When to Pick Stinging Nettles?

Leaf Harvest

• Stinging nettle leaves can be dried and used for tea, or cooked fresh as greens, either alone (with a touch of garlic and lemon or vinegar for a refreshing side dish) or as substitution for spinach in any recipe. The stinging quality vanishes when cooked. Stinging nettles' reputation as a medicinal herb no doubt comes from the fact that it absorbs a significant quantity of minerals from the soil, and is particularly high in iron.

  For the best flavor and nutritional content, pick the top 4 to 5 inches of new nettle growth in the spring, before the plants flower. Hand-picking serves most home culinary needs, but the University of North Carolina Mountain Horticultural Crops Research and Extension Center reports success field-planting stinging nettles and harvesting the young leaves and stems with a tractor-pulled sickle bar.

Roots

• The Kansas State University Research and Extension Center reports that stinging nettle roots are used in Europe for prostate ailments, as well as for irritable bladder. For medicinal uses, the roots should be dug in the fall, after the summer's growth has died back but before a heavy freeze makes digging difficult.

Fiber

• Nettle stems contain fibers that have been used throughout history much in the same manner as hemp or linen flax fibers. The Interactive European Network for Industrial Crops and their Applications reports a European Union project begun in 1999 to re-introduce nettles as a commercial fiber crop in Europe. After two years of study, the participating Institute for Applied Research of FH-Reutlingen, Germany, determined that late August, after spring-growth leaves had died back but new fall growth had not yet emerged, was the optimal time for harvesting nettle stems for fiber production. After harvesting, the stems are dried, retted and decorticated in preparation for spinning by hand or by linen-processing machine methods.