Stinging Nettle Tea

Does anyone make Tea out of stinging nettle? I was told I have it all around my place and to be careful of it cause it stings.
I thought well what the heck, I don’t ever get stung by any plant around here. Only plant I look out for is poison ivy.
I googled it to see what it looks like, and found out it’s very nutritious and makes a great tea.

Looks like wild mint when it’s small and makes me think it’s the plant that fools me when I go picking it. I rub the leaves, and never gotten stung from it.

I think I’m gonna make some tea and serve it at the local hall! Free coffee and tea every Wednesday morning.

After my experiences with stinging nettle, I have gone out of my way to avoid them. I know people make tea out out of stinging nettles and blanch and eat stinging nettles. Procuring the stinging nettles is something to be avoided in my opinion.

In 1993, I was fishing a public hunting area called Pater, in South West, Ohio and had to wade through stinging nettles to get to the stream I wanted to fish and to leave the stream. I had shorts on. I had heard of them, but never experienced them before. The next time I went there, I wore chest waders.

Keith

I'd try it. What nutrients does the plant have?

OK> a couple things here. You only want to harvest the bran-spankin-new spring nettles for eating You can get away with a bit older for tea,but We are talking 4 leaflets or less and only take the top 2. The rest will be bitter and have less vitamins. Additionally, older leaves/ shoots may cause some gastro/intestinal upset and nausea. When you can get them fresh out of the ground in the early spring (often before the snow melts) they make great pesto, slasa, tea, salad greens, etc.


I hope this helps. I am new to trapping but an old hand at edible plants (so long as they are the same as in Alaska.)

You can rub it on you with no problem, but let it gently brush exposed skin while walking through it and you will know it. Around here it's why you wear long sleeves sang digging!

I planted stinging nettle for the second year. Last year it got washed out as I planted in the wrong place. This year I have it in a "staging garden" concept I've come up with (mostly because I don't know what I'm doing).

Can anyone tell me the best place to transplant my nettle plants? Where have you had the best success of them taking off?

Thanks.

You are on the right track if it washed out .it really grows best in bottom ground woods

I've had cooked and eaten like spinach.

We boiled it and changed the water 3 times, while preparing it like spinach. Added butter and salt it was just ok.
That was in a Nature foods class back in the mid 70's

Never would I Try to grow it, or introduced it intentionally.

We sometimes pick a few when they are young and sauté them in butter with salt and pepper.
They taste just like butter, salt and pepper.

Zim
.

When you are in at NAFA ask Mel about it he boils the leaves and uses it to fertilize his tomato plants.
Must have been an old Alberta homesteaders remedy he brought

Thanks!
Ya that’s what I read about yesterday. I went looking for it this morning and didn’t find any for sure. The plants I thought it might be didn’t have the hairs on it like the pics I’ve seen so I’m not 100% sure.

I’m not too interested in eating it. Just wanting to make a tea to sip on while reading some Tman!

Like someone said, wade through it wearing shorts and you'll soon remember what itch-weed looks like! Lol.

I might try transplanting one of the plants into bottom ground that floods all the time. I had it in a field last time. Thanks for the tip.

Ground that gets frequently flooded is where I have always seen the highest concentrations of it.
I have never had poison Ivy and i have waded through it. I have pulled it from the sides of trees so I could use the tree as a rifle rest while hunting squirrels.
If I get hold of stinging nettles, I break out in blisters.
I may have some on my lots at present. Just waiting on verification and at that time, they will be gone!

Rubbing dirt on it always seemed to help. I don't go to the river much anymore so it hasn't been an issue for me in a good while but this tomato feed thing has got me intrigued.

its a truly crazy thing......sting the bejesus out of ya......but the sting is gone after you put it in boiling water. nettles/itchweed are a superfood......packed with protiens and vitamins. its a handy plant to know if your caught in a situation. all kinds of food out there that most folks see everyday.....and don't know it........cattails,milkweed pods,purslane,primrose,nutsedge,

If you have jewel weed around where you got bit by the nettles, break off a piece and rub the juice on the sting. Pretty good remedy.

Zim

Edible does not mean good to eat-- Patrick McManus

Stinging nettle sucks, pigs seem to always hang out in it. An old timer called it 7-minute itch, I’ve timed the blistering itch sensation a few times and it fades pretty darn close to 7 minutes. Super helpful info about your tea question I know. Sorry.

If you did not bring jerky, what did I just eat?
Bill Heavey


Zim

Good one Zim

Also, if'n you need to locate stinging reds, just go trout fishing with Patrice.
In a matter of minutes she will go skidding down the bank with only nettles
to break her fall. I swear, some of them get 8 feet tall here by summer.
Anyone who would consider planting them needs to take up crocheting or some such hobby.

Zim

They are not hard to find here either.

Why you wanna try to make tea out of that crap-don't be a tightwad-get some real tea at the grocery store before you poison yourself trying to save a couple bucks.

Very informational! I dig it

He looooves me!

It burns just long enough to make you regret it lol

So sad seeing all the ignorance about edible wild plants in general, and nettles in particular. Especially here of all places.

I’ve been thinking of trying Polygonum substituted for green onions for 10 years. I chew on it often, but I haven’t tried cooking with it yet.

Ever chew on any? Some of em are like super spicy green onions to my taste buds

Enlighten us Duxdawg !

