A rich seam of stinging nettles in Salvisa , Kentucky .
My daughter , Molly , decided to harvest nettle on our farm in Salvisa last year .
I enquire , Why ?
A rich seam of stinging nettles in Salvisa, Kentucky.
I must have been lost in the woods . Suddenly , more herbalist are singing the praises of stinging nettles . Urtica dioicais loaded with vitamin and minerals and is also a worthful , anti - inflammatory , weedy herbaceous plant . The parting can be harvestedfreshordriedfor a nourishing pick - me - up tea . And they can also be pale forpesto .
Some of you may never have take on a stinging nettle . Mike Berkeley a pardner ofGrowild Nurseryin Fairview , Tennessee , and co - creator of theNative Plant Podcast , suppose , “ You run through the woods naked and you ’ll recover stinging nettles .
So , you need to take precaution if you require to make an herbal tea or pesto with prick nettle . They have tiny little daggers called trichomes that can irritate your thin skin or even the thick fell of a buck . ( My wife , Rose , is a rider and she enounce , “ Oh yeah , cavalry will get jumpy . ” ) Molly recommends long sleeves , pants and sturdy oeuvre glove for crop .
Fresh spearmint and stinging nettles. Molly Bush photo.
Fresh Mentha spicata and stinging nettle . Molly Bush picture .
Nettle leaves should be harvest a few weeks before inflorescence begins . Stinging nettles flower in Kentucky from June - August . I dry our nettles in the strong sun on a breezy , wry Clarence Day along a gravel walk in late May . But , it ’s safer to tie them in little bunches and hang them from a clothesline on the porch . Your neighbors might distrust you ’ve harvested your backyard marijuana crop , so fill them in that your task is street effectual . ( And cue them that the pot harvest does n’t come in until later summertime . )
The dry out process can take a hebdomad or two . The annoying small sticker will recede their stinging effect .
Molly ’s friend , the husbandman and forager Laila Alizadeh , descend out to see the nettles last workweek . They do n’t grow on her farm in nearby Shelby County . Ronald L. Jones , author of Plant Life of Kentucky , wrote that stinging nettles are , in fact , rarefied in Kentucky .
Well , we must have the mother load . Stinging nettles are abundant in the evenly moist grime , along the woodland flood plain of the Salt River .
The Texas billionaire king Nelson Bunker Hunt [ shibboleth : “ People who know how much they ’re deserving are n’t usually worth that much ” ] tried to tree the silver marketplace and lost much of his fortune . Before and after the collapse of his many other nefarious enterprisingness , Hunt possess some 600 horse on 8,000 Akko of select thoroughbred land not so far from our farm .
I may be myopic on precious metal , but I ’m rich in prick nettle .
I told Laila to get along prospect for nettles anytime she desire .
