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  • From: Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Male Nettle
  • Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 14:38:43 -0800

Rob wrote:

At 12/7/2005 07:44 PM,Marie McHarry wrote:

<<Nettle is the plant we can't live with, and can't live without.>>

Enlighten me. I've been living without nettles for nearly 60 years. What am
I missing?

Marie


So you want to know about stinging nettles? That's probably something you could go another 60 years without having missed anything...







Wow, and I didn't even attend the Oregon Biodynamic society's conference on nettle.

I guess if you don't mind catering to struggling little spinaches on a dim windowsill, you could make do without any of the perennial plants we use for early spring vegetables, like nettle, chop suey tree, bamboo shoot, hawthorn, etc. I guess there's always the age-old carrots from the previous year, although the vitamin C content of stored roots really is in doubt. I think that dreary stored cabbages were the norm in the olden days. And even in the most frozen landscape you can always grow sprouts.

When the nettle is past the tender young stage, it can be incorporated into layer mash for hens. Its protein and mineral content are tremendous. I've never harvested so much free food from any other planting. Personally I recommend the recipe that I found for Scandinavian nettle soup, in which it's cooked pureed with an equal volume of chives, and mixed with beef broth and thickened. Any nettle too old for use can be composted.

Its value in permaculture lies in the fact that it stores and recycles nutrients, when planted downhill from a barn, for instance. A cheap cement barrier would keep it forever in check, as long as no seed is set, hence the importance of the male nettle. Now that I know about the male nettle, I think I may try this, along with some ivy-covered junk sculptures (also with cement barriers, although I'm a little more leary of the latter, since without tending, the ivy will eventually crawl out, unlike the upright nettle).

Bill
S. Oregon coast




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