couple of weeks ago. They came from Holland and I am optimistic that they will prosper here. Blueberries don't grow here although there is a wild berry that is similar. Our priest's wife gave me a bottle of liquer made with cranberries and this wild blue berry. Unfortunately I can't remember it's name.

Effie