The Mighty Nettle

Doc Ruby

Yes, the humble Irish nettle, weed and sometime tormentor, is actually one of the handiest plants going. If you haven't got rope or thread you can turn it into high quality cordage, which looks like this:



There's a very comprehensive guide here. You could make a half decent fishing line out of that, which is actually another tutorial he covers.

Nettle tea is now for sale over the counter in most health shops, and makes a delicious alternative to the normal cuppa, you can find a no-nonsense guide here, run by a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to my first girlfriend as it turns out. Don't drink too much of the stuff all at once or you'll get a dose of the runs as well.

Historically it has been used for a wide variety of health reasons, from the sting helping arthiritis to a meal garnish to, well see for yourself, as I don't want to incur the wrath of the charter again.



This is a waistcoat made of nettle yarn:


Far more than a nuisance weed, the Mighty Nettle is a treasure trove of outdoor utility. What else can be done with the nettle?

And what other valuable plants do you know that hide in plain sight in Ireland?

krissovo

I had nettle soup a few weeks ago, well maybe 6 or 7 now but its a fine plant for eating

You have probably picked the best one to start but I will throw in Hawthorne.

Hawthorne is everywhere and the berries and leaves are edible. Young leaves actually taste very good and often found in 5 star restaurants as garnish but the older leaves should be tested first as they can be very bitter.

Berries are edible and make great fruit leather, kind of like jerky but the fruit version. Quite bland on their own but mix with sour crab apples and you have a nice treat.

Young leaves make a great salad and you can add the flower as well.

eth0

I used to drink nettle tea. Stuff wasn't half bad actually

ajhalpin

When I was a kid I jumped over a 3 foot wall only to find that there was an 8 foot drop on the other side and a field of 8 foot high nettles to boot. It was summertime in the 70's so I was wearing shorts and tshirt. I came out looking like a creature from outer space. Needless to say the doc leaves and spit didn't cut it this time.

Doc Ruby

The Bulrush, more versatile perhaps than even the nettle, this common waterway plant has many uses.



Note before going any further, know the area you are harvesting them well, they absorb pollutants very easily. Don't take them downstream from a farm or industrial area, also make sure they have a crescent shaped cross section, not diamond shaped, that's an iris which isn't good for you.



So what can we do with the bulrush?

• Weave them into baskets and other storage implements, use them for thatching, as well as making just about anything you can make out of cloth, such as mats or blankets
• The reeds when dry can be used as arrow shafts quite effectively, although more than a 60lb draw will probably split them before they fly, you can do this with a point on them or just make the point near a knuckle
• The green leaves make decent cordage with less work than the nettle, brown aren't much use though
• The shoots, lower stalks, and tips of the root mass can be eaten raw, although that's best done in early spring
• If you dry the root mass you can crush it and grind it into pretty good flour
• Young roots can be crushed and boiled to produce sweet syrup
• The seeds are edible raw or dried, and can be ground into meal, this or the root mass can be a good source of starchy carbs, over 200 calories per 100 grams, much better than even potatoes
• The sap on the stem can be stored in rolled balled form
• The pollen can be used as a flour or thickener
• The seed heads and dried leaves make a great tinder, as does the fluff
• Some dip the heads into oil and use them as torches
• Plus several other uses I won't go into here

A fantastic plant all told, with an almost limitless variety of uses, whose presence on grindstones has been recorded going back long before the last ice age.

Doc Ruby

krissovo wrote: »

You have probably picked the best one to start but I will throw in Hawthorne.

I might add that the hawthorne, or more properly the blackthorn but they can be used somewhat interchangeably, can be turned into proper whackin shillelaghs when cured.

Grizzly 45

The soil where you nettles grows is proably also a very fertile soil patch that is being helped along by the nettles bringing up all the nutrients.So maybe a mini garden in the former nettle patch.
Also for garden fertiliser ,simply let nettles rot in fresh water ,and chuck the water out onyour garden soil,not on plants as it will burn them.It smells like all the unflushed toilets in Ireland at once.But it is powerful stuff.:D

BRIARS
Want cheap strong cordage?Find a briar patch and sort out a nice long briar stalk that is fresh.Cut it off at the base and untangle it.These babies can grow up to 20 ft in length.Get a pair of strong welding gloves,[not the rigger gloves they are useless for this] or big handfuls of grass ,and run your hands along the stem of the plant to remove the thorns.
You can then pound the stalk in its length to make it more flexible and thinner with either a mallet or just two rocks.This plant has been used for lashing outside for generations.

Doc Ruby

Dandelions, as any gardener knows are nothing but a pain in the ass; cut one down, two pop up. Don't get rid of the root entirely, one more joins the party. Driving along a main road in a major city last spring I noted the green middle strip had turned itself yellow less than a week after the grass had been cut.



