Storing stinging nettles for fiber

I have maybe 50 stinging nettle plants and I'd like to harvest and store them for use making twine.  Perhaps for future SKIP events.  I believe they need to be cut, stripped of leaves, retted for a week or so and then dried before turning into fiber.  If I want to store them for a year before making twine/string/fiber, at which point should I pause the process?  Or what should I do differently to have a store-able product?  Thx!

I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure you could just harvest them, strip off their leaves, and then stack them somewhere dry. Then, you can rett them for use. Dew retting takes longer than retting in a vat, and kind of depends on the weather. I've never vat retted nettle. I can ask in the nettle for fiber facebook group I'm in, if no one knows more here.

If you don't want to deal with retting, and have time to semi-process them now, you can harvest them, strip them of leaves, stomp on them to release the "bark" from the stalk, and then peel off the "bark." It usually peels off in four strips. Those can then be dried and stored. When people want to process them into fiber, they'll need to rub the dry peelings to get off the chaff and outer bark to get down to just the fiber. This is how I store my nettle. I've only ever retted once.

Here's a video of processing the nettle without retting:

Thanks Nicole!  It seems like I could do the strip, stomp and peel step, let them dry and bring them to WL for doing the twine BB.  Or whatever else I want to use twine for...  Plus it sounds like now is the time to harvest so I guess I have something to do this afternoon :)

Decided to do a trial.  I cut two bundles of nettles and stripped them.  One I'm going to stomp and bundle up for drying.  The other I'm just setting aside for later processing.  I'll collect a third bundle in a month or two cuz a friend said it would be stronger if they were nearly spent.  So I'll try all three methods and see which gives better twine fodder next year :)

Nicole Alderman wrote:...

If you don't want to deal with retting, and have time to semi-process them now, you can harvest them, strip them of leaves, stomp on them to release the "bark" from the stalk, and then peel off the "bark." It usually peels off in four strips. Those can then be dried and stored. When people want to process them into fiber, they'll need to rub the dry peelings to get off the chaff and outer bark to get down to just the fiber. This is how I store my nettle. I've only ever retted once.

Here's a video of processing the nettle without retting:

I agree with Nicole (and with Sally of course, everything about nettles I learned from her videos).
I use the no-retting-method: cut (harvest) the amount of nettles you can process that day (in my climate the best time is about end June to early August), strip off the leaves, stomp, peel the bast from the woody inner parts, divide the strips of bast in thinner strips and then let them dry.
There are too many nettles growing here to process all of them. If I had the time I could harvest nettles every day and process them in this way, for as long as they are good to work with (maybe all month August?). The dry strips of bast can be kept in storage, probably for years.

When I want to go on to make the fiber I put a bundle of dried stips in a bowl of water, let it soak for a few minutes and then I can start scraping. The amount of scraping depends on
the desired end result: do you want garden string or fine sewing thread?

I'm following this post for my reference!

I've been saving nettle stems for a few years when I harvest for food and medicine. This year my patch has matured enough that I was able to do a huge harvest of nettle seeds (Anyone have tips about ways to eat those?) and naturally a nice bundle of stems. These stems are more robust, and I suspect will have stronger fibers due to their age.

I'm going to attempt to ret them, as I'm working towards fine fibers for spinning, not course bast for twisting into cordage. However, as I live in the high desert dew retting is not feasible. Here's hoping I can ret them, but not rot them...

Pink Pitcher wrote:I'm following this post for my reference!

I've been saving nettle stems for a few years when I harvest for food and medicine. This year my patch has matured enough that I was able to do a huge harvest of nettle seeds (Anyone have tips about ways to eat those?) and naturally a nice bundle of stems. These stems are more robust, and I suspect will have stronger fibers due to their age.

I'm going to attempt to ret them, as I'm working towards fine fibers for spinning, not course bast for twisting into cordage. However, as I live in the high desert dew retting is not feasible. Here's hoping I can ret them, but not rot them...

I'm interested to know about the result of your experiment. Maybe retting after storing the stems dry for a longer time will still work.
I know the method I use only works with fresh nettle stems, picked the same day (I know because I tried ...).