Stinging Nettle: Nourishment for
You and Your Garden  

Tips for using stinging nettle as food and fertilizer | Lots of pictures | About a 5 minute read

Stinging nettle has a long history of use for food, medicine, cordage, and dye. Here are some ideas for making use of the free food and fertilizer that this under-appreciated weed has to offer.

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A persistent and useful weed 

Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) originated in Europe but now grows on every continent but Antarctica, where-ever there is fertile, moist soil and particularly where the soil has been disturbed.

I have a personal theory that the plants (“weeds”) that most persistently follow human beings about are those that have the most to offer us in terms of medicine, food, and other useful things.

If there is anything to that theory, then nettle must be among the most useful of them all. Not only does nettle follow us about but it leaves us in no doubt, when we brush against it, about its presence and identity.

If you're wild-harvesting nettle, look for it near stream banks and ponds, and in low, shady areas. You’ll often find it sneaking along beside, through, or under the walls of barns, stables, gardens, and houses.

If you want your very own nettle patch, nettles are easy to grow and to propagate from runners. They spread easily, sending long exploratory runners under or between things and popping up where you least expect them. Keep this in mind when you consider where your nettle patch should be.

Nettles like a bit of shade, but will tolerate full sun as long as they don’t dry out.

For a long time, I kept my stinging nettle in a tub out of the way of people because I didn't want it to sting anybody. But the trouble was I never thought of using it, and it couldn't spread out beyond the confines of its tub.

Why would I want a stinging plant to spread out? Read on, and I'll tell you a number of reasons why.

Stinging nettle is a super-food

Although it's often talked about in terms of its medicinal properties, I prefer to think of nettle as a food. And not just any food, but a super-food. (I’ve shared some links at the end of this article to resources that describe its amazing nutritional profile.)

Thinking of nettle as a super-food reminds me to eat it often as a cooked green (it loses its sting when you cook it).

If I'm planning to eat it, I harvest the tips (wearing gloves) and snip the leaves into a bowl.

Caution: Nettle can be harvested for eating any time except when it's flowering or seeding. Once nettle flowers and goes to seed, its leaves may be potentially harmful to your kidneys if you consume a lot of it.

Stinging nettle on a table, ready to have tips and leaves trimmed off the stem

Then I drop the leaves into stir fries and "bubble'n'squeaks"... Below: bubble'n'squeak at our place - a meal made from left over veggies, bits of bacon or other meats, and whatever else I find in jars in the fridge, mixed and heated in a fry pan and usually graced with greens from the garden. Like nettle leaves.

Or I drop them into soups. This is a pan of chicken broth with white sweet potato added and the stick blender applied...

This batch of chicken and nettle soup had bits of chicken meat in it. Yum.

Below is a jar of nettle infusion, a staple drink in our house, which I learned about in Healing Wise. To make nettle infusion I put 2 loose cups of dried stinging nettle in a 2 liter heat-proof jar, fill the jar with boiling water, and leave 4 hours or overnight. Then I put it in the fridge and compete with the rest of my family to drink it. Learn more from Susun Weed about Nourishing Herbal Infusions.

Large jar of Stinging Nettle Infusion

Nettle nourishes and strengthens the adrenals and kidneys, relieving anxiety and building focused energy. It keeps the blood vessels flexible, shines up the hair, improves skin tone, nourishes the immune system, and moderates or eliminates most allergies.

Nettle infusion (not tea, not tincture, not capsules) provides lavish amounts of protein, all macro- and trace-minerals, and every vitamin we need - excepting vitamin B12.

Nettle is considered an anti-cancer herb in South America."

~ Susun Weed, in her book Healing Wise  and her website, Nourishing Herbal Infusions

Stinging nettle in our garden  

Besides feeding us, our nettle patch also nourishes our garden and compost bins. 

This is why I decided I wanted a larger patch of it, and why I put it where it could spread into a pathway: to remind me to harvest it often and use it well. 

This is our nettle patch, beside the main pathway through our garden. It's broadcasting a clear message: "It's time to harvest a large amount of nettle and make nettle fertilizer tea."

If I miss the message for too much longer, someone is going to get stung, to remind me.

(In defense of baling twine: when I had nearly finished this article, I looked at this picture properly and realized there was a messy piece of baling twine right in the middle of it. I know. How did I miss that?!

I decided to leave it as it was rather than go outside, secure that chicken netting by some other means, take another picture, re-edit it, and re-load it. Just to remind me and you that its not necessary to be super-human. Or not more super-human than we are already being.)

I wanted to show you cutting the nettle back at the edge of the bed, but I needed my cutting hand to hold the camera. You get the idea. 

Same bed (below), with nettle harvested and a new cardboard barrier in place.