And yet, this ubiquitous vegetation has quite a lot to recommend it! The leaves come in fourth of all leafy vegetables for overall nutritious value, and are beaten only by the likes of cod liver oil for vitamin A content.

Almost every part of this plant is edible, although it does come with a bitterness which a frost or a slow boil after water changing can disperse. The root can be fried lightly and the leaves make a great salad when mixed with other vegetables. Even the flowers are edible!

The leaves are higher in beta-carotene than carrots, the iron and calcium content is tremendous, greater than spinach. You also get vitamins B1, B2, B5, B6, B12, C, E, P, and D, biotin, inositol, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, and zinc, and of course the root contains the sugar inulin.

The dandelion might be a gardener's nightmare but its a nutritional dream, although I'd recommend looking up recipes before tucking in!

CamperMan

This is a waistcoat made of nettle yarn:




cool waistcoat!

CamperMan

Doc Ruby wrote: »

Dandelions, as any gardener knows are nothing but a pain in the ass; cut one down, two pop up. Don't get rid of the root entirely, one more joins the party. Driving along a main road in a major city last spring I noted the green middle strip had turned itself yellow less than a week after the grass had been cut.

I have baked the dandelion roots then ground them to make to make a nice hot drink with!

Doc Ruby

So, next up we have the silver birch tree. There's so much you can do with this tree that I doubt I'll be able to cover it all in one post, so if anyone can think of anything I forgot do chime in.



The silver birch is one of two types of birch in Ireland, the other is the downy birch, I'm not sure how much of a difference there is in terms of bushcraft though. Don't rely just on the shade and appearance of the bark to identify it, check the leaves as well, since older birch can look like anything.



This is a chart of the distribution of the silver birch in Ireland, the downy birch is a lot more common:



Now obviously as people who enjoy the outdoors, its our duty to make sure that the outdoors stay enjoyable, so don't take any bark from living birch, only fallen birch, unless you have absolutely no choice. Taking the outer bark will damage a tree, the inner bark will probably kill it.

Probably the first and most important part of the birch tree is the bark, which can be used as paper (we have birch documents dating back a thousand years), canoes, shoes, clothing, containers which keep food longer due to the anti fungals in birch bark, waterproof coverings, tents, and just about anything of the same sort.



It also makes an incredible tinder, which is water resistant, just crumble the dry bark up and it will take a spark like nobody's business. The sap is easy to harvest. Theres a good tutorial on how to tap it here.



The bark can also be turned into a hard setting tar, this guy explains how to do that. This can be used anywhere you need glue, and was employed in the setting of arrowheads.



And of course the birch has a deep significance in traditional Irish culture.



So I mean really, its an all in one package, a source of housing, water transport, footwear, clothing, containers, and a lot more, as long as you develop the skills neccessary to take advantage of this great resource.

CamperMan

Doc Ruby wrote: »

this is cool

Doc Ruby

Pine trees, commonly found in many commercial tree farms around Ireland, have numerous valuable uses.



The sap goes up like lighter fluid, more so when you roll it around in your fingers or heat it for a while so it becomes soft.



Collecting the sap can be done anytime, from hardened drips exuding from scars or cuts in the tree. It can also be used at a 1:1 ratio with charcoal for making pine pitch glue, maybe mix in some manure as a binder. Another recipe is pine tar, sawdust and beeswax, used to mount knives into hilts in the past.



Pine stumps and old pine generally can be cut for fatwood, another excellent fire starter. This is the reddish heartwood of the pine three, impregnated with sap, as the tree tries to cover the damage done, whether by saw, lightning or other effect, the roots keep pumping up the resin which is highly flammable.


Pine needles make an excellent and fragrant tea, high in vitamin C (apparently five times as much as lemons), and the bark, leaves and twigs can be made into a cough remedy and a poultice. It has been said that those who died of "rabbit starvation", scurvy caused by only eating rabbits while lost in the wilderness, could have been saved by chopping and boiling the pine needles around them.



The inner bark also make a nutritious if ferociously bitter meal.



And of course pine nuts are delicious salted

baords dyslexic

Waistcoat looks good but this looks better



STUDENT SHOWS OFF NETTLE KNICKERS

Essentially it would be similar to making linen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeCXLiwWqKw but with a different method of extracting the fibre from the plant.

Doc Ruby

There's a decent guide to Irish woodland plants here

http://www.woodlandplantkey.com/Bosbeer%20Irish%20Woodland%20Plant%20Key.html

That's a web 2.0 form there so it might take a minute to load. Useful for identifying plants but doesn't give any details on their uses, it would be nice to expand it a bit. This goes into a bit more detail: http://www.pfaf.org/user/plantsearch.aspx

bonniebede

I have been wondering about eating nettles, because I came to liking spinach late in life, and reckon it must be similar.

