Is This The Most Useful 'Weed' for Self-Sufficiency? 

Not being the no weed police, but it reminds me of what my Grandma used to say. "There's no such thing as weeds, just Wildflowers without a home!" She was an avid gardener 🌹

In Italy we use nettle for gnocchi, ravioli and vegetables pies 😋

My granny always claimed she wouldn't have lived to be 97 years old if she hadn't eaten nettle spinach and dandelion salad almost every day. 😊 I love both!

Dandelion, Cleavers, Stinging Nettle for the win!

Nettles can also be used to create a fibre that is very similar to silk, it was called silk of the North or Nordic silk. It was considered such a luxurious fabric that in Norway ordinary people were banned from wearing it until 1720.

Hi! You forgot an essential thing. In Romania we eat it an buy it only when it has 3 or 5 cm high. Then when it s higher is very useful in the garden: it can fight againt any fungus an insects when we make a juice from it. We keep it a day or two in the water and then use it to sprinkle the garden.

Boiled down... they're a vegetarian rennet that can be used in cheese making! Just in case you're fresh out of ruminate parts. 🐑

When I injured my back I had to leave the gardening so it went wild and nettles sprouted up and grew 10 foot tall and huge leaves and cleavers grew so I added that to my greens smoothie. Dandelions, dock leaves, blackberries and alpine strawberries grew too so I had free food. I had to build a bamboo stick support structure for the tall nettles as the wind and rain tend to flatten them. I don't eat the baby leaves along the stalks, I let them grow for next harvest. I've noticed people harvest the whole stalk but then if you do that just like celery, cabbage, spinach and lettuce then it's gone so why not take what you need and let the vegetables carry on growing for more food. I only harvested outer stalks of celery and the middle just carried on expanding and each celery plant divided itself into five new plants and they survived for 7 years till the drought. They do require a lot of water. The stalks were three times wider than supermarket celery and were two foot tall. Also to grow larger celery the soil needs to be deep...they have long roots.

Im a permaculturist, its all fine and dandy ! 😂😂😂 I need this on a T-Shirt

What a coincidence, I’ve just eaten steamed nettle tops as a veg with my cottage pie, simply delicious, been eating them for years! Also great food in the vegetable garden and I’ve also used them for years as a final rinse to my hair…..no dandruff and a good shine……just nettles steeped in hot water, like a tea. Thanks for the great video telling everyone how fantastic nettles are, nobody believes me.

As soon as I saw the title I knew this would be about nettles 😊 Such a valuable resource! My first experience with appreciating nettles was as a child, probably about 10. I was away at a week long conservation summer camp and one of the activities was a long hike followed by setting up a primitive survival camp for the night. We couldn’t bring food and instead were only allowed to harvest nettles and drink nettle tea that night. We were taught to tap the plant with a stick to loosen excess pollen and then pinch the individual leaves from the top, folding them downward on themselves because the underside has the most needles. Now I harvest them for drying for drinking teas and for making fertilizer in the garden.

I still have nettles in my freezers and I'm desperately trying to eat it all to create space for this years harvest. (We still have snow). I use the nettles in soups, stews, pies, omelett and pasta dishes. It's a great vegetable AND it's great as a fertilizer for healthy plants! ❤

Dandelions should never be underestimated for the uses they can provide! thanks Hugh!.

I live in the desert and I have planted yarrow, peppernint, oregano, thme, sage, lavender, dock and more. Then I have dandelions and plaintain that grows wild.

My Nan would make nettle wine every year, when I was allowed a sip it tasted nice 😄

Love it when Huw says “we’re all part of nature, it’s all fine and dandy…”SO true 👍🏻😃

I live in a desert alpine valley in Colorado. To get nettles at all, I have to treat it like a perennial vegetable in a raised bed. I haven't managed to get mine to weed status yet... life goals!😂

I have a treasure. I found a patch of nettle together with comfrey. The two plants grow right next to each other. Safe to say I harvest from this spot almost weekly.

I was thinking black locust. Very useful tree. Wood doesn't rot. Edible seed pods. Attracts squirrels. Some people say that the spikes can be used as nails in softer woods. They are definitely straight and long enough, and probably hard enough. Black locust is very hard wood. I like plants.

