2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38
If you are fond of indoor vegetable growing and forcing greens in winter, but stinging nettles are not yet on the list of your pets, this is a huge omission. What kind of dishes with this plant have not been invented by cooks in all corners of the world: Romanian pilaf, Georgian casserole, Dagestan dumplings. Nettle is used to prepare cabbage soup and salads, mashed potatoes and meatballs, pickled, make syrups, cocktails and juices. And we have not yet mentioned that the plant belongs to medicinal and is multivitamin. So while there is such an opportunity - in the fall you need to stock up on plant roots for distillation
Forcing stinging nettles indoors
Nettle is also good because it is a rather undemanding plant. Rhizomes of plants are dug out of the ground and planted in any suitable container. After that, you need to water the homemade beds. These containers can be left in the garden for the time being. They are installed on a litter of leaves or straw, and the boxes are also lined with this insulating material on the sides. And in winter, it will be easy to get the containers with the workpiece out of such a shelter and transfer them to forcing in room conditions.
The transferred pots with nettles are watered and kept at a temperature of approximately + 7 ° C. For the greens to appear faster, the air around should not be dry, and good lighting is required. The first crop will be harvested very soon. As with other greens, you can take several cuts from the nettle. However, to do this, you need to harvest the crop carefully, not cutting off, but cutting off the stems with a sharp tool.
But what about eating nettle if it burns mercilessly? After all, it is not for nothing that it is called stinging - the leaves of the plant are densely covered with hairs with formic acid, and from contact with them, blisters appear on the skin, like from mosquito bites. To prevent this phenomenon, after cutting the stems, they are rinsed with boiling water.
To make the taste of dishes or tea made from nettles richer and less herbal, it must be subjected to a fermentation process. To do this, the greens are sent to the freezer. After the leaves are frozen, take the nettle out of the refrigerator and knead it thoroughly with your hands. And only then you can start drying.
The health benefits of nettle
In addition to being rich in vitamins, nettle greens have other valuable qualities. The plant is classified as medicinal. It has a phytoncidal effect and copes with the function of combating pathogenic microbes. The leaves contain proteins and tannins. However, for therapeutic purposes, using nettles that have been set for distillation is not entirely correct. Like many other medicinal herbs, the plant reaches its maximum medicinal power on the days of flowering. It is then that you need to harvest and dry nettles for your home first aid kit.
Despite the ubiquity of nettle growth and even some of its routine, it is a very potent medicine. And self-medication uncontrollably can be very dangerous. For example, nettle is widely used as a hemostatic agent. But its ability to clot blood can negatively affect health in cases where there is a tendency to vein diseases, thrombosis. Well, if, on the contrary, you need to stop the bleeding, use this recipe: 2 table.tablespoons of dry leaves are brewed with a glass of boiling water. The medicine is allowed to stand for an hour. It turns out the daily dose - they drink half a glass twice a day.
Dry nettle leaves for medicinal purposes are also used in collections. For gastrointestinal ailments, a mixture of nettle, plantain, St. John's wort and chamomile flowers are used in equal proportions. On the 4th table. spoons require 1 liter of boiling water. The infusion is left in a warm place for 2 hours.
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