stinging nettles

Dear friends
Use stinging nettles for spraying your plants.Put the nettles into a bucket and fill up with water let it stay warm for about a week so the water gets green fill in 3 times with water and spray the plants you gets healthyer plants less insects and moore taste on the fruit.

Roger Dahlstrom

Good point Roger, I've also heard that its a good companion plant too although perhaps not the wisest thing to plant next to your prize flowers.

we dont have to plant it its grow everywhere you can also use it as a herb tea or mashed on a sandwish

Roger Dahlstrom

Love the tea. My mother had me plant some so she could harvest it. DH thought I was loonier than a jay-bird!! He should be used to loony by now. LOL
Ruth

When you say stinging nettles, which nettle are you refering to? Bull/horse, or one of the thistles like Canadian or milk thistle? We have lots of all of them growing around our yard and it there is a good use for they it would make me very happy.
EvaMae

They're talking about Urtica dioca, Leaflady. You can't mistake it for anything else. The hairs which cover the leaves act as mini-hypodermic needles and inject an astringent irritent under the skin.

Most people react to this, to a greater or lesser degree, with an itchy, stinging, burning sensation.

Stinging nettle has a long history as a medicinal herb. Primarily it is a nutritive spring tonic, used as a blood cleanser. But it's even better than chickweed for this purpose. High in minerals like calcium and potassium, nettle improves resistance to allergens.

One of the uses (albiet Herculean) is to treat arthritis and other ailments by flagellation with stinging nettle. This stimulates blood flow, eases pain, and acts as a stimulent for the body, and promotes ease of movement.

Thistles are a different class of plants, both botanically and medicinally. Milk thistle (Silybum marianum), for instance, is the number one hepatonic in the world. It not only treats damaged liver tissue but promotes new growth as well.

Thank you Brook
Can you tell us a litlle moore about milk thistle what part can we use and how and how much and how often.

Roger Dahlstrom

I would like to know more about the milk thistle too. If anyone has a picture of it, I'd like to see that too.

You can't mistake milk thistle for any of the others, because the leaves are varigated: white striations on green leaves. Very pretty, in fact.

The medicinal part is the seed. However, unless you have stainless steel teeth, you can't just chew them, as they are very tough. So they have to be ground first.

Trouble is, they are like flax, in that the seed will keep forever, but, once it is ground it can turn rancid fairly quickly. So it's best to grind only a day or two's worth at a time, and keep it in the fridge.

Most people, after grinding, use it by sprinkling it on cereal, yoghurt, or what have you. Friend Wife, for instance, sprinkles it on her soy cereal. Dosage is 1 tbls twice daily.

This treatment is highly recommended for anybody who's liver is at risk. This would include alcoholics, substance abusers, anyone on cholesterol-reducing drugs, or anyone living in an environmentally toxic (i.e., polluted) environment---which, nowadays, includes many U.S. cities.

This message was edited Monday, May 20th 8:03 AM

a friend of mine has stinging nettles in her yard and would very much like to get rid of them does anynoe know how?

yes eat them,dry them as tea,mash them in oil,vinegar and garlic.use as a very good soup.use them as insekticides,fertilizer.its the most useful and healty vegetable you can have.

Roger

yea i know that but she is a city girl and does not feel the same way
btw how would one go about cooking them

I remember reading, years ago and don't know where, about a lady who would pull stinging nettles bare-handed in her yard/garden when her arthritis flared up. This was her treatment for arthritis and it worked for her!

Lana

Lana,

That's a traditional treatment for arthritis (see my post above, btw) which is still very popular. What happens, basically, is that it increases blood flow which, in turn, reduces inflamation. With the inflamation reduced, so is pain. And movement becomes much easier.