Huw, blimey you've come a long way. well done

I've got a small bunch growing on the side of my garden, just peeping through the fence. I put up a sign for the council not to mow them "I standing here for Butterflies". So far so good. As an artist I also use them to make/add to handmade paper. And of course (like mentioned) liquid feed, or simply composting/mulching. Super versatile. Thanks Huw!

Also you can make string from the long fibres in the stems. Sally Pointer has some great videos on making and using nettle fibre.

“We are a part of nature” … l love it! I share my cabbages, they share their nettles. Great job, Huw! Keep us balanced in our thinking.

I love nettles. you are amazing man. Been watching you grow for years.

I have received my book yesterday. Thank you Huw and Sam for a fantastic book. 🎉🎉

What a great educator and communicator. Delighted to have this video arrive in my algorithm tray.

I love nettles, there a great food source for us and creatures. They are also great for making cordage and textiles!

Garden weeds has always fascinated me. I feel like that's an ecosystem on it's own. The Biologist inside me wants to make a full research on it, but sadly, I can only come home on vaccation.

Another edible "weed" is the similar but non-stinging white deadnettle & purple deadnettle plant. They are amongst the first to flower along with spring bulbs like daffodils, crocuses, tulips & muscari, but bumblebees seem to overwhelmingly prefer the nectar of the white deadnettle & dandelions.

I made a tea from stinging nettle, and it was delicious! There's also a soup recipe made with it and potatoes, carrots and almost anything else you want to add - yummy!

One thing I would add is that they're full of antihistamines. They're really good to take as a tea from February onwards to help combat hay fever

I eat, infuse and powder nettles.. Nature's perfect 💚

I like the flavour and texture of nettles more than spinach. I just finished my dried nettle seed from last year, had some on my soaked oats every morning! Must save more this year! ☺️

What a great video. Thanks all the way from South Africa. So encouraging to listen to a young man in tune with the natural world of butterflies, edible “weeds”, and food sources grown in a natural and healthy environment.

In Greece the old folk used it in soups, stews and as the greens instead of spinach in spinach pie. In Crete they use it as a staple green and people in the know pick it and cook it. Its very versatile.

I harvested, steamed, cooled and froze a large batch last year in very little time and it was light work too. Very like spinach. I only pick the top four leaves so I'm less likely to disturb insect eggs etc. Good to remind us of nettles Huw😊

I just put another set of nettle leaves in the dehydrator about 1/2 hour before seeing this video... It will go EVERYWHERE, and I would consider it a weed. Last year I had one plant, and this year I have a patch about 3x4 feet large.

Thank Huw!! it is always a delight to listen to your very useful videos!! keep on doing them!

That fencing in the 1st minute......nice.

Always thought weeds...are actually the true badasses! Survivalists that subsist in minimal or even hostile terrain

The only problem apart from the sting, is the stench when making compost tea. I use it in my public garden to scare people away sometimes :-D

❤ Brennessel ist ein Muß im Garten. Greatings from Vienna.

I love your attitude about nature, permaculture, and no dig. Thanks Huw for another interesting and useful video 👍🌟✔

Nettles are my best friend for allergy season. A gardeners fix, for a sniffly gardener! I couldn’t believe it would work but sipping nettle tea throughout the day keeps me off all those allergy pills!

@HuwRichards, great info as always and am loving my signed copy of your terrific book which arrived in New Zealand in perfect condition after 12,000 miles in a very clever cardboard container with no need for any sellotape, brilliant! 😃

I was collecting the tops of nettles for soup just this weekend. Trust me, they will more than recover lol. And I have to go to some wild land to get mine. So while I was there foraging, I had the joy of coming upon that rare beauty white trillium. As a forager I know that this is a plant that can be easily damaged by human interference and often doesn't recover very well. I don't need white trillium for anything except that mood boost I get rounding a bend in the trail to discover one in all its glory so I left it alone and took nothing but joy and pictures away. True foragers know these things. Yes, some people don't know these things and know how to manage the land they forage so that nature can be successful and other foragers can also benefit. Yes some people may indiscriminately damage things, but these aren't knowledgeable foragers. However I guess there is a.point to be made that some people may watch a video like this, get a little knowledge on foraging and then tromp destructively through the woods. So maybe it's worth making a video on some.of the dos and don'ts of foraging if you are an influencer. Now I am just playing devil's advocate lol. Anyway. Thanks. I love your videos...and to anyone who has never eaten a good nettle soup, you aren't truly living! The soup I made this weekend had nettles and onions and carrots and a dash of milk and cheddar. Yummm!

