Super Nettles

The picture above is of a young wood nettle plant. Wood nettles have the same medicinal properties as stinging nettles, about which I read a terrific article today. Nettles make a great spring tonic, a tincture of the leaves can help with seasonal allergies and the plants has tons of vitamins and minerals. So read the article and go looking for nettles. With our early spring, they'll probably be all over their usual places.

Onwards,
HM

Nettles for Medicine and Nutrition

Lately, I've been daydreaming about nettle gathering come spring. It's only late December and much too early for tasty, slightly bitter but oh-so-good-for-you spring greens such as stinging nettles or wood nettles. The pix above shows a young wood nettle, which grows in shady areas near flowing water.

If you're thinking of getting into wild food foraging this year, try to familiarize yourself with the nettle plant before spring hits. Get a good foraging book, one with color photographs and read up on stinging nettles, which is the usual variety of nettle described. Around here, I mostly find wood nettles, but since their nutritional and medicinal profile is the same, I harvest them and am grateful to find them in such abundance. I wrote about nettles once before...

Early in the spring, young nettles make excellent eating in any number of preparations. Saute or boil them for a few minutes, top with olive oil or butter, a touch of salt and you'll have one delicious and nutritious dinner. Or make a soup with onions, garlic and nettles. Add some to scrambled eggs...ah, the list is endless.

Harvest young nettles when they are four to eight inches tall. If they get much taller than that, they'll be a bit tough. Still tasty, still nutritional, but a bit tougher. Even so, I've harvested nettle at about a foot tall and they still tasted great to me. The trick is to find them when they're young and freshly popped out of the ground. Around here, that's early spring, in late April or so. Then later, I harvest nettles throughout the summer, but these I'll dry for use as a wonderful medicinal tea or as an extract.

Nettles are the green of chlorophyll, which naturally they contain, as well as iron, calcium, silicon, sulphur, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus. Rich in vitamins too: A, C, D, E and K and a few of the B vits as well. Nettles also have trace elements or more of zinc, cobalt and copper. I think nettles are so healing because of these vital nutrients. If you've read much of this blog, you've read how our food today has lost much of its nutritional value due to industrial agriculture and overall processing. One fine way to counter that is to eat wild foods like nettles (and lambsquarters, purslane, red clover....).

I found a couple of very informational articles about nettles. One is from Ingri Cassel, from a few years ago. Europeans down through the centuries have employed nettles in a variety of medicinal uses and treatments. Its a terrific article.

The other is from the University of Maryland Medical Center, which for some reason has lots of good herbal information. As you'll see from these articles, nettles can be used for many different ailments in a variety of forms (extract, tea, capsules and so on).

I mostly use nettles for a wonderful spring tonic--either as greens or simmered in a broth with other young spring greens (dandelions, clover leaves, wintercress, garlic mustard, plantain). I usually make two nettle extracts--one of the leaves and stems, one of the roots. And of course, I dry lots of the leaves for use as tea throughout the year. Whenever I'm feeling a bit under the weather, nettle tea is one of the first things I turn to.

It is definitely worth your while to learn to identify and harvest nettles. They grow worldwide, where ever rich soils are found. Both stinging nettles and wood nettles can sting, so wear gloves when harvesting. Once cooked or dried, they no longer sting. Nettles make a great fodder for animals as well. Once cut and dried a bit, nettles can be fed to horses or cattle, especially if they need a nutritional boost themselves.

During these months of winter (while I'm daydreaming longingly about these plants...), I'll describe as many as I can. I hope this will spur some of you to start foraging and boosting your family's nutrition. Foraging free, wild plants is an ancient skill--but one we should learn again.

Onwards,
HM

Nettles!

(The picture above is of a young wood nettle.)

I've been meaning to write about the wonderful nettle plant for a while now. Nettles are one of those miracle plants that are ridiculously good for you, as well as also providing the human family with cordage, cloth, and tasty beer or wine. However it is getting close to when the wood nettles I gather will flower, and then they are not so good to eat. I've read that after stinging nettle (urtica dioica) and wood nettles (larportea candadensis) flower, that consuming them could cause kidney damage. Plus, they get pretty tough and gravelly so they're just not as good as in the early spring. So, I want to go harvest more nettles while I can! Of course, you can harvest nettles in the summer and use them dried for a terrific tea or infusion.

Wood nettles grow in profusion here in our valley. Strangely enough, I have yet to find stinging nettles here. Wood nettles are just as packed with nutrition, vitamins and minerals, as the stinging nettle, so if you find wood nettles, feel free to use them just as you would stinging nettles. Wood nettles sting just as much as stinging nettles, so beware!

Wood nettles like to grow by forest streams or rivers. Stinging nettles prefer sunny areas. If you have a creek or stream or river near you, look along the banks for nettles. If you get stung by the nettles, jewelweed is usually growing nearby. Cut the stem of the jewelweed and it will ease the nettles sting. So do dock and plantain leaves. Stick some plantain in your pocket before heading out to gather nettles.

So, rather than read me trying to give you a full appreciation of nettles, read this article at Susan Weed's Wise Woman's Herbal Zine, here. I just read it this morning, and it will tell you all I would have said about nettles only better. Corinna Wood does a great job. The herbalists who write for Susan Weed's ezine have a habit of referring to their favorite plants as "she." That's fine by me, the info is there and well-presented.

If you are feeling run-down or under the weather, an infusion of nettles is invaluable. It's very healing. Expressed nettle juice has been used to good effect with convalescing patients in many countries. The infusion is green and very tasty. It even tastes green. I use a tiny bit of sea salt in mine and the infusion, warm or cold, is welcomed by my entire body.

I have many quarts of nettles frozen already, a gallon or so of nettle wine, and a quart jar of nettle tincture. But I need more! Both for eating and drying, since I want to have a good supply of it dried for winter-time tea.

I'll leave you with "The Glory of Nettles," then, and I'll go do what I really want to do: harvest more nettles!

Here's a couple of paragraphs from Wood's article, just as a teaser. Do read the entire article:

So why would you want to meddle with nettle? She is a veritable cornucopia of nutrients: calcium, magnesium, iron, B complex vitamins, C complex, vitamins A, D and K. She has protein, cobalt, trace minerals, potassium, zinc, copper and sulphur.

Nettles are especially rich in chlorophyll, which is only one molecule removed from hemoglobin, so they feed the blood. Add in nettle’s bounty of iron and it adds up to a fortifying tonic for anyone who is anemic or for pregnant, lactating, or menstruating women.

Nettle has also long been revered for its benefits to the kidneys and adrenals. The kidneys allow us to expel toxins and the adrenals help us to respond to stress (think adrenaline), so given the challenges of modern life, most folks can benefit profoundly from nettle’s medicinal properties. Additionally, she offers relief from seasonal allergies, strengthens the bones, hair and nails and nurtures the lungs, nervous, hormonal and immune systems – that covers a lot of ground.

One of the wonderful things about nettle is that her nutritional benefits are delivered in a very balanced form and are easily assimilated and absorbed into our systems.

Nettle is one of my favorite foraged foods. As such, I'll come back to it later. In the meantime, enjoy the article!

HM