Project Apocalypse - retting nettles

I've now stripped the leaves from the nettles I collected on Saturday. It looks a very sparse collection now. As a first experiment, that's probably fine.

I'm 'dew retting' in order to avoid finding a large receptacle and doing hard smelly work changing water. This takes much longer (6 weeks) but all I need to do is to turn these and water them on days that it doesn't rain.
 I've since read that green stems may be better than brown ones, so I've collected some more from my garden and stripped those too. (Hey, they're a weed and need clearing up anyway. I may as well get something from them.) These ones are greener, but twister too, I'm not sure whether that's a problem.


3 comments:

Anthea said...

I shall watch what happens with interest as I have thought about having a go at this process. Keep us posted please.

peahen said...

Thanks for your interest Anthea. I'm very curious about how soft it will be. I've a feeling I've not picked anywhere enough for a useful amount of fibre but I'll find out! Thankfully there's an inexhaustible supply around!

Unknown said...

Sounds fascinating. I'm in, I want to try this project too.