(I like using cardboard as a barrier because

  • its free
  • it’s a resource that otherwise goes to landfill
  • it feeds my soil (appropriately balanced with other nitrogenous inputs I use) as it breaks down
  • running weeds such as couch grass and nettle runners are much easier to pull out when they’re running under or over cardboard than over uncovered soil, since they’re loosely rooted if you catch them early enough.)

The chicken wire was put there to keep the bandicoots out of this section of raised beds. It pre-dates the nettle; if I did this from scratch, I wouldn't bother protecting the nettle from bandicoots. Yes, that piece of baling twine is still there.

Stinging nettle is a super-fertilizer 

This is where all that nettle went: chopped into a 20-liter bucket... 

Weighted down with a rock and covered with water...

After 2 to 3 weeks in the shade with a loose lid on to let air in and keep critters out, this will be a black liquid smelling a lot like cow dung: liquid fertilizer.

(Don't keep it near the house. It actually smells more like cow dung than cow dung does. Take it from someone who is very familiar with both smells.)

To use it, strain, dilute 1 part fertilizer to 10 parts water for the soil around your plants, or 1 part fertilizer to up to 20 parts water if using it on the leaves.

Your compost heap will love it, too, if you have excess after feeding your plants.

Don't use it on a given garden bed or potted plant more often than about once every 3 to 4 weeks.

When the bucket gets low, it can be topped up with more water a few times. You may want to reduce the amount of water you dilute it with when you think it’s getting a bit weaker. And when you think it’s done or you have a new batch ready, put the plant material and any left-over liquid on the compost.

Zero maintenance abundance 

All this food, fertilizer, and what-ever other uses you might want to put nettle to—there are many, some detailed in the book and articles I've listed below—is available for very little effort on your part. 

Just find the right spot, establish your nettle patch, and enjoy. (Or perhaps I should say "get to work putting it to use before it takes over the garden.") Depending on your climate, you may have nettles available year-round (remember not to eat/drink the leaves while its flowering/seeding) or every spring. The only real work involved in maintaining a nettle patch is harvesting from it.

References and further reading

I've been a nettle fan ever since I first read about nettle in Susun Weed's book, Healing Wise - which was about the best introduction I can imagine. 

Nettles were once tithed, they have so many uses: medicine, food, fodder, fertilizer, beer, dye, fiber for thread, nets, durable cloth, paper, hair restorer, aphrodisiac, and smoke!"

~ Susun Weed, Healing Wise

Please comment...

Was this helpful? Do you have questions? Do you have other nettle recipes or garden applications that you could share? Please leave a comment below 🙂 

  • Thanks for the article Kate. I have mainly been using nettles as a compost tea and as a mulch – it grows naturally in many parts of our garden. I am encouraged to try out some of the uses you have mentioned.

    • You’re welcome, Terry, I’m glad it was useful.

  • Nettles can be used to make cordage/string. There are loads of videos on YouTube but Sally Pointer has the best method for joining in, I think. There’s also a Facebook page called Nettles for textiles. A guy called Allan Brown has made some good videos on the subject. I’ve only made cordage and I’m only a beginner but it’s quite soothing to do.
    You can apparently eat the seeds too, as they are highly nutritious and great sprinkled on your muesli, salad or soups. In the UK our nettles have only just begun to flower and seed, so I’m hoping to give it a try.

    • Hi Theresa, thanks for your comment. I’ve tried making cordage from banana fiber before and I’d be keen to try with nettle fiber (there is so much to learn!) so thanks for the resources 🙂

      You can indeed eat the seeds of nettle; I’ve read that they are great for thyroid health in particular. I’ve decided to stop cutting a section of my nettle patch to allow it to flower and seed so I can have my first go at harvesting nettle seeds. I’m thinking maybe I need another nettle patch 😉

  • Raine Bradford says:

    Hi Kate, another great article! I love your perspective on everything! I started a nettle patch a couple years ago, but haven’t made use of it as well as you have.

    I will share my main use for nettles, though. I put them in my Excalibur dehydrator and then use them in smoothies all year. I have one every day, and have been able to stop using deodorant since I started eating nettle every day, no joke! I can’t remember where I found out about this attribute of nettle, but it works!

    Love your pic of the bailing twine and how “real” you are!

    Thanks again,
    Raine Bradford

    • Glad you liked the bailing twine, Raine 🙂

      That’s fascinating about eating nettles and not needing deodorant any more. Another use for nettle!

      And thanks for the dehydrator tip. I have dried them in the Excalibur before too, and then crumbled them for use in soups and stews and such. (“Mum, what’s these green dots?!”)

      But I gave up doing that because it didn’t occur to me (duh) to strip the leaves and only dry them, without the stalks — so there were always stalky bits in the soup.

      I think now that you’ve reminded me I’ll try again with only the leaves 🙂

  • Jay Stuart says:

    A great article, thank you. I knew nettle had many uses but wasn’t sure so this was a useful reminder. I make tea with it in the spring and summer.

    • I’m glad it was helpful Jay. Thanks for commenting 🙂

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