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I have been meaning to pick some nettles and have a bash at nettle soup, but the ones i was eyeing up have now started to flower (if you can call the green string on the nettles flowers!) and I wondered if i have left it too late, sonce you are susposed to take only the young tops of the nettles?

nettles get stronger in flavour as the year goes by. I have sucessfully used flowering nettles, but I only picked the tops. You may wish to use less in a recipe later in the year.

If you have a stand of nettles in your garden or allotment cut them back and pick from the new growth that emerges. If that's not possible, keep an eye on the places where you would normally pick. Some councils strim back growth periodically which again results in fresh young shoots. Beware though, if you see distorted or discoloured yellowish leaves on the plants. They are likely to have been sprayed and must be avoided completely.

The texture of older nettles does seem to get grittier I find so I try to get young growth wherever possible and avoid those that are in flower if I can.

try strimming or chopping the nettles down and then picking the leaves from the new nettles which will emerge.

(or come over here to France and you can have a trailor load. For free like!)

Yes, it is a little too late. But a nice little trick is to look under hedgerows for new growth. Older nettles can irritate the kidneys!

Kris

Slightly alarmed about older nettles irritating the kidneys... I didn't know that till right now. A few hours ago I picked and souped my first ever nettles. I picked the tops... at home I picked off leaves and discarded the flowers. I had sautéed baby potatoes in their skins, garlic and onions in the soup... I used saved water from potatoes boiled earlier and added a veg stock cube. Cooked it for 15 mins then ran the blender on it till it looked like very fine green tea leaves. I then took half the soup and added diced salami as an experiment and cooked this another four minutes. I always cook soup, veg etc in the microwave where possible, it conserves much energy and speeds things up considerably. I read that if everyone baked potatoes in microwaves instead of ovens we would need one less power station.
Result- excellent but the salami-fied batch was simply the finest and most delicious soup I ever tasted.

I speculate that nettles would deliciously enhance

Fish
Chicken
Lamb
Goat
Bacon
Quiche
Pasta
Ricotta pastries
Curry
Veggie burgers
Tofu
and much else besides

So far kidneys are holding up well... I wonder if eating mature nettles too often damages them... any further info anyone???

Grumpy J