If they don’t grow naturally in your backyard, you can transplant the rhizomes and enjoy them year after year, as they are tough, perennial plants.
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Often growing on top of compost or old branch piles full of decaying organic matter.Īs far as sunlight is concerned, nettles thrive along edges, meaning that they are both sun loving and shade tolerant. You will always find stinging nettle growing in temperate climates and in nutrient-rich soils. In this way, you can use them as a spring vegetable, not just a powder, providing you with limitless options for making omelettes, scrambles, quiches, soups and pesto. Stinging nettle capsules can be bought from health food stores, though fresh is still the best. Intrigued? Now you must get out foraging and find some nettles for yourself! Where to find stinging nettle ( Urtica dioica) Nettle can also be used in the production of paper and stinging nettle beer. In comparison to cotton, nettle is far stronger, making it suitable even for weaving fishing nets, sailcloth and cordage. And in World War I, Germans facing a textile shortage found that nettles were an excellent substitute to cotton. Remnants of nettle fibers have been found in burial cloth originating from Scandinavia thousands of years ago, but we don’t need to go back quite so far in history to see that nettle is a superior fiber, like flax, worth revisiting.Ĭloser to date, in the 16th and 17th centuries, nettle fabric was commonly found in Scottish linens. Perhaps if we relearned to honor the nettle’s beneficial qualities and strengths, we could embrace them once again, very carefully that is. The question is: do we appreciate them as much as we should? Times have changed greatly since 2500 BC and yet, the perennial nettles are still here, thriving in wild spaces.
Nettles have long and interesting history dating as far back as the Bronze Age, where they were once used for food, medicine and fiber.
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