A Family Herb: Stinging Nettle Leaf Uses
The first plants to rise up in the spring, gracing the world with green, often include the very herbs we can most successfully use to be healthy and strong. It’s seasonal herbalism at its best with healthful weedy plants such as dandelions, violets, and chickweed expressing their vitality by simply growing all on their own…
Allergy Home Remedies For Families
Springtime brings the waking of green things from the Earth. The air is fresh and wild, and we feel called to the out-of-doors, to nature. Yet for some of us warmer weather is also the harbinger of, well, misery. If you suffer from seasonal allergies or someone in your family does, you know that the…
12 Nettle Recipes To Add To Your Cookbook
It is spring, and to many of us that means time to watch for the nettle. Long ago, our ancestors also watched for the first greens of spring after a hard winter with nutritional foods in short supply. As soon as they were able, they harvested nettle and incorporated its revitalizing nutrition into their diets. Nutritionally, nettle is one of nature’s…
Stinging Nettle Plant: A Spring Favorite
Many herbalists can hardly wait for spring to nourish their bodies naturally with fresh greens from the earth. Much like our ancestors, we harvest (learn how) the highly nutritious nettle, incorporate it into our diets, and dry enough to get us to next spring. Nettle (Urtica dioica) has fulfilled many needs for humans in the past. It has…
Harvesting and Cooking Nettles (Plus, Nettle and White Bean Recipe!)
Spring nettles are at their best right now in New England – new, spring-green, and tender – so last weekend I was delighted to discover a large patch simply brimming with the prickly goodness of nettles. Harvesting, preparing, and cooking nettles doesn’t have to be hard. Along with health benefits of nettle in herbal tea, these…
Stinging Nettle Recipes for Spring Eating
After a long, cold winter, most of us warmly welcome the arrival of milder weather and the return of the green. As the world seems to wake up, we also wake and stretch our limbs. Emerging from a season of storage and hibernation, our winter inactivity and heavy comfort food indulgences may become more apparent….
4 Natural Allies for Allergy Season
With the recent passing of the vernal equinox, we have now officially entered the season of spring. For many of us, this time of year translates to longer days, the planting of our herbal gardens, and an ever-increasing need to wear sunglasses. For others of us, this time of year translates to allergy season. Indeed,…
Nourishing Weedy Tea
Herbalists have an eye for beauty and worth, seeing usefulness inside what others consider useless. Often reviled plants like nettles, dandelions, burdock, plantain, chickweed, lambs quarters, and red clover often grow nearby in favorite fields or woodland paths, or even on our lawns, and make delicious and nutritious teas as well as herbal vinegars, soups,…
