Haha! I like it! Generally, the greens are what people eat or make tea with though. In WWI, the Germans ended up resorting to wild-harvested nettle fiber for uniforms due to linen shortages.

I made some nettle fiber of the sort that could be used to make textile in the past to see if I could. It’s not that challenging but is time consuming. The process is very similar to processing hemp and flax for fiber:

• Cutting and bundling the stalks (ideally without getting stung too many times): However long it takes your Mr. Handy or manual cutting.

• Retting, dissolving the pectin that glues the cellulose fibers that you want to the woody lignin bits that you don’t with the help of microbes: “Wet” retting takes about a week of just letting the bundles sit in stagnant water. “Dew” retting is also possible but, due to the lower quantity of moisture takes closer to 2-3 weeks and results in lower quality.

• Breaking, the process of breaking up the woody bits to start separating them from the fiber: Can be done very quickly by passing the retted stalks through mechanical rollers

• Scutching, removing the woody bits from the fiber: Manually, takes a LOT of effort. Basically, it’s scraping the stalks with a wooden knife. Apparently, a person can be expected to scutch about 6.8kg (15lbs) of fiber per day by hand. Mechanically, it can also be done with metal rollers. Much, much easier.

• Heckling/hackling, further removing woody bits and coarse fibers by pulling it through progressively narrower combs (generally made of nails): Manually, more pleasant than scutching but time consuming. Mechanically, can be done on a machine compound it with the previous two steps.

• (Optional) Boiling fiber in wood ash solution. The weak alkali helps to break down remaining pectin and soften the fiber.

Then, raw fiber is ready to be spun and sent to a loom to weave into textile.