Thank You , I love nettles in all their ways 😻

Absolutely. I totally agree. That was my experience of this tale

Thank you, sir! I look forward to trying it.

Hi! In Greece and Albania (probably also in other balkan countries, though the first two i know for a fact and have tasted both variants), there is a baked nettle crust pie (pita with fillo) recipe that is simply delicious!

I had this for dinner last night for the first time. Highly recommend!

Wonderful! Looking forward to adding it to my garden. ❤

Great to promote the humble nettle, thank you and love all the ideas

Nettle gnocchi with lemon balm pesto is very nice!

I only made your nettle juice ferment yesterday, as well as first nettle & seaweed with comfrey into a bucket and way at the other end of the garden for early fertilizer two weeks ago. Last year I sown a lot of medicinal herbs into the garden. Thanks for your insight, loving the book by the way!!

We make fresh pasta with spring nettles and a filling with ricotta for ravioli.

I love your mindset. We are all part of nature. Have had nettle seeds for years and have never known where to plant them. I think this year it's time.

Nettle seeds are so underrated! Fun to forage, easy to dry for winter storage, sprinkle on your salad, soups, anything really

I remember going to a seaside place as a kid with my parents where we could buy delicious homemade nettle beer.

Thanks for the very inspiring presentation.

I enjoy the added flavor in soups and stews. I also started making my own fertilizer that I used for the first time this week. I look forward to the results. Started using nettle a year ago. Love it! And to think it was only a obnoxious weed growing up - lol

fab video, thank you so much, Huw - and appreciatel the comments - so valuable

I FINALLY got some in my yard last year. Gonna go pick some right now and make a tea. 😊

i am waiting for a dry spell to harvest nettles. it makes a great hay for my rabbits. I feed my rabbits well and they feed me and my garden. rabbit manure is balanced like a NPK fertilizer.

Good one Huw. To avoid them spreading, I grow nettles in a tub. No maintenance.

Nettles are lovely as a tisane/tea and it tastes just like the color green.

I've eaten them for years, especially for hearty potato soups. I never knew that it could be eaten raw. Nettle is a nutritional powerhouse, and as a medicinal herb, a nerve tonic. food for the twenty-first Century !

Thanks Huw Inspiring post x

I had a big, creamy (blended cashew cream) nettle soup yesterday. I just added some onion and salt. So delicious!

A brilliant video Huw. Thanks a lot!

Great video, thanks I make nettle pancakes when there is fresh nettle about. NB they do thicken the mix considerably consequently it's best to start with a more fluid mix.

LOL, you can come and have some of ours then. They are taking over our farm and the animals don't want to eat them so we have to cut them down constantly. A few patches are fine but they will take over everything before you know it. AND they come back in the same places year after year. There's only so much nettle soup and nettle tea that one can consume, believe me. 😆😭😭😭

I have a big patch of nettles at the bottom of my allotment. I’ve been using them to make nettle fertiliser and as a strulch…I’ll have to give eating them a go 😊

Another awesome video! Thank you!

Lovely video Hugh. I have plenty nettle patches in my allotment which i cherish. They attract so many benefical insects, enhance the compost heap and make great health giving tinctures. I agree we are not seperate from nature and when you garden with principles of biodivesity you create with nature abundance. Embrace the nettle ❤

Could you please make a really close-up video on exactly how to pick the nettles with bear hands please? I love them too! And I had actually made a dish years ago when my kids were young and they like it too. Saute tender nettle leaves with red onions in butter and then put these with some feta cheese on top of pastry dough. Wrap them into a sort of a box or a croissant and bake. You can eat these pure or with some glazed orange or tomatoes or both. So add finely chopped oranges with peel and tomatoes anrich brown sugar or coconut sugar and a pinch of freshly milled pepper if you like. Perhaps you could swap oranges with lemons.

