Helping a nature school with nettle

Hi,
I’m hoping I’m posting in the right area. I’m a parent of a student at a nature school. When the property was set up they had a gentleman who was a permaculture expert set up a food forest on the property. The director of the school has been learning about how to care for the food forest. But we’ve run into a nettle issue. It has become overgrown and has overpowered the area to the point that the kids are having a hard time working in or being in the area. He’s been mowing the walkways, he also put a tarp down over a hillside that was getting covered that he could not mow. Is my only hope to rip the roots/ tubers out? Is there a good plant that could suppress the nettle? We don’t want to eliminate it entirely, just make it more manageable for the kids. They do harvest some for teas but no where near the quantity we have.  I’d like to help bring it into balance and I do have some time to contribute. Your knowledge and help would be most appreciated!
Thank you!
Kelly

Welcome to the forum!

I eliminated nettle at our other house by pulling it up, this was before I knew about how beneficial nettle is.

Since there is a desire to keep it in some places it would be good to give it an area then surround that area with cardboard and wood chips.  The sunlight would need to be completely shut out to eliminate the nettle.

Hi Kelly,

Welcome to Permies
Nettles... To keep nettles at bay you need to rip out the plants (with gloves on and long sleeves) getting all of the roots out - easier to do after some rain and at a new moon.
Also, don't let them go to seed.

But then again, nettles are fantastic. They make a healthy tea (that also strongly increases the need to pee), you can make a great liquid fertilizer out of nettels by letting them rot (yes) in water until stinky, then dilute that stinky stuff with rain water and water your vegetable garden with it. Pigs LOVE nettles. They say chicken will lay better if they have access to nettle seeds. Could be, we have free ranging chicken and nettles is a common plant at some spots where I let it just grow all it wants and we've got lots of eggs.

The children could also try to make twine from the nettle fibres, as found here!

Oh yes, stinging nettles can be a mixed blessing, but definitely lots of potential uses. The good news is that if they are happy, you have good soil and plenty of water, so many other plants should thrive. It sounds like you are already taking good actions.
As others have said, smothering them or digging the roots out are your best options. If you smother them, make sure the material is really deep organic material or something like thick black plastic as a light covering of cardboard or mulch will probably just feed them! If the area is covered for a full year (maybe less if you get solarisation cooking the roots) that will successfully knock the plants back on the covered area. Hopefully they haven't seeded in as well, or the seedlings will need pulling out for years.
They tend to be pretty robust at coming back from cutting down - however that makes them a useful cut and come again crop or fertiliser plant. They cope with pretty low light levels, so will tend to out compete other plants rather well. I have them as an understory with my raspberries, so have to go through harvesting the nettles before I can comfortably pick my berries!
The stings are generally only active on the fresh plants, so after the plant has wilted for a day or so they should be fairly innocuous to handle. As Nina suggests, making twine might be a fun thing to do with the cut down plants. If you have dock growing, rubbing a leaf on the stung area helps a bit to relieve the pain. Plantain is probably another suggestion.