How To Forage Nettle Seeds

As I've talked about in previous videos, the nettle plant is truly the forager's superfood. It is a multivitamin and mineral tablet in a plant and the seeds are the most nutritious part of the plant. They are a little powerhouse of energy giving goodness. So if you need an energy boost, the seeds are excellent to eat. They are full of iron, easily absorbed by the body, they are antihistamine, they're good for low high blood pressure, they're good for anemia, good for prostate trouble with men, coughs, colds, tonic for the blood, you name it, they're good for it. So definitely worth harvesting and keeping, storing for future use. But this time of year we don't want the leaves, in fact the leaves could actually cause an irritation of the urinary tract because they contain these crystals. The nettle plant is dioecious which means it has female and male parts on separate plants. What we want is female, of course female produces the seeds, but the plant will have male flowers and female flowers on a different plant. Luckily there is a difference so you can tell which ones you want to be foraging. On I go with my gloves so we can get a closer look at the seeds that we want to be foraging. Here is a brilliant example of the seeds. Look how they dangle, they hang, they're pendulous, they've got a lovely spring green colour and they're in bunches. Those are what we want to Here we are with an example of the male flowers on the nettle. So let's have a look at the difference from this to the female plant. As you can see these stand directly outward almost at a 90 degree angle from the stem. It's not in bunches and the colour is different, it's a lighter green, There's no wild food to be had here. I'm now going to harvest the plant. Most of that I will do at home so at this stage all I need is a pair of scissors, my gloves and a brown paper bag. I just want to identify on the plant where all the seeds are. They stop there so I certainly don't want any more of the plant than this. In it goes. Now even though we know the leaves can be really good and edible food earlier in the year, you can see now they've gone way past their best. Look at this, they're definitely spent. So you'll know that's not the part of the plant we want to be eating at this time of year. Here I've got some nettle seeds that I harvested a few days ago and have been drying for the last few days. These I snipped off with the scissors as I picked them so these have come straight off and dried just as seeds. The odd leaf has snuck in there which I will have to get rid of. These over here I cut, now most of the sting has gone off these, I've cut them into lengths so that they would fit in my drying racks. These drying racks are actually paper making contraptions but they make perfect drying racks for plants, berries and all sorts. Another way to harvest your seeds is to dry them on the stalk then when they're dry use your fingers and we're going to go over here and we're going to pull them off with our fingers. You can use gloves, I do get the odd little sting but mostly the stings have gone and if I don't push my fingers down that way but only hold it this way that also helps me to avoid the sting. Twice a day I come along and I just turn the seeds over to make sure they're not sitting damp underneath, the mesh will help get the air underneath but just in case I just turn them over to make the drying process even better. This will be done in a dark room in my house without direct sunlight. If you haven't got anything like this kit here for drying your seeds don't worry just use newspaper but then it's really essential to keep turning those seeds probably two three times a day. During really warm weather like it is now I'd like to say that within five to seven days these will be dry enough to then store and I'll use a glass jar. I'll know straight away if they're not dry enough to be stored yet because they'll start to be condensation in the glass so they do want to be put away totally dry so you could leave them a few days extra over in a week just to make sure. Here we have the dried nettle seeds and what we want to do now is separate the seed from the tiny stalks leaving that hairy stalky stuff behind so we're just left with the seeds. You can use the back of a spoon to push the seed through the sieve, the seed falls through and you're left with these stalks in the sieve and here we are left with those nutritious seeds nature's superfood full of vitamins and minerals and energy giving properties ready to sprinkle on as many meals as you can think of. The stalks and leaves need not go to waste they make a great natural fertilizer brilliant for your tomatoes and if you've got comfrey in your garden add that as well fabulous and free. To make your free natural fertilizer for your garden just put all your nettle waste in a bucket fill with water add comfrey leaves if you've got them cover and leave for a few weeks or until it's totally rotten and stinking. When it's really smelling bad it's it's that simple. Now you can use the seeds in a salad you could sprinkle them on cheese on toast I'm going to be making some raw chocolate energy balls full of the seeds myself there's lots of things you could do with them or add them to a smoothie or sprinkle them on any of your foods but definitely get those seeds and store them for the rest of the year. Here I am a year later with the next batch of nettle seeds all year I've been eating last year's nettle seeds whilst pregnant and producing this beautiful baby so supporting my health and I've ran out so now I've come this season and collected nettle seeds from this year's plants and here they are. Now if you're interested in my recipe for raw chocolate and nettle seed energy balls then you can get that recipe in our online course it's your wild food year where there's loads of other recipes foraging resources videos to support you in your foraging journey check out the link in the description below. If you like this video please check out all our other videos on this channel and please do subscribe thanks so much for watching and we'll see in the next one.