Harvesting Nettles for Spinning and Weaving

Harvesting Nettles for Spinning and Weaving

Nettles are extremely valuable plants.  They offer early spring greens, beneficial herbal medicine, as well as fibre for textiles and cordage.  Salish women in BC spun the nettle fibre to make fishing nets.  The fibre is a bast fibre like linen and hemp, but shorter than either commercially exploited plant.

There are several species of nettle throughout the world.  One variety in the Himalayas has a sting so poisonous that it will kill a man.  But most of us can safely deal with nettle stings as they come, using plantain.  It’s a small price to pay for the privilege of working with this useful and prolific fibre.

Nettles are ready to harvest for fibre in August when the plants are tall, seeds are forming, and the new growth begins to come up from the root zone.    The leaves are beginning to wilt and yellow but there is still a lot of water in the stem.  At this time of year, it is easy to get be stung by the nettles so make sure you have a source of Plantain close by to deal with the stings.  Plantain is the best herbal remedy to take the sting out of the nettle.

When you are ready to harvest you’ll need this equipment:

Long sleeve shirt

Heavy leather gardening gloves or work gloves

Sharp knife

Long, heavy pants

If you have long hair, keep it tied back or cover it with a kerchief so that it doesn’t tangle in the stems

Twine to bundle the nettle and take it to where you plan to rett the nettle stems

Watch this episode of Joybilee Farm TV to see how easy it is to harvest nettles for spinning and weaving while maintaining your nettle patch for future years of harvests.

If you have sheep and goats and free-range them, you may need to protect your nettle patch after harvesting.  The goats love nettles and don’t seem to mind the sting.  Once you remove the tall, thorny growth, they may gorge themselves on the younger, more tender growth coming up.  If you plan to harvest nettles from the same patch for many seasons, you’ll want to protect these younger stems after removing the longer stems, or you might find that your future nettle harvests are curtailed.