The following article and recipe are a sneak peek excerpt into my debut book, The Healing Garden: Cultivating and Handcrafting Herbal Remedies, a detailed herbal reference, decadent cookbook, and garden manual all in one. This book is written for home gardeners and anyone looking to bring the therapeutic benefits of healing herbs into their garden, kitchen, and apothecary. You can purchase a copy of your own wherever books are sold. You can find more details on the book and its accompanying bonuses here.

The emerald nettles queen reigns over the herbal realms with vim and vigor. The leaves of this legendary herb are packed with vitamins, minerals, and chlorophyll, and this vitality infuses into nutritive herbal teas, vinegars, and medicinal foods. 

It’s true that nettles (Urtica dioica, Urticaceae) wears a crown of nearly invisible silver prickles, primed to sting any who might dare to trespass, but the sting is disarmed when the leaves are dried or cooked.

The plant forms dense colonies through spreading rhizomes. It is native to Eurasia, northern Africa, and North America but is now widely cultivated and naturalized throughout the temperate world.

How to Use Stinging Nettles 

As a seasonal skin and energy tonic. Nettles is a traditional spring tonic and blood cleanser, and it’s an excellent herbal ally during fasting and cleansing. The herb is prepared into teas, along with red clover and burdock, to assuage eczema, psoriasis, and acne. Nettles will perk you up when you feel tired or depleted and can help build reserves after a long or intense illness. I often add the herb to milky oats and tulsi to support people undergoing challenging transitions and periods of extra workload. 

As a delicious nutritive tonic. Nettles is a supreme blood builder and nourishing tonic. If you’re hankering for the minerals in nettles, take the herb as an infusion, broth, or vinegar, or enjoy it as a food. (Alcohol-based tincture won’t deliver the minerals.) Because it’s a food plant, nettles can be consumed frequently, with less attention to dosage as compared with other herbs.

How to Grow & Harvest Stinging Nettles

ZONES: 2–9; full sun to partial shade

SOIL: pH 5.5–7.8; rich, moist soil with a high nutrient content

SIZE: 3–5 feet tall; indefinitely wide

LIFESTYLE: Herbaceous perennial

Planting nettles into the garden requires foresight and planning, as the plant can spread by seeds and runners alike and become a troublesome and painful weed. But with strategic placement and management, it is a valuable asset in the landscape: nettles are a perennial food crop, medicinal herb, and garden amendment. If you already have nettles growing nearby in a pristine locale, perhaps you don’t need to invite it closer. I’ve found, however, that our family consumes more nettles when we have easy access. Throughout the spring and summer, my partner’s morning ritual consists of clipping a few shoots from the nettle patch for his herbal infusions, and I’m apt to run out the back door to harvest the greens for dinner.

If you do decide to grow it, enrich the soil with abundant organic matter, and mulch heavily the first year; nettles will soon fill the entire bed, excluding most weeds.

When harvesting nettles, wear thick clothing that covers arms and ankles, and use leather gardening gloves, preferably ones that cover the forearms, such as leather rose gloves. Use a scythe or similar tool for large-scale harvesting and pruners or kitchen scissors for smaller yields. The shoots emerge in the earliest spring and can be harvested weekly. When you pick the greens repeatedly, you’ll be rewarded with tender new regrowth throughout the spring. 

When harvesting for food, take only the tender upper leaves; pinch off the tips or strip the upper leaves from the stem. Later in the summer, the leaves become too chewy to eat. For medicinal uses, harvest the plants when they are knee-high but have not yet flowered. Don’t crush the leaves. If you pile up the shoots in a harvest basket, the bruised leaves oxidize to an unsavory black color, diminishing the herb’s vitality. I learned this the hard way one spring. After hiking a few miles to a lush, pristine nettle patch, I eagerly stuffed a large duffel bag full of shoots, only to discover the crop ruined when I returned home.

For details on propagating nettles, starting plants from seed, siting considerations, problem insects, and more, see my book, The Healing Garden.

Want to learn more about using nettles medicinally and growing its green greatness? 

You can read my heartfelt ode to nettles in my book, The Healing Garden: Cultivating and Handcrafting Herbal Remedies! You’ll also find dozens more of my favorite herbal recipes and detailed medicinal, culinary, and cultivation profiles for over 30 beautiful, healing herbs. 

You can purchase your copy anywhere books are sold! To learn more about the book (and the exceptional bonuses that come with it), visit The Healing Garden Gateway.