I really don’t care about the health benefits of it, stung once thats enough.

Thanks Zim … I was trying to remember the name of Jewel Weed …. we always called it water weed. When I was a small buy my dad turtle trapped the Licking River here in Ohio. He waded in the water and I walked on the shore and drug the turtles in a burlap bag. The first thing I would do when I got there was to pull up a big handful of Jewel weed, because the entire length of shoreline was covered in stinging nettles and I broke out in rash and red welts from the stuff, but the rubbing the Jewel weed on it stopped the irritation.

Garry-

X2. Thanks for the help , Duxdawg.

The stuff smells like cat pee. There would have to be some real magic in the tea for me to go through the trouble of harvesting the plant
BTW, you can pulverize jewel weed and freeze it to take the sting away. Staying away from the stuff works best.

1.) I grow it for personal use.
2.) Get seeds from rareseeds.com. Make a box or area boxed-in so it doesn't spread everywhere as I'm told it will.
3.) It's the greatest green that you'll ever eat. Fry up leaves in butter and olive oil, or put into soups/stews. More delicious than Anything else. Basically as soon as it hits boiling water or even hot water, the little parts that "sting" (look it up, it's not a sting, it's how the plant is made) disappear. Heck, frying it up for 2 minutes with some meat and they disappear.
4.) Yes tea.
5.) It's not poison ivy, you should not be scared of it. I was! Until I learned it was a food and medicine and like all good stuff: Was replete with a book of wives-tales. Just get it.
6.) It will sting you hand for maybe 24 hours but that's it. Unless you have some allergy (which I've never heard of) but if not, it's fine. Get used to it. Wear gloves if you want.
7.) Probably many more uses, but that's what I do. It's more valuable to me than Anything else I grow.

Stinging nettles can be harvested all year long if you know what you're doing. Four ways to avoid the sting: heat, crushing, drying and only using the meristem portions. Sad that so much has been forgotten about such an awesome resource.

Lots of nettles here. Whenever it gets on me or the kids we just head to the river and wash it off with plain water. Goes away instantly. Had a horse go down on me once after riding through a big patch of nettles. Ended up figuring out what happened and wiped his legs off with blanket and he quit rolling, got kinda western for a minute or two, pulling the saddle on the way down and wiping legs while rolling. lol

Also, if we know we came in contact with poison ivy we wash the area with Lava soap as soon as possible and do not end up getting it. Few of us are real sensitive to it.

Lava is a great soap for the fish house as well. Best I have found for removing fishy smell from your hands after cleaning a big batch, in case your heading to town right after.

Many good books on wild edibles.
Thayer, Elpel, Kallas, etc.

I've eaten 250+ species of wild plants and 30+ species of wild fungi.
I spend three years learning each species:
Where to find it (geology, soil, companions, microclimate, etc).
What it looks like at every stage of growth; the fine details of flower, leaf, stem and root; look alikes, etc.
Edible & medicinal uses; cautions & contraindications; etc.

Where would you suggest I begin, Golf Ball?

I had the tea as a kid... Nature class

And cooked up like spinach. Water drained 3 times , butter and salt added.

It was good...haven't done it since though

Sorry Aix, haven't done much with smart and knot weeds.

I find the wide leaved woodland/wetland species more palatable of them. Nor never sought their tea as flavorful, though it contains many good oxidants. Got bit by an Australian nettle, who's needle tubes that delivery the itch are larger and more durable, that long after the itch was gone exposure to hot or cold water to them was very,very sensitive(painful) - like a year.

I 100% agree with you.

I one time collected several gallons of tender spring stinging nettle tops and served them up to my fraternity brothers (I was on cooking duty that weekend) and claimed it was spinach.

Not one out of 18 suspected that it was anything but.

I fixed them just like I do any other green. Salt and pepper, butter, and a splash of apple cider vinegar. Boil until tender.

Laughed a lot at these reply's but Boco had the best one, Zims were good too. I crashed a dirt bike in a big patch of nettles all sweaty and in a tea shirt when I was young, I hate nettles! I would never plant them! They come up in my rhubarb patch and are a pain the way the roots travel underground and start a new terrible plant!

A "Tea" shirt you were wearing...LOL!

I have to agree with the many so far. I hate and dread getting into that stuff. It is all over here and I will more times than not get right in the middle of it before I realize what I have done. Have seen it over 6 ft tall here many times.

I have heard it is full of good things, but I will have to take others word for it. If it itches as bad inside as it does outside, I would rather be dead.

Worst was on the Illinois river squirrel hunting. Got into at least an acre of it taller than I am. Got out and headed for the river. Stripped down and jumped in. My buddy thought I was crazy but it wasn't long he was doing the same.

I had one pop up in my garden this year, ill google how to do tea, i hear mullien tea is good for the lungs

I eat them in the spring sautéed in butter along with fireweed shoots, sugar and bit of onion. Good with fish.

They tend to grow here on the river bank. Often times in contaminated soils, like where they used to dump the honey bucket over the bank. They appear to filter the soil, I notice they grow around my steam house too.

They are high in nitrogen so good for the garden . My chickens love it. I use some in my compost, and have made tea for the garden as well.

As far as tea. I am surprised you as a Kanuck dont drink the Labrador tea. Here we call it Tundra tea. I drink it every morning mixed with oolong tea and my fireweed honey.