A lovely harvest of young Nettles form Greg Tilbrook place. These'll make nice medicine,
This year I'm experimenting with something I've seem written about in herb books. Apparently, of you use Nettles after they've set seed, they can be irritating to our kidneys. As they're a restorative for kidney function and diuretic their affinity for that system is well known and it's quite possible.
However many things about Nettles are written about Urtica dioica and our Nettles, Urtica urens is just lumped in with them because of all of the similarities. However, ours flowers and sets seeds almost immediately after popping up from the soil. They're annuals. U. dioica is a perennial and the flowering and seed setting have distinct times in the plant's yearly cycle. Maybe the kidney irritation is tied in with that.
