October and nettle seeds

The south facing branch of the sycamore tree across the road from my suburban home has turned from green to yellow, showing autumn is finally here. The warm days of the past few weeks have brought both respite and a lengthening to the late growing season, but it is good to be reminded the wheel of the year is turning and change will follow soon.

September always fills me with panic. Have I grown enough? Has the harvest been enough? Have I foraged everything I need. Enough is such a strange concept. How many people do I need to treat? How many people will I need to feed over winter?

In previous years I could plan and estimate but these strange times make things more uncertain. Winter is coming and all I want to do is find my sheltered place, line my nest and hibernate for the duration. I know it won’t be possible but I can hope.

October is the time of roots and seeds, preferably gathered after the first frost, whenever that is. My ashwagandha plants are still vibrantly green. They were so late germinating and then growing back in July that they have hardly put out their flowers and the seed pods are still green. I will wait to see if any of them turn to orange in the next few weeks. Otherwise everything will be dug and dried or tinctured. There is no rush.

What I did find whilst I was pulling up the dead broad and climbing beans was a hidden last harvest of nettle seed. I remember finding some last seeds this time of year in local parks in the first year I gathered. I’d forgotten the time of gathering was quite so long.

Reading through foraging posts on social media, it seems everyone has finally discovered nettles make more than leaves for soup and fibre for fishing lines. The seeds carry a rich nutritive density. As with any medicinal plant, you do need to harvest and consume with caution.

The fresh seeds when eaten can send some people “high”. The American herbalist, Kiva Rose Hardin first pointed out that if you have a “dry” constitution then nettle seed will dry you out further. She lives in New Mexico, so she is very conscious of moisture and the lack of it. Another issue we have discovered is that if you have misused “recreational drugs” somewhere in your past, nettle seed will cause you difficulties.

We tincture fresh nettle seed  to support kidney failure, as first highlighted by David Winston. It is especially helpful in dealing with kidney pain when you haven’t drunk enough fluid. The dry seeds support exhausted adrenal glands. The usual dose is one teaspoonful taken in yoghurt or porridge or as a seed topping to salads.

We usually recommend they are consumed for at least three months or until the “patient” can’t stand the taste of them anymore. I have one friend with an incredibly stressful job who is still happily consuming her nettle seed two years after they were first given to her.

Dried nettle seeds can also be an aid to reducing dietary salt. They can be ground with salt crystals in a ratio of two: one to produce a useful condiment. If you want something a little hotter, add chilli flakes to the mix.

It worried me when nettle seeds at the farm were turning black and dropping off back in July, thinking I had not found enough for fresh seed tincture. The following month I found another stand of vibrant green, enough to put up nearly 5 litres of tincture. After our herb festival in September, huge nettle plants now covering all the Sanctuary like rampant triffids, dangled their seeds so seductively I was forced to pick them, even though I was there to harvest my damson tree and time, as always, was very short.

I did manage to pick my usual five pounds of damsons and these are now sitting on my jam shelves ready to eat. The quince harvest is very sparse but luckily my friend has a tree and shares her largesse with me. Two bottles of spiced quince gin and three of vodka are now infusing in the larder until Christmas and twenty small jars of quince jelly were made over two days this week.

Now, there are more nettle seeds from the garden drying in a paper bag over the kitchen radiator. I should have added another batch from underneath our hawthorn tree but I was too tired and now it is raining.

What I did pick was an orange flourish of calendula, waving from underneath the runner beans. I’ve lamented the lack of a dedicated calendula bed for the past two years, but collecting a few flowers here and there, self-seeded in the vegetable beds have given me a few to dry for anti-viral tea and enough to turn into oil for skin salves when next needed. There was even a rogue chamomile plant this year, providing enough to fill a tiny jar for emergency use in the future.

This gentle week at home has given me the time to decant this summer’s St John’s wort oil. Only two jars this years, but still plenty in the larder from previous summers. The dried vervain, yarrow and sage have also been poured into glass jars, labelled and put away. The vervain will be mixed with chamomile and lemon balm for IDGAS tea, yarrow for colds and conditions which require an anti-inflammatory and sage for mouth/tooth infections.

There are still bags of St Johns wort flowers, plantain leaves, red clover blossoms and other mysteries to emerge from the “hot cupboard” and put away but not today. I still have tomorrow. 

Harvest ramblings

Despite the weather, harvest is upon us. No matter how large or small our productive plots, there is something to gather, preserve and enjoy. I thought I would share some of my recent activities.

Surprisingly, I harvested nothing during our time away apart from some wonderfully sweet blackberries and a few nettle seeds. Cornwall grows the largest ribwort plantain I’ve seen, but there seemed little point in gathering armfuls as I did two years ago when there was nowhere to keep it dry and relatively warm. Instead I caught up with embroideries I’ve been meaning to do for the past 15 years – starting but never finishing until last month.