Firstly, I see it often reccommended to pick young leaves, is this essential? and how would I identify their age?

Second, well this is an issue for everything I wnat ot eat that doesn't come wrapped in plastic (I can so identify with Howard Hughes) - how do I wash them before eating. I mean they're wild think passing dogs and foxes marking their territory and all that stuff.

Any advice?

baords dyslexic

bonniebede wrote: »

I have been wondering about eating nettles, because I came to liking spinach late in life, and reckon it must be similar.

Firstly, I see it often reccommended to pick young leaves, is this essential? and how would I identify their age?

Second, well this is an issue for everything I wnat ot eat that doesn't come wrapped in plastic (I can so identify with Howard Hughes) - how do I wash them before eating. I mean they're wild think passing dogs and foxes marking their territory and all that stuff.

Any advice?

Depends how big the dogs are around your way but who cares your going to boil it anyway

Obviously the leaves at the top of the plant are the young leaves provided the plant is still growing vigourously and not gone to seed but country people I know only bother with nettles when they first come up in the spring when most of the fresh new growth is edible, but discard the stems.

You can even cut a patch of nettles down and pick the fresh leaves from the new growth.

Doc Ruby

bonniebede wrote: »

Second, well this is an issue for everything I wnat ot eat that doesn't come wrapped in plastic (I can so identify with Howard Hughes) - how do I wash them before eating. I mean they're wild think passing dogs and foxes marking their territory and all that stuff.

Animals generally keep away from nettles to avoid being stung, in particular their more sensitive areas, but like BD said a good run under the tap should get rid of most surface pollutants. If a plant looks or smells off, avoid it, but otherwise you're as likely to catch something from a manually picked/packed/handled vegetable sold in Tesco as from a field.

Maudi

baords dyslexic wrote: »

bonniebede wrote: »

I have been wondering about eating nettles, because I came to liking spinach late in life, and reckon it must be similar.

Firstly, I see it often reccommended to pick young leaves, is this essential? and how would I identify their age?

Second, well this is an issue for everything I wnat ot eat that doesn't come wrapped in plastic (I can so identify with Howard Hughes) - how do I wash them before eating. I mean they're wild think passing dogs and foxes marking their territory and all that stuff.

Any advice?

Depends how big the dogs are around your way but who cares your going to boil it anyway

Obviously the leaves at the top of the plant are the young leaves provided the plant is still growing vigourously and not gone to seed but country people I know only bother with nettles when they first come up in the spring when most of the fresh new growth is edible, but discard the stems.

You can even cut a patch of nettles down and pick the fresh leaves from the new growth.

i tried nettles about three years ago for the first time and they are yummy and worth trying..also those prickley greenweeds that stick to your clothes..cheevers we call them...vey good for you apparently too...and dont forget the dandelion..leaves .flower and surpriseingly good drink from the roots...and the wine...ive just been checking my batch brewing away in the kitchen...and those small blueberry type berries that we have all over the hills in the summer..ive a french mate who goes mad for them..hawthorns..sloe..blackberrys..i could go on and on....(hungry now)

bonniebede

Maudi wrote: »

also those prickley greenweeds that stick to your clothes..cheevers we call them...

dandelion..leaves .flower and surpriseingly good drink from the roots...

Are they the sticky things which grow long, like to grow up through hedges, have slightly ridged stems, and very small leaves, also some sort of little green ball, all of which is very sticky like velcro?

And how do you prepare them?

Dandelions I do seem to be able to grow in abundance. Any recipes for preparing the roots? Is it roasted and ground?

Maudi

bonniebede wrote: »

Maudi wrote: »

also those prickley greenweeds that stick to your clothes..cheevers we call them...

dandelion..leaves .flower and surpriseingly good drink from the roots...

Are they the sticky things which grow long, like to grow up through hedges, have slightly ridged stems, and very small leaves, also some sort of little green ball, all of which is very sticky like velcro?

And how do you prepare them?

Dandelions I do seem to be able to grow in abundance. Any recipes for preparing the roots? Is it roasted and ground?

yes velcro type sticky fellas...my missus laughs at me collecting em...i basically blanch em.and eat em raw...dandelion root i chop em up oven dry them and pound em into powder in a mortar and pestal..

Doc Ruby

bonniebede wrote: »

Are they the sticky things which grow long, like to grow up through hedges, have slightly ridged stems, and very small leaves, also some sort of little green ball, all of which is very sticky like velcro?

Hrm, never tried those or met anyone (till now) that ate them, but follow the guidelines on consuming foreign plants and you should be more or less okay. Dandelion recipes here.

I've made a nettle beer (and will again!).

Currently considering trying out a nettle and cleaver tea, which I believe is quite good and also packed full of nutrients.

- Druss.

http://paddy-halligan.blogspot.com
http://twitter.com/#!/druss_rua