Cultivate the nettles in your garden to help butterflies

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Permalink Reply by gilly on July 17, 2012 at 13:06

The nettles can be very useful to! I make nettle soup but this is one recipe that I would like to try, think its from Hugh Fearnly Whittingstall, I use one of his recipes for the nettle soup which includes rice to thicken rather than potato but he has a few different recipes on the net:

Nettle Beer

Ingredients:
6 litres water
A small carrier bag of nettle tops, washed
Juice of 1 lemon, strained
Juice of 1 orange, strained
750g caster sugar
30g cream of tartar
5g yeast

Method: How to make nettle ale
1. Bring the water to the boil in a large pan.
2. Add nettles, stir, then remove the pan from the heat and leave to infuse for at least an hour until it is at
blood temperature.
3. Carefully - you might want to enlist a helper at this point - strain the nettle liquid through a colander
lined with a large piece of unbleached muslin into a large brewing bucket or pan. Once the liquid has
filtered through, squeeze the muslin to get the maximum amount of liquid into the bucket.
4. Gradually add the sugar, stirring constantly to ensure it is thoroughly dissolved, then add the cream of
tartar, and lemon and orange juice.
5. Finally, once the mixture is tepid, stir in the yeast. Cover and leave for 2-3 days in a warm place, until
it's obviously fermenting.
6. Remove any scum which has risen to the top in fermentation and siphon the beer into sterilised bottles
and seal with corks.
7. Leave for at least a couple more days or up to a month before drinking.

And enjoy drinking hic!

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Permalink Reply by Paul Bumstead on July 17, 2012 at 17:56

Hi Liz,

You obviously haven't been on Beaconsfield Road N15.  There are two front gardens at the West Green Road end that could support as many Butterflies as one could wish for.

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