For the bushcrafters in the audience, I've also heard that the stems of nettles can be stripped to make rope; gave it a try once and it seems to work, though I didn't have a lot of practice making rope by hand and didn't give the fibers enough time to dry. I'd be interested though in soaking them in water over a long period of time to rot the center out of them in the same way that flax is produced, and whether or not the resulting nettle fibers could be used to make linen.

Just ordered some seeds! Thanks! Your book looks good!

I just watched your stinging nettle video of 12 years ago yesterday. You have come a long way since!

I didn't have any stinging nettle in my garden so I sowed it. People thought I was nuts! But it's useful for so many things.

Been using nettles for years; it thrives in a park near us. Steaming, pureeing and freezing it in ice trays helps us use it in smoothies and soups throughout the year. Instead of the messy and outrageously smelly tea for the garden I’m trying putting it around garden plants as mulch, using only the young, seedless shoots in early spring. Love your video and thx for spreading the news of this amazing plant. I’ve not had spring or fall allergies since using nettle!

They're my favourite green foraged food. I used to have a go-to patch next to a creek, but the little trail is now paved, and the area is sprayed for weeds. I would harvest cleavers / stickyweed from there as well.

Wonderful, thank you. 🙏

The long stems that are left can be made into really good cordage, nettles have more vit c than anything else we can grow, interestingly enough and the green dye you get from them is quite lovely

2:12 what an artsy shot :)

Well timed! was just about to weed a bunch of nettles out of my yard this afternoon but now I will leave them and see how it goes!

Thank you so much!

Excellent video, thank you

It took me seven years of homeownership before I finally started recognizing it right at the beginning of the year, instead of going: "Darling dear, what's th-ouch!"

Here in Australia many seed companies sell dandelion & nettle seeds 👍 Thank you for the video Huw 🙂

Having a french mama we ate young dandelion leaves,. Stinging nettles are also great for herbal remedies

Yes I have had nettle omelette and found the flavour quite mild not over powering. I just sweated them down a little in butter.

Just picked nettles today! For fermentering into plant juice and for food. Such a lovely gift of nature. My experience is that they grow back just fine when harvested sensibly.

Great present Huw. Been very busy and need to catch up on your posts. Nettles. Bloody marvellous!!

I make all the edible and medicinal things from nettles, including hair and skin care. Would never want to be without them! They’ve helped so much in so many ways. Even tho they’re all different plants, the ‘weeds’ with “nettle” in their name are all incredible for many reasons.

My grandmother used to bake Epirus' spanakopita which is basically season greens plus spinach. Nettle and poppy greens was the best combination

I use nettles in soup (my fav), stewed as sidedish, in pies, pastadough or like lasagna or sauce, gnocchi and the seeds on top of youghurt or in smoothies. Living up north in Sweden we have a short growing season and have to wait for the harvest of veggies so they are a nice contribution to my food in May/June. After a couple of harvest I cut them down, put the stems in a waterbarrel and make fertiliser from them, Then I got a second and fourth harvest from the plants I have cut down. So versatile, love them!

Thank you

Champion weeds, and your a champ too mate, great content to help people grow healthy food in the simplest most effective and efficient ways, life can be so simple yet so enriching if we go back to basics, thankyou for being dedicated to show and demonstrate that!

Good show, cheers Huw. If you look up the mineral analysis of nettle and comfrey in the apendix of Nigel Palmers book (The regen growers guide to garden amendments) you'll be able to see that mixing the two 50/50 in compost/ferment provides one of the best all round mineral amendments you could need in the garden. I make an excellent liquid extract by mixing the two in a wheely bin with a tap on the bottom, scrunch up some old chicken wire to put in the bottom ~a ft thick to act as a filter, fill the bin with the 50/50 mix and weight it down with a large stone, open tap to harvest runoff, it'll store well for years in old plastic milk bottles. I use it diluted 16:1, 1 pint jug goes into a 2 gal watering can.