Usually I make a new corn dolly to celebrate the harvest, but this year I drew one and embroidered it instead. I also drew a picture of the three pine trees we could see out of the caravan window. I can’t draw in any sense of artistic merit, but my little attempt at folk art brings me pleasure if no-one else!

Since our return, my free time has been taken up with birthdays and harvesting. Last week we celebrated my mother’s 81st birthday. I made new cockerel cushions for my father to give her and she liked them and the new teapot, milk jug, mugs and plates – all with blue cockerels on them - I’d found in Bakewell back in May.

We were at the farm again for the weekend for a herb workshop. Eight people came and made flower essences, comfrey and meadowsweet double infused oil, nettle salt, wild bergamot flower honey, bergamot leaf elixir and various vinegars and tinctures. The weather was kind and during our herb walk around the beds, we looked at meadowsweet, spotted orchids, burdock, white horehound, lemon balm, Solomon’s seal, calendula, motherwort and several other herbs.

The wasps’ nest behind the summerhouse had been deserted, but this didn’t stop the wasps being out in force, attracted by all the honey we were using. When everyone had gone, I managed to pick some hyssop, skullcap and white horehound along with a few dandelion roots.

After tea, I took my mother down to Condicote, where we used to live and where her brother and nephew still farm, so I could raid their purple sage plants. I finished the evening by collecting yarrow from around the garden. I was afraid it would all have gone to seed, but I managed to find some newly flowering plants.

On Sunday morning I picked flowering mullein stalks and dug rosettes to make mullein root tincture. It was really difficult digging the new plants as the hens decided they had to investigate everything I was doing as they couldn’t afford to miss any insects or seeds I might dislodge in the soil!

I also managed to pick some seed-heavy nettles from the field which will probably be the last ones I dry for this year. I already have several jars put away along with three or four from last year, so there should be plenty to munch my way through for the rest of the year or to give away to those in need.

My uncle gave us some of his cream out of a huge bowl while we stood in his kitchen. It was so thick; it turned into butter with just one whisk of the beaters when I worked it on Sunday morning! It took me back to my childhood whisking cream into yellow gold, then painstakingly squeezing it with a large knife to remove the buttermilk. With only one housecow, butter making was a very infrequent task in our household, but we relished the new butter when we had it.

On Bank Holiday Monday, Chris went off to spend a happy day at Greenbelt with his cousins while I took a deep breath and began my herbal task list. Herbs which had been drying in the kitchen and summerhouse were brought onto the garden bench to be checked for mildew and either discarded or placed in glass jars in the larder.

Although I still have to do something with a large bag of assorted dried herbs sitting in the summerhouse (nettles, dead nettles, ground ivy and red clover), sage, burdock, St John’s wort, thyme, calendula, apple and spearmint were all dealt with. I also decanted three jars of vinegar (milk thistle, motherwort and mint), put up some St John's wort and mullein root tincture and made some meadowsweet oil from last year's dried leaves and flowers.

The mint vinegar tasted and smelled so wonderful, I picked some more mint and put up another jarful, together with a small jar of rose petal vinegar using the last 3 roses in the garden and a sprig of spearmint.

The hawthorn trees in the garden have produced the most amazing large, ripe haws this year, so I took time to pick enough to put up 1 jar of brandy, 1 jar of liqueur and 2 jars of vinegar. Chris kindly took his stepladder on Tuesday and picked more haws, which took me two evenings after work to prepare more liqueur and vinegar.

When researching a particular herb, it is not often I find an appealing recipe and have all the herbs to hand. This happened on Tuesday when looking up the properties of horehound. Maud Grieve said a popular cough medicine was made with hyssop, white horehound, marshmallow root and liquorice.

I still haven’t had the courage to dig any marshmallow roots, but the plants are prolific in leaves, flowers and seeds at the moment, so it didn’t take long to pick a large handful to go in the syrup mix along with half my hyssop and horehound bundle and a large stick of liquorice I bought at a French farmers market in Solihull a few years ago. The resulting syrup was incredibly bitter, so it’s been put in the larder to wait for an unsuspecting guinea pig with a dreadful cough!

The remaining hyssop and horehound was mixed with brandy and honey for a cough elixir. We shall see which is the more popular!

My first priority yesterday was to make some St John’s wort salve for a Tabler friend who is suffering the aftermath of transverse myelitis. I mixed a small amount of yarrow oil with the SJW and will be interested to know how useful he finds the salve.

I split my yarrow harvest in two and made some more oil with the older stems and a tincture with the fresh green leaves and flowers. Now I just have nettle roots to tincture and dandelion roots to pickle tonight and this current batch of herbal preservation will be over.

It is very satisfying to see my hot cupboard full of vinegars and liqueurs, but I need to start decanting tinctures and elixirs soon as there is no more shelf space and I’ve run out of large glass jars!